Please select what you are reporting on:
Unreal Editor for Fortnite
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
Devices
Summary
Hello, I am putting this thread together because I believe the Character Device is critical to the future of Art and Animation in UEFN. Unfortunately, as it stands today, most practical aspects of the device are not functioning as intended. A great deal of care has been put into the device’s creation, so as its target audience I believe its my responsibility to contribute to its success through rapid testing.
The Character Device has a few critical bugs:
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In a level sequence the skeleton changes when you open or close the project by deleting keyframes. This was most notable when keyframing the root bone using an FK rig, whereupon reloading the project the keyframes would be deleted and “Root_2” was renamed to “Root_xyz_2”
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The transform properties of the device cannot be keyframed in a sub or master-level sequence. This leaves traversing to the Root bone animation which I mentioned above cannot be saved between sessions.
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To my knowledge, the Character device is intended to unite the outfits available under a single skeleton rig. When retargeting the only one that works for me is “M_Medium_Base” (The asset under “Character Basics”). Unfortunately, this asset is invisible making retargeting a guessing game. It is connected to a skeleton mesh, but that mesh will not appear in the retargeter.
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Some outfits have a different bone structure instead of sharing the universal M_Medium_Base rig. This is apparent when setting up an animation with the Character Device and then swapping or customizing the outfit/device after. Only some keyframes will transfer between outfits when a bone name is shared 1:1. All outfits should have the same bone structure making a swap seamless even after baking the animation to a control rig.
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Bones multiply their movement when using the transform gizmo causing over-amplification of the animation inputs. This may be a bug with the Layered FK rig, but I feel it happened most frequently when working with the character device.
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Each outfit has a different version of an Apose making pose correction inconsistent. If you toggle through the Character Device outfits you will notice that some of them have a true Apose while others share an alternate version of an Apose where the arms are rotated differently or the hands are misaligned.
Steps to Reproduce
For
Step 1: Add a Character Device to a level.
Step 2: Add this Character Device to a Level Sequence. Choose an outfit.
Step 3: Convert the Character Device to an FK Control Rig
Step 4: Keyframe the face, arms, legs, hands, feet.
Step 5: Change the outfit. You should notice the issue right away.
Step 6: Save your project and restart UEFN.
Step 7: Observe that only some keyframes have been saved between the session.
Note: I would attempt this with a full-body animation to ensure all bones are active before converting to an FK control rig.
Expected Result
The Character Device should be a universal programmable rigging system for Fortnite Outfits. It should allow you to keyframe and animate Characters in a level sequence consistently.
Observed Result
The Character Device will make keyframes invisible, delete them, rename bones, and stutter/disappear when keyframed in most circumstances.
Platform(s)
PC
Additional Notes
There are more issues than the ones I have outlined above as my team and I have tested this device extensively and we are hoping to build a new animation pipeline around it. I am happy to provide a demonstration of these issues if that would help. You can reach me here, discord, email or slack.
Thanks!
seth@moistymedia.com
Discord: sirdustydirks