FBX character anim problem: body works, face does not

(NOTE: I have tried this in 4.18 and 4.19)

Hello all,

I’ve created and rigged a character in maya for use in Unreal. I rigged the face using leaf joints. It looks great, works fine. I have tested facial animation on earlier versions of the character and its skeleton, and it worked perfectly. But now, the face does not move anymore.

I have tried importing only facial animation, and I have tried importing both facial and body animation together, and either way, the face is completely still. (The body anim works fine). The facial bones are visible and gave no errors on import, but they are not moving in the viewport either. I can grab the facial bones in the editor and manipulate them to my heart’s content, but the baked out animation just refuses to play on those extra joints above the head bone. I can guarantee you there has been no practical difference in the way I built the previous version that worked and this one that does not. The only differences that I can think of is that it’s using an updated mesh for the body (face mesh hasn’t changed) and has IK bones on the hands and feet.

Already confused, I assumed something was somehow wrong with my fbx > ue4 import, so after trying all the different options I could fathom, I then exported my uasset animation back out of unreal to FBX format and imported it to Maya, and to my great surprise, the facial bones are moving correctly.

If anyone has the power to shed some light on this peculiar problem, I am all ears.

Thank you!

Update: I created a new skeleton by importing a copy of the existing skeletal mesh and the animations worked. However, after retargeting my animBP to this new skeleton, THEN the facial animations stop working.

The problem SEEMS to have been fixed by setting the facial animation bones retargeting settings back to Animation from Skeleton. I will test further tomorrow.