Vehicle skeletal mesh import problem

Hi!
I was working on a fps project and wanted to import a downloaded vehicle(from turbosquid, t3fdm, cgtrader… I tried all). When I tried importing the fbx file, as skeletal and select the ‘sedan skeleton’ part, it gives me an error regarding the merging of bones and if i press yes all OR no all, the fbx imports in small pieces,
Eg: a separate mesh for the windscreen, the seats, the door, the spokes of each wheel etc.
I want to import a single skeletal mesh and want it to use the sedan skeleton so I can drive it around…
Please Help…
Thanks!! :D,

Hello, well, if you just download some random mesh from some site, it will in most cases won’t work with any skeleton in game, only if it is aimed just for that purpose. If you want to use the mesh and assign it the skeleton of the sedan vehicle in unreal, you have to first check in your 3D modeling software how it is modeled and rigged. You cant just download a mesh and assign it some skeleton. That mesh has to have the same amount of bones as the skeleton you want it to retarget to and has to be skinned as well with the name of the bones you are retargetting to. The best thing you can do is to import it to your 3D modeling software and reskin it as you wish so you have your unique skeleton. Just in case you are using blender here is tut video on how to set it up How to get wheeled vehicle from Blender to Unreal Engine 4 from scratch [OLD] - YouTube.

Is there a way to do it on maya? Because I am new to blender…

Sure, it is the same process. Just join all the parts together and make 5 bones, 1 for each wheel and one for the body. There are plenty of tutorials on how to make working vehicle in maya ready for unreal. I cannot tell you exact steps because I have never used Maya.

Cant we download a mesh, and then add the bones etc… And then use it?

You can download whole .fbx file with mesh and armature but its good to first import it to Maya to see if it is set up properly and then export again. Of course you can just download mesh and rig it yourself but all of this has to be done before importing to UE4.

1 1/2 years later, Thank you…

Had this issue, didn’t think about checking the mesh first.