Hey,
I’m having problems importing an animated bell I made in Blender.
Simple reproduction method:
- Start new Blend file
- add a cube
- add a bone
- set bone deform to false
- parent cube to bone
- create basic animation in Pose editor
- export for FBX
- import into UE4
- receive error
I’ve attached the bell blend file I’m using which receives the same error as the cube method above (essentially the same thing).
Screenshots of settings
Error:
Bell blend
“it but no weights” ← i think that’s supposed to be “it has no weights”.
I’ve tried setting up vertex groups, weight painting and everything I can think of, but nothing works.
Hey, I just downloaded your .blend file and tried to make it work.
You haven’t parented your mesh to the bone (or no weights are set), to fix this go to object mode, select the bell and in the bottom menu click Object → Parent → Clear Parent, do the same for the bone.
Then (still in object mode) hold shift and first select the bell mesh and then the bone, click (at the bottom) Object - > Parent → With Automatic Weights (maybe a second dialog is popping up, click automatic weights again).
Also activate deform on the bone, this shouldn’ matter if you export all bones but it is still good practice… only deactivate deform on bones you don’t want to export (with the export option enabled) like Inverse Kinematic (IK) bones.
If you have Blender 2.71 use ASCII export because there is a bug with binary export (I think, it’s not confirmed) that is sometimes messing up the bone locations (the offset to the root bone).
Use this export options if you have bundled your animation with your skeletal mesh:
If you want to do multiple animations it’s imho better to seperate the skeletal mesh and the animations for a faster workflow, just disable [ ] Animation in the export options to export the skeletal mesh … when exporting an animation deselect the “Mesh” option (you just need the armature data)
For importing the skeletal mesh to UE4 I use these settings:
As a final note: If you are using ASCII export in Blender Unreal 4 Engine will not recognize the animations on import. But this is fine, just select Animation and import it anyway.
In the blend file I provided the mesh I’m pretty sure it’s parented to the bone. If I parent it like you suggest it gets parented to the armature? And I can’t pose it in pose mode. In import shouldn’t “import meshes in bone hierarchy” be ticked? If I add deform to the bone it will deform the bell when posing. Or am I sidetracked here? 
If you want to add a non deformed mesh to a bone start by having deformation on the bone OFF then add the mesh, pose/animate, then turn deformation ON and export. It will not deform the mesh. If you don’t turn deformation back on there will be a problem with the weights and UE4 will refuse to import it.
