Hi.
First of all, please forgive me for my bad english.
I’m new into Unreal world and i have a big question. I noticed that before you learn to code inside a game engine, you need meshes to work with, so i decided to start learning blender. Now, i don’t know what to do. I feel pretty secure about modeling, but not about animations, since i don’t know what direction i must take. I mean, let’s assume i want to make a first person game. Now, my character is just the hands, and i know i can make animations, in the same mesh file, about idle pose, running pose and so on. BUT, i want to implet things like guns, or even more simply a one use object, such a grenade, do i have to create the animation of holding a grenade importing the grenade file in my hands file? I seriously don’t know how to behave.
It might be worth it to spend a few dollars and buy some content on the marketplace. You can buy both meshes (including “first person” hands) and animations.
Inside the engine, the types of assets you have available are:
- skeletons
- meshes (bound to skeletons, or free-standing)
- animations (drive the movement of skeletons)
- logic and “attachments”
So, you start with a skeleton. You build a skinned mesh to attach to the skeleton. You then build animations for the skeleton. When the skeleton moves, the skinned mesh moves.
In the engine, you can combine various animations (stand/walk/run, aim-left/aim-right/aim-up/aim-down, point-at, drive, hold, …) to generate the final output animation.
For example, the “holding a thing in the right hand” animation might override the right arm from the shoulder down to the wrist,
Each holdable object would then point out an additional animation that curves the hand/fingers appropriately for the object.
The object itself would likely just be a static mesh (except a grenade might have a pin and spoon animatable part?) and the mesh might have a property that calls out the “curve fingers” animation to override with.
So, the game logic would go:
- start with regular guy
- pose animated skeleton as per running/walking/whatever
- if holding something, pose arm based on the holding animation
- if the thing being held has an override animation, pose the hand based on that override
- attach the thing being held as a component to the “hand” socket/bone on the skeleton, to put it in the right place in the world
Exactly how this works varies by game engines, though, so you probably can’t make “generic” art in Blender without also knowing which particular engine or game you’re making it for.
Thus, it might make sense to start playing around with the engine, and come up with the kind of gameplay you’ll want, so you can identify which kinds of assets you’re going to need to create.
The marketplace content is great for this, because it allows you to drop in “placeholder” art that looks enough like what you need such that you can identify the gameplay and actual asset requirements.
Thanks man, this general view of the mechanics is exactly what i was looking for