I am trying to export an animation where my character is tossing a prop between their two hands. I’ve used locators and parent constraints to drive the animation of the prop so that I have free control of it in the hand and in the air. It works perfectly in Maya, however things seem to go a little askew in Unreal in regards to the parenting. What would be a good workflow to achieve this?
Skew issues typically arise when the parent bones are scaled. Ensure that the parented bones do not have any scaling applied in Maya.
Your current setup will be good for unreal ( locators and parent constraints)
Add a joint inside the skeletal hierarchy of your character, parented to the root.
Then constraint that bone to the prop, and bake the animation.
Once in Unreal, in your Character BP add the prop as a child of the character, and use the “Parent Socket” by selecting the joint you previously created in Maya, and once the animation will be assigned, you’ll see the prop animated as in Maya.