I’m struggling to add animations located on one UE4 skeleton to another? I think Im missing something simple?
For example if I simply create a new project and then add in the animation starter pack, how do I then add those animations to the Skeleton I had before importing the animation starter pack. I just need the animations as Im using the character in sequencer and want to be able to select them from the “add animation” button so I just need a way to add them to the initial skeleton.
I have the same problem. I bought a set of animations and am trying to change the associated skeleton, but my target skeleton mesh isnt in the list… which is odd because its the default skeleton mesh included with the starter content. The anmiation uses the same bones as the UE skeleton. Animations are in a subfolder of /content.
I have found that if i manually copy the source asset into a folder it prompts me to import, at which point I can select the skeleton, but id rather not do that for 122 animations one by one.
Yeah, I went through that documentation a bunch, didnt see, or I missed, unchecking that box. I did get it figured out, but thanks for the info either way
The weird thing is that I can vaguely remember finding a way to do this, where the re-targeting would be done at runtime – no need to duplicate/copy the animations.
Now I can’t find how that was done. It was something to do with setting up the skeleton equivalencies, but my google-fu doesn’t manage to get me back to that place. Was I hallucinating? Technically, seems like this should be possible.
Runtime retargeting is always active by default - and its the reason the epic team has had bad/damaged animation in every template for 5plus years without giving a f*ck about it.
Under the skeleton hierarchy, eight click and choose retargeting options.
Each bone cab be set to match something - the skeleton, or the animation track, with various options for scaling.
There are some uses for this, but generally it’s just a waste of resources on skeletal meshes, since they all have it active and set to follow the skeleton.
If you set it to follow the animation, you get to see just how f*ucked up the epic animations are
In fact, most free animation packs have issues like that. Even non-epic ones.
Generally, retarget the skeleton so you get duplicated animations. Modify the animations so you have a 100% accurate animation set specific to that skeleton.
If you want to “save” on disk space. You would go with runtime retargeting. But then you have to be OK with animations being much inferior quality.
That’s the give/take.
Also, on a retargrted skeleton most IK has issues.
Good to know. Thanks!
What’s the bit that I’m missing, when other animations (for some other copy of “UE Mannequin Skeleton”) don’t show up as options in the animation selector for my particular skeleton instance?
When animations don’t show up, either you need to fix redirectors on the project folder, after an import or something similar done externally…
OR (more likely)
The animations aren’t associated with the correct skeleton.
(When the bones are the same, that’s a simple fix with re-targeting to force the merge.)
Right – what I’m getting at, is – I seem to remember some way to get them to show up without having to “copy with retargeting.”
I’ve set up the shared retargeting setup and rig, such that manually re-targeting animations would work, but that’s not enough. There’s some other thing I need to do to make this happen automatically. (I’m starting to fear that this belief is just the result of a way-too-vivid daydream…)
Seems likely.
You can re-write the engine files to not only show stuff associated via skeleton.
But then you also have to run the custom editor build…
And the engine will actually crash when you try to play an animation that doesn’t belong to the specific skeleton…
As far as I know, there is no way to associate one animation with multiple skeletons.
Even when the skeletons are identical, just because they use a different file name, they don’t “match”…
To the original question, with same skeleton, you could right klick on new skeleton and Delete… “REPLACE REFERENCES” with your skeleton, then hit save then do a “Fix up Redirectories in Folders” should be good to go… thats what I do with market place animations. Hope this helps
