So I have a character that I rigged fairly decently. I already had animations and a character blueprint setup from the default ue4 mesh and skeleton. All I want is to change the character mesh. However I am not sure if there is a way to change the mesh without changing the skeleton and retargeting all the animations. I have about 30 already setup with the default ue4 skeleton and setting up everything would take way more time than if I can just swap out the mesh.
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Hi MikeRPG,
animations are usually applied to skeletons not mesh: the skeleton hosts animation.
My suggestion :
when you import the new character (it must has the same skeleton hierarchy as the character you already set), select the skeleton of the character that already did prepare before.
Cheers 
So the way I have it setup there is a blueprint that handles all the character anims. How do I tie that anim BP to the new characters skeleton and mesh once I retarget the new skeleton to the same humanoid skeleton as the character I started with?
Want to add the orange animBP to this skeleton/mesh
so the animations and animation BP are tied to the skeleton asset.
If possible, the previous suggestion to import the new mesh onto the existing skeleton is orders of magnitude easier.
If, for some reason, you HAVE to use a new skeleton asset, then you will have to retarget all animations and the animation bp.
When I try to import it onto the pre-existing skeleton there are usually errors with merging the bones onto the mesh. The original skeleton it has outside of ue4 has extra bones and different names from the default humanoid so I think that messes up the import auto skeleton match.
• Both characters must be rigged to the same skeleton.
• Both characters must be in the same pose (either A or T pose)
*A note out of the context : 300K tris are too much… try to reduce it
*
that’s exactly how you do it, rig everything to the same skeleton, retargeting can be buggy at the best of times and won’t yield perfect results, so realistically your only option is to go back and rig it to the original skeleton… don’t worry about the tri’s as far as i know Horizon zero dawn uses 500k for main characters, unless its an enemy or something, i use a similar number for my main character but have to compensate for it in the enemies who are only about 20=30k still not bad that i can have about thirty enemies and player character plus environment without any noticeable lag, hope this helps.
So I got the whole thing rigged and retargeted but some of the bones in the skeleton don’t move properly. Specifically the fingers and the left shoulder are glitched but on the humanoid retargeting there aren’t any fingers targeted and the shoulder isn’t targeted either. Essentially untargeted bones aren’t moving with its parent. Or maybe it’s the bone hierarchy, there’s a lot of factors that could be messing it up.
Can I retarget a skeleton if it has extra bones that aren’t named the exact same as the Unreal Skeleton? The whole thing nearly works perfectly if it weren’t for the few bones that glitch out. The original skeletons aren’t exactly the same but in retargeting all the main humanoid bones are there, does the humanoid retargeting not work properly and actually require perfect original symmetry and bone nomenclature to the default ue4 skeleton?
I think the bone hireachy has to be same if you are going to retarget the animations from the epic skeleton to another skeleton otherwise you get messed up deformed looking animations as a result if there are any
extra bones in one of the skeleton hireachy, then the retargeting is likely to mess up.
In case you are using Mixamo animations - check this plugin out, it will bake your animations and skeletons so you can retarget them easily
The fingers will be 100% accurate :
