How do I Animate an FBX with different parts?

[Vattghern4]

A little confused.

I have a camera which has 2 parts. the mount and the head.

It seems overkill to create a rig and skeleton for it.

is there no way to import the camera with the (non-rigged) animation into UE5 ?

Thank you Kindly

[Quetzalcodename]

Hey @Vattghern4!

Are the meshes you have static meshes or skeletal meshes? What is your end goal? You can use a modular mesh if they are skeletal meshes:

Working with Modular Characters

Any additional specifics you provide may go a long way in solving your problem!

[Vattghern4]

Good day @Quetzalcodename ,

oh yes!

so they are static meshes broken up into a mount and the head (Parented). the camera head rotates left to right as if its panning.

this is so when i import it into UE from blender if the camera is selected from my widget menu (I have a database), when the player places it, the animation from the camera will automatically play. so the static mesh does not start in my scene.

[wtfyoucare (smm)]

That depends on what exactly do you want to animate and how - specifically, whether you want to do it in PIE, or sequencer.

I found there’s many options how to animate something in PIE with a blueprint - for example, you could use Timeline to rotate it (which has the advantage it can play the rotation either way), or use make rotator function with even tick (search for these terms on YT, there’s plenty of examples).

Or you could have key events that just take existing rotation of the component, and increase/decrease it (as long as the camera head has the camera as the parent, the rotations would be relative to the camera), probably using the make rotator function.

But I could not get any of the above work in sequencer.

In theory, you’d be able to use either template sequence in sequencer or a component sequence in blueprint to do that, but for me the template sequence kept rotating absolute (not relative to the parent), and component sequences had sound problem (which may not be an issue for you). I’m sure that the template sequence can be made to work, but I could not find how.

Unfortunately, it seems few people are interested in animating more complex static meshes with many moving parts.

Cheers,
–smm

[Vattghern4]

HI @wtfyoucare,

Thank you for your response,

Ill look into these aspects, Blueprinting seems like the winning formula from what I understand. Does UE5 ignore imported model parenting? so I have to parent in UE5.

Thanks again.

[wtfyoucare (smm)]

As far as I can tell, UE5 follows parenting properly. It’s just that in template sequences it appears that if you want to translate a component of the actor in the sequence, it uses the coordinates of the parent, rather than the component. At times, I’d say that’s the correct way of doing it, but I’d also like a way that would allow shifting of the root to the component, because I cannot just place the component into the sequence as a root. I’d have to take out the component, make it an actor/BP, and the both attach it in the original parent BP as well as as use it in the sequencer.

It may be possible to that if I convert the static mesh to a very simple skeletal mesh (sort of like they did with chaos cars), I’d be able to get around it, but it seems a bit weird IMO.

–smm