I can't seem to successfully re-import animation in UE it never ends up in Anim BP!.

[anonymous_user_1e17fd3e]

After reading manuals endlessly, watching endless videos and spending over $500 on UE4 books, I finally have to ask for help here, and I hate asking for help, I’ll spend every waking minute for weeks and months to figure to something on my own, 99.999% of the time I do. This is the first thing in 20 years I really needed help with!

I have no problems with anything else in UE4! I simply want to assign a simple animation to a standard Manny Skeleton…(really! that’s it!)

Say I have 5 standard Mannequins, I just want to copy the animations from one Standard Mannequin Animation BP to another Standard Mannequin Animation BP (all other things being equal), OR to ‘consolidate’ Anim-BP’s . Online people have said ‘exporting and re-importing’ is the only way. ( I will be SHOCKED TO MY CORE if that is true.)

**These are all successful working animations btw (I am only testing with the ‘Animation Starter Kit’ from Asset marketplace and ‘Advanced Locomotion V1’ (what I actually need an it gives the import error below) it should be easy and work …?? BUT even if I export the animations from Ue4, I am unable to apply them, import them, do anything with them,. I have taken screen grabs of what is happening below:

I have tried ‘Animation Retargeting’ (and tried that other completely different thing also called, ‘Animation Retargeting’ , (???)

I have tried replacing and renaming assets in the Windows Folders,. (trying to trick UE4) **

PLEASE HELP.

Step 1) I EXPORT A ‘BULK’ OF ANIMS:

HERE ARE THE EXPORT OPTIONS, I HAVE TRIED EVERY COMBINATION OF EVERYTHING , EVERY CHECK BOX, UNCHECKED, HALF CHECKED,

SHOULD IT BE LIKE THAT, ABOVE, OR LKE THIS: There are just vague videos and long manuals
that you spend 3 months reading and still don’t come away with an answer!

I have tried importing like this (‘IMPORT ASSET’ menu option, NO GOOD,. Also have tried ‘IMPORT’ button ) I have EVERYTHING ELSE DOWN PAT IN UE4 but Animation,

IT EXPORTS THEM AS FBX OK,… ??

I’M TELLING THE ANIMATIONS TO GO TO THE STANDARD, BASIC, MANNEQUIN…

SOMETIMES IT OPENS THE ‘IMPORT SKELETAL MESH’ WINDOW, SOMETIME THE ‘IMPORT ANIMATION’ WINDOW, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW OR WHY I AM GETTING TO THESE WINDOWS, IT SEEMS TO BE RANDOM)

50% OF THE TIME i GET THIS ‘FAILED TO IMPORT WINDOW’

FOLLOWED BY THIS WINDOW

OTHER TIMES IT DOES INDEED IMPORT ANIMATION, THEY REFUSE TO GO INTO THE SKELETONS ANIMATION BLUEPRINT.
WHY CAN’T THE ANIM BLUEPRINT HAVE AN INMPORT ANIMATION BUITTON?

NO MATTER WHAT I DO, I CAN NEVER GET ANY ANIMATIOPN TO GO INTO THE ANIMATION BLUEPRINT.

PLEASE HELP.

[MostHost_LA]

I’ll give you this, at least you documented your question.

forget about all of it. Go to a new peoject, bring in 2 different skeletons and play with animations until you can transfer them from A to B and B to A.

Once you can, and you go back to this project where you have 5 different skeletons, you’ll figure out what you were doing wrong.

Chances are its the wrong skeleton you picked during import or export, or something equally silly. (That happens because of having too many skeletons to choose from).

To get from A to B or B to A, the easier approach is InEngine re-targeting.
Why? Because you can retarget a full animation BP.

To know that retargeting is working you should add an extra bone to Skeleton B. That way the import will moan about it being different if you mess something up.

For exporting, it depends on what you are doing with the export.
usually just Preview Mesh with the correct version for the program you need to work on.
you can check almost any of my BoneBreaker tutorials for the export process
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis…1pyCvNxh29sYRH

Just so you know, exportong LODs is useless because the engine can/should build them for you.
​​​you.

When you import an animation or a skeletal mesh, if you leave the skeleton empty a new one will be created for you (thats how you get to skeleton B with an extra bone.
add it in the middle of the hierarchy, between spine01 and spine02 so you KNOW that the animations aren’t valid between A and B on their own.

Once you have the B, create the retargeting parameters and retarget the full anim BP from A to B.
it’s literally as simple as saying it.
You should get a fully working end product too, right from the start.

Now that you have all in B, flip it back to A.

Delete A original animation+bp. Leave only skeleton and mesh.
and retarget B to A.

once that works you can right click and retarget any individual animation. Thats probably what you’ll want to do for the 5skeleton project.

Its a fairly straightforward process if you have exact same meshes with exact same rest poses.

[anonymous_user_1e17fd3e]

Hello I found a solution that doesn’t require all the exporting and such there (you probably already know this is a right click menu option on Animations called: ‘Retarget Anim Assets’ and under that Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget (meaning I have found a 3rd way UE4 uses the term ReTarget to mean 3 completely different things! LOL But that’s ok Anyways it poppe up 'what skeleton ’ to put it to, and it EVEN PUT THEM IN THE ANIM_BP! So that is great. I am even getting comfortable merging a really great implementaion of the MIT license ‘GRASP’ utility (lets VR hands wrap beautifuly around any object with no finger penetration and unlike something like UVRF where you almost need an animation hand pose per unique object,. requires only 2 hand animations (‘Can Grab’ and ‘Grab’)…

Anyways thank you! I will be animating my own stuff soon instead of retargeting existing ones, as the new Biped etc Rigging Tool they have recently added (or featured at least) is so amazing!