Playing with the latest nightly build of Blender from Blender Builds - blender.org and I discovered that it’s now possible to go round-trip from Blender to UE4 and back to Blender and have it match the original skeleton if you don’t make extensive changes to the skeleton. You can add bones on to the end of a bone chain, but can’t insert bones into an existing chain.
This is a big step forward for Blender. Up until now, I’ve been unable to use the default UE4 HeroTPP_Skeleton because I couldn’t get Blender’s exported FBX to match up.
Yeah. I haven’t checked if animation import works, but mesh/skeleton import/export works and the resulting file is armature-compatible with the imported file.
This was my only big issue with Blender/UE4, so now that it’s resolved, I’m a happy camper.
Does this mean that I can export HeroTPP to blender and make a few extra animationd to it(sword swing/shield block) and it will work on UE4? Because that would be awesome!
I think it does, but it’s not completely straightforward. The bones all come the same size and all oriented along the Z axis (Y axis in Blender). This makes skinning a little weird, as you can’t rely on autoskinning unless you resize the bones, and moving or resizing the bones can result in odd results on import. I’m still playing with it and trying to figure out exactly changes you can make to the imported Hero_TPP armature and have it still import properly.
If you search the threads, there’s a thread that has a blender version of the Hero_TPP rig with IK. I’m pretty sure you could use that to create new animations using the nightly build, though.
Ok thanks. One more question. Is it possible to make a static mesh, no skeleton at all and just hook it up to HeroTPP rig in UE4 somehow? Lets say if it was a char from make human without any bones?
Btw I have rigged Hero in blender myself, but when I tried to do animations it seemed hopeless. I might be able to make a sword swing somehow, but run or walk… no chance. …
Just an update. I imported Hero to blender, made an animation, then got it to unreal engine and it is working just fine. Finally I can add my own animations to the existing ones!
