I’m a beginner but i’m into the games enough to follow the changes of the engines and now this Editor and the Blueprints solves many things of the hardwork of make a game, but one first thing i want to do is make animations for the character (rig the body), and that looks more difficult than it should. I can think on a couple changes like different Terms (bc there are Animation/Sequence/Cinematic, and idk what else, but gets confusing at the first), quick accesses (from the Skeleton), and Animation properties (related to the Normal animations and “Additive animations and the trick with the Slots” that i watch currently on tutorials to only affect some parts of the body (could be like defining key-frames on the additive animation).
Regards
I agree that character rigging and animation is complex! Character animators are some of the most technical artist roles on a production team (together with VFX/particle folks, usually.)
It is, however, not “more complex than it needs to be.” All the tools and controls that are there, are there for a reason. Coming as a beginner, and saying “I don’t know what all those knobs are for,” feels a bit like walking into a nuclear power plant control center, and wondering why there’s many dials and buttons, and not just an “on/off” switch in the center.
The good news is, lots of people have learned all these things before, so it’s totally possible if you hang in there!
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Yes it is a Complex Subject and the engine in general is not exactly optimized for simplicity in fact its the opposite its made for Maximum Complexity.
my Advice is don’t try learn it all at once or even think about learning it all at once , instead try to break it down into smaller more approachable step as in
Start learning Just one thing at a time for example the Control Rig , but dont go from that to Blendshapes and motion warping and then Anim BPs ETC because all of a sudden your overwhelmed and its impossible to learn then.
so take it one step at a time and start learning a specific part/topic until you can do it without thinking , then move onto the next small single topic/thing and then after a prolonged period of time learning these sub-topics in engine you will understand more about the engine in general and it will start to come together for you .
I hope this helps 