Help me unreal UV animation

Development Character & Animation
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1

Ok so I want to render a character in unreal
I didn’t make the character or the rig so i don’t know exactly how it’s built
The eyes are basically planes and have a controller that moves the UV to animate the iris
I exported fbx from maya and loaded it to unreal… when i open the animation in unreal it shows under curves the eyes uv animation curves but the eyes don’t move

How do i make it work? Please help me

2

It gets bit complicated so i make bullet points. :slight_smile:

first material part:

  • make material for eyes with single scalar parameter as input
  • use that param to pan uvs for textures. (panner node)
  • panner has speed and time inputs, in your case think of them as speed*time. just two scalar values
  • either use speed or time to drive animation (i suggest time), and other value to scale range.
  • so use time as driving param 0…1 and speed to match range, also add offset to time so 0 value matches where you want eyes.
  • you can also make time in range -1…1 or whatever
  • when you have material that pans eyes correctly when you set input in range. You make material instance for that material

Now blueprints part:

  • make variable that is type of material instance reference
  • make second variable that is dynamic material instance
  • set material instance to your eyes instanced material
  • make blueprint on begin play (or in constructor) that creates dynamic material instance out of your instanced material
  • then apply that DYNAMIC material to eyes material slot on mesh
  • finally pass parameter to eyes from animation
3

This was bit complicated for just text, so some pics:

eye_panning
eye_panning1811×1256 227 KB

Material has that range math wrong, but its elementary school math to map -1…1 to whatever amount uvs need to be shifted.

Eye mesh setup
Eye mesh setup1981×578 110 KB

And this is blueprint to create DYNAMIC material (without it being dynamic changes will not work during runtime) then apply that material to mesh. Then you need to drive that param from animation blueprint, or just animation sequence.

4

thank you so much for replying!
i think i did the first part right but the second part i didn’t really understand how to do
i’m pretty new to unreal and pretty much only use it to render so i don’t really know how to use blueprints that much

can you please explain the second part more step by step?
please and thank you :heart: :pleading_face:

5

Dynamic material instance:

I am not sure how you animate (I assume with matinee), however last time i used it was 4.2 or so, and i am quite sure it changed a lot since then.

I know how to use animation blueprint and how to drive such material parameter from it, but playing anim sequences with dynamic materials and without doing blueprints code, i have no idea.

Edit:

I found how to use parameter collections to animate directly from sequencer, without whole coding in blueprints (starts at 6:30)

So make material (first picture)
Add material parameter collection (second tutorial)
Add collection parameters in material (like in tut)

6

hmm what he’s showing in the video is not what i need
i animated in maya and exported it as fbx to unreal
the animation curves for the UV did transfer i can see the curves when i open the animation they’re just not connected to the UV in unreal :frowning_face:

7

He is showing how to connect curve in animation to material parameter.