WHAT
Unreal Engine has been advancing in a lot of ways, but some of the most recent key strides have been in regards to animation. To get a better handle on some of these new systems & learn how to master these movements, we’ve recently released the Game Animation Sample project - where you can not only improve your skills, but also get your hands on a library of over 500 ready to go animations. Come join us as we walk through this new sample project, show off some incredible tech and answer your burning questions all about animation!
WHO
Samuele Rigamonti - Principal Animation Programmer
Tony Gialdini - Lead Animator
Caleb Longmire - Technical Product Manager
Tina Wisdom (She/Her) - Community Manager - @TheUnWiseTina
If you’re unable to make the show, all livestreams can be viewed afterwards on-demand .
Don’t get me wrong, giving us 500 retargetable(?) animations for free is certainly an boon for just about anyone. But my main complaint about the marketplace is that it doesn’t lists the file size of these assets, as far as I noticed. Although, I was planning on saving up for an new PC, anyways; stuff like this kind of gets in the way of planning on the hardware that I plan on getting
I hope this message finds you well. My name is Aleksei, and I am the founder of TURGEN Studio specializing in high-quality 3D animations which we sell on the Unreal Marketplace. I am writing to share some concerns regarding the recent release of the Game Animation Sample project.
I greatly appreciate the continuous advancements and support Unreal Engine provides to the animation community. However, I worry that the availability of over 500 ready-to-use animations might impact the demand for unique and custom animations offered by small studios like mine on the Marketplace.
As a creator dedicated to developing original animations, I am concerned that this release may affect our sales and ability to continue producing high-quality content. I kindly request that you consider taking measures to support independent developers during this transition.
Thank you for your time and understanding. I am looking forward to your response and hope we can find a solution that benefits both the Unreal Engine community and independent creators.
Isn’t it completely insane we get this technology available to individuals and indie, wild.
Loved the stream, very informative, very clear and educational!
Haven’t checked the code yet, but I wonder if you tried machine learning instead of your distance based computation and interrupt system to find the optimal frame/database to transition to ? Maybe to find some subtle correlations or to filter out noisy input ?
Wondering if MotionBuilder is “still” (to my knowledge) the best solution for retargeting out there, used to play with it with educational licenses but it’s 2K$ licensing per year <.<…
I did a true first/third person replicated distance matching test 4 years ago inspired from Paragon.
Had to indeed edit the charactermovement component code back then to add acceleration replication, bake the distance to the various runtime generated projected data points, create a custom animation node and choose the right animation frame etc…
It was an interesting project but required way too much finetuning of tedious parameters, wasn’t very practical, looking forward to test the motion matching plugin and its optimal frame selection system, think it should be much more flexible !
This is indeed a great gift.
However, I noticed one problem. When I switched to the female character, I was surprised to see that the same animations are still used. Her movement doesn’t look right. I guess these are all the animations now? There are no plans to add animation data from female motion capture actors?
Anyway, this is a fantastic resource.
I must be missing something stupid basic, but I downloaded/created project… but when I open it… it just opens to the 3rd Person Template default map. Searched all the content folders… can’t find the ‘defaultlevel’ that it shows in any documentation and videos. What am I missing?.. kinda new to Unreal so I’m sure it’s something obvious that I’m not seeing. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read/answer.
I was getting index out of bounds crashing following the steps to add your own character mesh when I tried to move. Visibility Based Anim Tick Option needs to be changed to Always Tick Pose and Refresh Bones on the hidden Mesh component.
Hello. Thanks for the incredible system. It looks amazing.
My gratitude would be for guides for this system. For example, how to dynamically change a character’s speed. The old way doesn’t work.
Firstly, let me begin by saying that I completely understand your concern. I am not an employee of Epic Games but just wanted to point out that although they generously released “500+” free animations, a majority of these animations are nothing more than adjustments to about 10-15 mainsteam locomotion animations that are already on the market from various sources for free.
Motion Matching makes use of multiple many motion variances related to what we call Run or Walk but in different positions, angles, leans, etc…
The reality is of those 500 animations, you can argue that perhaps 15 to 20 of them are actually most used and you could do just fine with them without motion matching. Its not like they released 500+ animations of coveted animations such as Combat, or Dancing, or an Emotes kit, etc…
Trust me, you and companies like you, are the first people I go-to when I need really professional and accurate and robust animations and you will never get that for free anywhere!
