Creating IK animations and blending to Epic's default FK

Hey all,

I asked this question in the Answer Hub a little bit ago but never got a response.

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/290843/ik-animation-and-default-epic-animation-issue.html

I am using the ART tools for Maya to create animations that should work with Epic’s base third person character. But if I use the IK system in the ART tools I get blending issues as the IK bones move and shift into position as the default Idle, walk and run animations don’t use them.

Check out a video of the issue here:

Is this the way I should be creating my animations? I found the ability to “Match” in the ART tools but doing so doesn’t seem to bake my current animation down into it at all times. And when it does, the bones tend to twist at strange angles making it impossible to use.

What is the work flow for these tools if you want to make an animation with IK? Or how can I bake animations down to use FK after I am done?

Hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction!

After doing some more testing it doesn’t appear to really be an IK problem at all. I quickly started a new scene in Maya, added the mannequin in for animation. Turned all controls over to the FK Mode and still have the same issue shown within the video.

This raises the question of if Epic’s default animations being comparable with anything I create? Or am I missing a step to fix this issue? Something in Unreal that I missed?

EDIT: Looks like the ROOT bone in the default Epic animations has Y forward and Z down so I’m assuming this is the main issue but have no idea how to fix it. Any ideas?

Any help at all would be amazing! I really need something to fix this issue and I’d rather not have to go in and animate bones directly but I will if that’s required to have anything work with Epic’s default animations.

It looks like this is a known issue for the new character animations.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?77473-When-will-the-Epic-Animations-be-Fixed-Please

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?74487-Why-do-you-rotate-your-Root-on-your-animations-(Epic)

Sad to know that all the time it was just a bug… Oh well! Hope they fix it soon!