From Scratch Animations?

Hey I’m very new to animation and wondering if I can create brand new animations withing UE4 itself. From the research I’ve done, I’ve only seen people import animations from 3rd party programs and edit those. I’m working with dinosaur models versus human models, just so that is clear. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

No reason you could not.
But it is far easier to animate in a dedicated program with a customized IK rig then it is to use Unreal.
That’s the main reason people usually don’t use unreal for it. But the built in system does work, and there are some very alpha plugins out there that allow you to create IK rigs in unreal too.

the reason other programs are better is that they allow you to work with curve controls to define the smoothing of animation between points. I’m not sure unreal allows you to modify that.