I created a simple character mesh in Blender and it looks fine when imported to Unreal. But when I import the animations the legs bend and twist for some reason. In Blender the legs look fine when playing the animation but not in Unreal. Am I doing something wrong when importing or is there something wrong with the mesh?
Hello
I had something similar happen. It had to do with bone scaling and rotation. Essentially everything looks correct in Blender and animation has no problems(in blender). As soon as you export it seems like everything is inverted. Push “N” in blender to bring up your properties tab. Select your Armature and check what the bone scale and rotation is. Scale should all be 1. And for your start rotation everything should be 0. Now it gets tricky sometimes because with rotation for some reason there might be a -0. When this happens it inverts the model.
To fix select your Armature in object mode and push “CTRL-A” and apply location then rotation & scale. That should fix the problem. If not let me know.
Still getting the weird legs in Unreal. Is there a setting that I should use when importing?
Would you be willing to share your blend file? I can have a look and then help you fix your problem.
Alternatively you can create an account at mixamo.com, pick from over 2200 animations and download several models for Unreal, which work okay, when you download/export them in the FBX for Unreal format (can be chosen when issuing a download).
Hello
Ok a few things. You would need to setup your blender in the scene settings. Change your scene units to metric and degrees. Then set your scale to 0.010. After that scale your model and armature 100 times to get it back to size. Apply location, rotation and scale on both your model and armature. Then your scale issue is sorted. Next your model needs to be in the center of the world. Currently your characters waist is in the center. Move your character up, Center your 3D cursors(shift+C) and then in your TOOLS tab click “set origin” then click “to 3D cursor”.
Ok more needs to be done so bare with me. Your animations need ALL the bones to be keyframed. Not just the ones that are being moved. So select all of them at your start pose and add a keyframe. At the end of your animation select all of them again and add a keyframe.
Lastly FBX exporting. With your model and armature selected click export to FBX. Then check “SELECTED OBJECTS” change your Forward to -Y and at the bottom select MESH and ARMATURE. Then click the ARMATURE tab and UNCHECK “ADD LEAF BONE”. If you want you can change your smoothing groups by click GEOMETRIES and smoothing to EDGE.
Finally import to Unreal Engine 4 and see results below.
WITHOUT SMOOTHING
WITH SMOOTHING
Apologies for the screenshots but it is the best way to show the problems. Hope this helped.