Hey guys,
I’m having some issues importing and I’m hoping someone will know where I’m going wrong.
I’ve set up facial animations on my character mesh and then linked them to the Skeletal rig using Drivers. I then set my key frames for the animations that I needed and exported everything over to my UE4 project. I made sure I was selection import morph targets when I imported but when I brought the mesh up there was nothing. The bone drivers worked correctly with the animation as far as moving the bones around… but the shape keys were not showing up, nor was the mesh deforming either…
I’ve look on line and it said I needed to use FBX 6.1 as the export style, but when I do the mesh imports with incorrect origins and still no shape keys (or morph targets) showing up.
So any help would be greatly appreciated. The over all result that I’m working on is creating talking and facial animations for a game character for dialog with the player. So if there is a better work around then what I am doing I would love to hear it as well.
OK I got it worked out, but wanted to post an answer just in case someone else has this same issue down the line.
In order to be able to export out of blender into UE using FBX 7.4 with Shape key animations rigged with Bone Drivers, you have to make sure you un-tick Apply Modifiers. Since you can not apply any modifiers to a mesh that has shape keys attached to it. So when you export and have it set to apply, all of the shape keys get erased when exported. Thus no animations or shape keys area transferred over.
When you imported the Skeletal Mesh is the shape key animation preserved.
Or did you then have to create an animation blueprint to control the morph targets? Also I assume that you are using bones in the armature of the skeletal mesh as the drives. I’ve been looking for ways to get shape key animation from blender to UE4. For now I’ve been doing shape key animation if UE4… Which is not ideal.
Sorry to bother on a question already answered but after hearing your solution I had to do some experimentation because your solution was quite contrary to what I’ve heard from others in that there was no way to export shape key animation in to UE4. Doing a similar process I was able to import shape key animations into UE4.
What I did was I use a bone in the armature of the skeletal mesh as a driver for one of the shape keys of the mesh. In order to export the morph target curve you have to export the the mesh along with armature when exporting animations. Also Driver bones do not have to be deform bones.
All this is however with the 7.4 FBX exporter in the newest version blender which has shown great improvement in it’s compatibility with UE4.
yes, the shape key animation was preserved. I used non-deforming bones on the skeletal rig as the Dirvers for the shape keys, then key framed the animations. As long as you import the Mesh and the rig together, with the apply modifiers box un-ticked. everything should work without using the Blueprints in UE4. Just like a normal imported animation.