Before UE4.23, I would often create morph targets for separate objects and have them share the same name so they got merged on import. For example, if I had a character with separate face and eyelash meshes, I could simply create two separate morph targets and name them “blink”. When I imported them into UE4 they would then be merged into one “blink” morph target. This workflow means that I don’t have to combine any meshes prior to creating morph targets.
Recently, I tried this in UE4.23 but found that my morph targets now get renamed. Instead of simply having one “blink” morph that affects both the face and the eyelashes, I now get a “blink” morph for one and a “blinkShape” morph for the other. Needless to say, this is hardly ideal and breaks the workflow I’ve been using up until this point. Is there some hidden setting somewhere or is this a “bug” that’s been “fixed”?
I would also like to know what’s going on with that. I experience exactly the same thing in Unreal 4.23.
When I used to import a character into 4.21, Unreal merges all the morph targets with the same name together. So if there’s a blendshape called “blink” on the body and the lashes-geometry, it will merge them together, so that both can be controlled by one slider or one animation curve. And I always took advantage of this behaviour.
In 4.23 however, it creates unique morph target names for every geometry, even if the names are the same. That means it will create one slider “blink” for the body and one called “blinkShape” for the lashes-geo. The consequence is, that animation-curves only apply on the main geo, so the lashes would stand still.
It seems like there is already an issue report on this animation behaviour, but not on the main fact of renaming morph targets:
I can also see how this could be wanted behaviour, so maybe a check-box in the import settings would be the best compromise.
My Workaround for now:
I import the character in 4.21 and then migrate him to 4.23, because that keeps the merged morph target names. However, that’s quite annoying, if the rig gets updated a lot, like in our studio.