Inside blender almost everything works. The bones look a bit mangled but they all work nonetheless. There’s just the problem that somehow the mesh appears disjointed inside blender but only here, in UE4 it will look correctly again…
Does Anyone know how to solve this mesh glitch?
You can edit the animations in blender, create new ones and import that back into UE4 and it works with the mannequin skeleton… there’s just this one single problem that the video didn’t address…
It is really hard to work on a character animation when the mesh isn’t being displayed correctly!
I just tried a large combination of settings in Blender’s FBX importer; nothing seems to work to keep the bones in their correct places. It’s likely a limitation of how Blender’s FBX importer currently responds to UE4’s exporter. I’m not sure if there’s a way to retarget the skeleton inside Blender, as a similar error had occurred inside UE4’s importer in the 3rd Person Game with Blueprints tutorial, but the instructor was able to fix it inside UE4. However, it’s probably far easier to just make your own rig for the UE4 mannequin, that way you can use IK controls and the rig would be more intuitive.
Or you could just use this Blender rig, which also uses the UE4 mannequin.
Hello! Thanks for trying it out - I had no luck with different settings either.
Well sure I could use my own rig or the one included in your link.
However I was hoping to make any animation as universal as possible by using the rig included with UE4, though I’m really not sure how important this is? If I were to create my own animations with a rig to use on the Mannequin will this still suffice for Marketplace content?
I’d like to say that you can use all my animations with the Mannequin skeleton but I’m not sure if the demand for this is really as high as I think it is… Are basically most people just going to make their own rigs anyway?
Would really help to know what developers are going to want in this case…?
You’re welcome! I wish I could be more help with your 2nd question regarding content creation for the Marketplace… for that I have no idea. I’m not sure if people would use a rig natively or just retarget the animation to their own rig. I think Blender has some tools and/or techniques like this for using motion capture data, and I’m sure other 3D apps have similar strategies as well. UE4 has built-in skeleton retargeting tools also.
Here’s a few random things I’ve discovered when exporting FBX from Blender in my very limited experience (they may or may not apply to what you’re doing):
In the Armatures tab, I check “Only Deform Bones”, and leave “Add Leaf Bones” unchecked to minimize bone count for mobile.
On the Animations tab, I turn Simplify to 0. I found leaving it at 1 was adding weird jitters to bones that had no animation.
On the Geometry tab, I turn smoothing to Face. I’m not sure yet if this is superior than the default setting, but UE4 doesn’t complain about “no smoothing groups present” if it’s set to face.
You’re welcome. I just checked out additional info online, but frankly there seems to be no solution I could find. You can import the UE4 mannequin into Blender without animations fine, but as soon as you try to import animations, it gets messed up. You might want to try messaging the OP of this thread, as I saw a video in which his addon contained a “Fix Imported UE4 Animation” button. However, in the thread I linked to, it doesn’t show the button in the attached image. I don’t have the time to check it out more thoroughly right now, but please let me know if that helps at all! Thanks.
Hi. It is UE4 exporter problem only. I tried just export mannequin FBX and import it back (without any actions in blender) and after animation retargeting I have met this glitch in Persona. The reason is clearly incorrect bones transforms. For instance, bone “upperarm_twist_01_l” has translation animation (it must be rotation only).
So, you can clean up animation from incorrect keys (for example in Blender dope ■■■■), if you want use it.
However, in the thread I linked to, it doesn’t show the button in the attached image. I don’t have the time to check it out more thoroughly right now, but please let me know if that helps at all! Thanks.