I am having hard time understanding how are the animation assets from the Epic Store supposed to work. Maybe I am fundamentally misunderstanding Unreal’s animation system, but I don’t get following:
Many of the humanoid animations on the store are listed as “Epic Skeleton” compatible. But when I add them into project, they come with their own copy of the mannequin skeleton, and are incompatible with already existing mannequin skeleton present in the project. So only way to actually get the animation working with the characters already present in the project is incredibly tedious process of retargetting the animation one by one, for every single character. Surely this is not the way it’s supposed to be done.
Well if the package states Epic compatible then the animations will work with any Epic based skeleton. This also includes the Paragon characters which uses the same Epic based rigging and in context is usually referred to as a framework asset as it’s practical use is the same across all similar assets.
That said when imported into a project a typical animation package will contain three required components. The animation as data, The base skeletal rigging usually the Epic rig, and the mesh detail that also contains the necessary weight data.
How all that data can be used depends on the context of the piratical application so lets say we set up a project using the 3rd person template.
For ease of understanding lets say that the original is labelled “Epic Skeleton” and as is out of the box you can run around using the 3rd person base animations.
Now lets say you want to add a 3rd party animations when you import the package into your 3rd part project you will have a copy of the “Epic Skeleton” that is referenced by the animations contained with in the purchased animation package.
To use the animation “data” contained with in the purchased packed you do not need to retarget the animations but rather change the animations reference to the “Epic Skeleton” of the original project and you can then make use of the purchased animations as part of the 3rd person template.
Another option since the purchased animations are generally contained with in it’s own folder you could just delete the referenced Epic Skeleton and Unreal 4 will tell you that it is referenced and give you some options such as changing the reference path to the 3rd person template version.
I know just what you mean. I think I saw a video where someone tried to delete the skeleton that comes with the assets and at the delete screen he got to choose his own epic skeleton and it solved the problem. I bought a roll dodge pack that came with rolls and dashes with root animation and some just in place. I had to of course retarget the animations to my own figure’s skeleton but all was well.
