How to make animations interact with environment? (cinematics & maya)

Hey guys, so I thought I’d also post this question here as well along with the answer hub in case someone has some useful info relevant to this.

Keep in mind this is intended for something like cinematics, scripted scenes, not actual gameplay.

Okay first, this question was difficult to word. The scenario relevant to this question is this: I have my scene setup in UE4. Lets just say for example, its a forest with a campfire in the middle of the map. Now, I want to make an animation with this setup in mind in Maya. In the animation if I wanted my character to walk around a tree then go sit next the campfire, how can I make this animation in Maya, without being able to see where my character will be in the UE4 environment? How can I know where my character will end up being in UE4 while animating in Maya? The problem I’m having is that when animating the character in Maya, I don’t know where he’s going to end up being in UE4 if he’s animated to walk a certain distance and then do something.

Is there a way to get a scene reference in Maya of my UE4 scene, so that I can animate a character around the physical surroundings to have them properly interact with them and NOT clip through them?

In UE4 you can select a part of your scene (or the entire scene if you wish) and export it out as an fbx to import into Maya. Hope this helps :slight_smile: