Modo>UE4 Object Animation (animated cable car)

Hi there, I’m running into a very odd issue when importing an animated tram object animation from Modo to UE4; I’ve attached a slideshow to explain…

UE4-Shot1
UE4- beginning of animation

Modo-Shot1
And Modo (matches fine)

UE4-Shot2
A short way through the scene, things are looking decent in both apps still…

Modo-Shot2

UE4-Shot3
…But at this stage you can see the whole tram is angling itself weirdly, apart from the rest of the animation remaining relatively solid

Modo-Shot3
-Here is how it should be appearing

  • My process/explanation:
    I wanted to use the dynamics/animation systems in Modo to create a realistic looking tram animation that swings/moves accurately. I did that and baked the resulting animation so I could import to UE4.

  • Stipulation:
    I need to be using pre-baked dynamics because I need to animate characters entering/exiting the tram smoothly with Motionbuilder’s constraint systems.

  • I’ve tried:
    Exporting keyframed object animation (as opposed to skeletal) which imports and animates but with this same rotation issue- (I’ve heard many times this was not possible so it confused me when it worked- is importing animation without a skeleton a new engine feature?)

  • Also tried binding joints to the mesh to try the skeletal animation route but ended up with identical results.

  • Tried the FBX converter, no change

  • Tried importing to Motionbuilder 2015 and re-exporting (since Modo is still on FBX 2013) but same issue.

Here’s a link to the fbx animation if needed:FBX

Any ideas? Sadly this one is a bit of a showstopper for a multi-year project :\

Happy to provide anything else if needed.

Thanks so much!
-Barrett

Found the issue; it turns out my center point was rotated ever so slightly before baking the dynamics to keyframes; for whatever reason this issue didn’t show up in Modo but did in UE4… either way it seems that ‘zero’-ing the mesh in Modo before baking fixed the issue.