I need some help. I’ve created an animated ski lift and it works perfectly in C4D but no matter what I try to do, I can’t get it to work in UE4. I’ve tried baking the frames, I’ve tried exporting as .abc file. I’ve tried exporting it and importing to Blender to see if that helps and it didn’t. I’ve tried using different export tools and watching countless tutorials.
Would anyone have any tips for me? I’d be glad to include my source file or pay someone a reasonable amount to convert it for me. I’m sure I’m missing something stupid, but it’s driving me crazy.
I’ve sucessfully imported animations from C4D to UE4 before, so i’m sure i can help.
Ofc. posting the c4d file itself will be the fastest way to get it right.
But if you really want to understand what you did wrong, i’d need more information about what you did.
So please considder posting some screenshots of your export and import settings, too.
Oh and we’re a community that helps each other without payment, so keep your wallet closed.
Thank you so much for your offer to help. I’m fairly savvy with picking things up and I’d love to know why it’s not working. I’m posting the C4D file and also some import & export screenshots of what I’m doing. I have a graphic design background and I’m enjoying learning UE4 and I’m amazed how powerful it is and what it can do.
Ok, first issue i see is the use of a lot of generators like sweep nurbs and cloner.
These are C4D specific objects that cannot be exported and therefor have to be converted before exporting.
Ofc. this will destroy your animation since it uses the cloner to work.
Also there are no joints/bones in your mesh that could be used to bake animations to.
Here’s what i did to get it working:
The very first step is to seperate the static and the moving parts from each other.
This means the stations, the support and even the cable will be imported as one big static mesh,
while the seats will be an animated model.
I decided to animate one instance of the seats, so i took the mesh out of the cloner, combined and rigged it to a basic skeleton.
Then i used the Align to spline tag to align the connector bone to the spline and animated it’s position value from 0 to 100%.
Next i baked the position and rotation of the connector bone and deleted the Rotation P afterwards,
because i didn’t want to have the seat tilt when going up and down the slope and then i exported the animation.
The Import in UE4 was done as usual, but since there is a -90° twist on any animation imported from C4D, i rotated the Skeletal mesh x-axis +90 on import.
Then i assembled the meshes in UE4 like you see in the TP_TEST attatched to this post. (Engine Version 4.14.3)
I’m sure there are better and more performant ways of doing this then having 34 animated models in the scene, but this might require some blueprint knowledge.
Overall, i have to say that your meshes are not exactly optimized for usage inside a game engine.
So if you’re planning to use them in any kind of game, there’s a lot that needs to be improved on them.
But that’s a completly different topic for another time.
First off let me say thank you, thank you, thank you! I wasn’t worried about optimization because I’m actually using it for a cinematic backdrop for a Christmas production. I’m assuming there was no way to keep the swing in the chair as it moves? Do you have any good recommendations for tutorials for learning about adding joints/bones for exporting to UE4?