I’m a complete beginner to UE4 and game development in general and currently working off the Third Person template.
How do you import equipment correctly?
I learned how to use sockets to equip static meshes and swap between them and that works for me. However, I’m trying to move onto importing parts of the character’s clothing that have to animate, like shirts and pants. (I got hats, swords working correctly etc.)
My character model is one I got off the marketplace and heavily edited in Blender (I’m also a complete Blender noob, even more than Unreal). I rigged it using Mixamo and imported it into Unreal. I know how to make movement/jumping animation blendspaces and it works perfectly. However, my character is naked since I want to create a swappable equipment system.
I exported the character FBX from Unreal and imported it into Blender. There, I deleted the mesh except for the torso and made the torso into a “shirt”. The shirt looks awful, but I’m just trying to get the mechanics to work right now and I’m not concerned with how it looks artistically.
Here is my Blender screen.
I exported the shirt along with the skeleton. What’s labeled “hips” is the skeleton, I’m guessing, although I didn’t name it that. It just came like that from Unreal. Then I import it into UE4 with the following settings.
HOWEVER, when I take it into Unreal, I run into a number of problems.
First of all, if I open the mesh and try to look at the skeleton, I can’t see the mesh. The skeleton tab only shows my character.
If I go to the mesh tab, then I can see the mesh and the list of bones, but not the actual bones themselves.
The biggest problem, however, is this. When I try to put the mesh into the Third Person BP and make it a child of the main character’s mesh, it looks fine. HOWEVER, the moment I put any kind of animation on it, it deforms into something resembling bad origami and starts floating a mile above my character’s head. This is regardless of whatever way I try to animate it. It happens when using animation blueprints, assets, or a master post component, the last of which is what I’m aiming for.
I have zero clue what that’s supposed to even be. I’ve watched about a dozen YouTube tutorials and read as many blog posts. I’ve tried following everything but it just doesn’t work for me. Obviously, I’m doing something wrong, but I have no idea what it is. I’d appreciate any help immensely because I’m at my wit’s end.
Thanks a lot.