Best Way To Import Custom First Person Animations into The Shooter Demo

First off, I’m not sure if this is the correct section but I’m not sure where else this post would go. So I apologize in advance. I am learning my way around UE4 by modifying the shooter demo. I have already switched out the default weapons in the game but would like to animate my own first person arms and bring them into the game replacing the default ones. When I was working in Unity (before I switched to UE4) I would animate the weapons and the hands/arms together than export them as a single FBX. It seems that in UE4 (or at least in the shooter demo) that the weapons and first person arms animations are imported separately. What is the best or correct way to bring in custom weapons and animations from 3DS Max into the Shooter Demo?

I think best to import the mesh of the char first (arms) then the weapon that way if you have a similar weapon you can change it really easy in the ue4, and not going in all the process of making a new animation of him holding the weapon.
(I am just make the animation separately)

That’s kind of what I was thinking as well. Then the next question that comes to my mind. What is the best way to make sure that the animations line up correctly with the weapon? Basically when importing a weapon into the game, it is a lot of trial and error to make sure that the weapon lines up correctly when aiming down sights (this has to be done outside of the UE4). Would the best approach be to find the correctly alignment/position for the weapon and then create the animations off of that position? Seems like even a sightly different weapon would need a new alignment and as a result possibly a new animation?

You can always try to adjust the gun in Unreal after attaching it to the hand sockets (after you made them) make a bone socket to the palm of your FPS hand. then attach the gun to it. that way it’ll move with your walking/running/reloading ect animations. then you can adjust the position/scale of your gun in Unreal if any mistakes were made. for the second hand you can try setting it up for the IK This doc will help setting up the IK system.

Hope this helped. sorry if it wasn’t any help.
But i tried! D:
if all else fails. you SHOULD be able to reimport new animations that you made through exporting in Maya. export it like you would normally. and you can use the import new animation on Unreal.
But i don’t think you’ll need to make a whole new animation for each gun. unless they’re completely different then eachother.
at-least that’s how it should work. never worked correctly with me. (4.9.2)

You can always try to adjust the gun in Unreal after attaching it to the hand sockets (after you made them) make a bone socket to the palm of your FPS hand. then attach the gun to it. that way it’ll move with your walking/running/reloading ect animations. then you can adjust the position/scale of your gun in Unreal if any mistakes were made. for the second hand you can try setting it up for the IK This doc will help setting up the IK system.

Hope this helped. sorry if it wasn’t any help.
But i tried! D:
if all else fails. you SHOULD be able to reimport new animations that you made through exporting in Maya. export it like you would normally. and you can use the import new animation on Unreal.
Also arms first then gun.
But i don’t think you’ll need to make a whole new animation for each gun. unless they’re completely different then eachother.