Support Stream – Blender Animation & UE4 – Jan. 13th, 2015

The next stream is all about Blender workflow and best practices with UE4.

WHAT
Senior Technical Animator , walks us through importing/exporting FBX files in Blender (v 2.73), setting up scene working units, and shares his Blender/UE4 pipeline

WHERE
Follow us on the official Unreal Engine Twitch channel:

WHEN
Tuesday, Jan. 13th @ 2PM EST Countdown]

WHO
, Senior Technical Animator (@](://))
Palomino, Developer Support Manager (@seanpalomino](://twitter/SeanPalomino))

Feel free to ask any questions on the topic in the thread below, and remember, while we try to give attention to all inquiries, it’s not always possible to answer 's questions as they come up. This is especially true for off-topic requests, as it’s rather likely that we don’t have the appropriate person around to answer. Thanks for understanding!

EDIT: The archive is available here](?v=Ayp1lof0RJU&index=1&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gbggHiwNP2JBXGeD2h12tbB)!

EDIT 2: Part 2 of the Blender Stream

Resources

3D Model Assets](https://d26ilriwvtzlb.cloudfront.net/c/c8/UE4_Blender_HeroTPP.)

Images used:

Export:

&stc=1

Import:

Import_FBX.PNG&stc=1

Units:

Units.PNG&stc=1

Unreal Engine Support Team

now that is something to watch, looking forward to see how you guys set things up in blender

Awesome! Finally a blender stream :smiley:

Do you guys also show the skeletal mesh pipeline? -> because that’s the tricky part in 2.73 :stuck_out_tongue:

Will be very interesting , thank for it ,
Next , I would like see too .

Thanks a lot for this. There are a lot of good artists/developers(myself included) that use Blender and could definitely help your company and UE4 accelerate. :slight_smile:

The thing is, in the last 2 years, Blender had reached a maturity that really does deserves it’s logo next to the other major players. Just needs these types of dialog with game engine companies.

Nice! We speaks. It listens. “Or it gets the hose again.” <- Early nineties movie reference.

Hi guys, Some time ago I wrote an addon for blender to facilitate my workflow. Might help :wink:

://bit.ly/Z3JrXV

I’m not tested in 2.73 but I read the FBX API change so I hope the next week ± I an have an update for the new version :wink:

I’m really excited about this! We’re a Maya shop, technically speaking, but I use personally use Blender for prototyping assets and the like (the art team won’t let me create “real” assets anyway :slight_smile: ).

Honestly, I’ve had great luck going from Blender to UE4 ever since 2.72 with the new exporter with characters I rigged in Blender (either to the Rigify skeleton, or to the skeleton), but I still haven’t been able to come up with a good workflow for rigging assets to the Epic skeleton or creating animations for that skeleton.

If at all possible, please please please cover that process.

[=;203667]
Hi guys, Some time ago I wrote an addon for blender to facilitate my workflow. Might help :wink:

://bit.ly/Z3JrXV

I’m not tested in 2.73 but I read the FBX API change so I hope the next week ± I an have an update for the new version :wink:
[/]

Wow I never knew this existed, I will check it out this week. I am a professional programmer by day so maybe I can help with the dev or suggestions in the future. Just getting into Python scripting in Blender (the API).

Thanks for the full page docs on your site, very helpful in understanding the plugin.

I’m really looking forward to this one and have a few questions/requests if possible:

I’d like to see basic set up and best practices for exporting skeletal mesh.

Is there a way to get the 3rd person template character rig into blender for rigging a different character, that can then replace the one in the template and use the same animations.

I heard last year that Epic/Unreal donated to the blender foundation to further development of UE4 blender integration. Has any progress been made with that?

Thanks!

It’s really great to hear about blender! Maybe we can also get some info about how to properly export animations based on blender’s rigify addon and the MakeHuman to Unreal workflow

Keep up the good work!

[=Snow;203973]
I heard last year that Epic/Unreal donated to the blender foundation to further development of UE4 blender integration. Has any progress been made with that?
[/]

My understanding was that the FBX exporter improvements we saw with 2.72 were funded by the Epic contribution. Whether other things are being done with that money or if that used it all, I don’t know and I doubt it’d be easy to find out.

Wow! Thanks Epic! I am looking forward to this stream.

BTW Blender 2.73 was released on Jan 7, 2015

[=Demolition Man;204422]
BTW Blender 2.73 was released on Jan 7, 2015
[/]

V2.73 release notes said there were even more FBX tweaks. I haven’t noticed any difference yet, but I don’t have any complicated rigging either.

As far as I know… to me seems the mayor problems in blender with the FBX is related with the import into blender for this reason:

(the bones in blender have names in 3 parts of the bone , other software only 1 name for all bone (on the join)

://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.73/Addons

And well they change the Api for the FBX exporter ( i not see for now ) but I suspect the changes are only the names of the parameters passed to the export function (like what happen for the version 2.72)

[=TeotiGraphix;203860]
Wow I never knew this existed, I will check it out this week. I am a professional programmer by day so maybe I can help with the dev or suggestions in the future. Just getting into Python scripting in Blender (the API).

Thanks for the full page docs on your site, very helpful in understanding the plugin.
[/]

Sure, I’m not a programer so of course i’m sure the code can be improved and cleaned (more than 1 script for example). And of course feel free to improve it if you can.

I had thought to include a couple more features, but for now I have not had time

1- Something to Export pre-made phisics aniations to UE4 like that: ?v=iQ6HFdP8_C4 (seems easy to do, is like a macro)
2- PivotPainter (https://docs.unrealengine/latest…ter/index.html) (translate the script to blender (more dificult to me…))

Greetings!

Only say that I just try the addon in blender 2.73 and seems to work properly. :wink:

The stream is in just a few hours, but we’re taking questions before and during. If anyone here has any Blender to UE4 questions, ask away and I’ll give them to Kevin.

Well I have 1. Any plans for read blend files directly in UE4 ?

I thought on this because maybe would be useful. Instead of re-build the level in UE4 the blend file can provide the positions of all objects in the scene, even if is an instanced object, place in the level as an instance. (just eliminate 1 step, but some times a large step)

Thanks guys!

I’m looking forward to this twitch stream.
Blender is the one and only modelling tool for all of us hobby game designers and starters. :slight_smile:

Here are some of my questions for the stream:

  • What are standard settings which you can recommend in Blender for some great workflow and import/export?
  • Are there specific features which you can recommend in Blender and are there features which are not supported by UE4 and which should not be used?
  • Are there best practices in terms of polygon count / texture sizes and so on?
  • Are there further plans to support Blender with plugins / import & export tools or something similar?