Best way to have different models share the same skeletons?

[TiernanWatson]

@BobJoel;451560

If I’m understanding you correctly, then it’s the 1st option - make the desired skeleton and import it as a skeleton asset to the engine, then it’s a matter of weighting both models separately in Maya. “Copy smooth skin weights” is the most basic way to get your skin weights from one mesh to another, but it’s just about guaranteed you’ll need to do some cleanup on the transferred weights unless the models match very closely.

If your models do happen to share the same vertex order or UV mapping, there are options in the tool to transfer in UV space which would give more consistent results. Works best for things like heads or arms where the maps can be shared.

Sorry, just realized my message wasn’t very clear, haha, but yes I believe you understand me correctly. I was in a hurry.

So yeah, I just need to create the skeleton, import it to UE4, and then when I’m exporting my weighted models, should they just be exported as usual i.e. export it as a skeletal mesh the way you normally would with both the skeleton and mesh in the file?

Also, how does UE4/any program know its the same skeleton? That probably sounds stupid, but if you make a skeleton with the same bone names, it still sees it as a different skeleton.