Hello people!
I have always struggled with animation and exporting - it’s like an unknown world to me. That’s why I’ve avoided making any sort of Maya animations to import in UE4 so far, but here I am, trying to learn something new.
I’ve got a phone that has a cable attached to it. Set-up is the following :
Phone handle is a whole mesh, no skeleton.
Cable is ncloth with constraint to both the handle and the phone’s body.
Phone’s body is static, no skeleton.
I animate only the phone handle, and the ncloth does it’s job automatically.
How do I export that, how do I import it in UE4, and how does the animation work.
When I play the animation in UE4 does the object return to it’s original look (frame 1) or does it stay like the last frame of the animation (handle is down)? I have no idea how to go about this, so please - try to explain everything as you would to a complete newbie.
Thanks!
Alright, just an update - got it to work.
Used ‘Alembic Cache’. Basically it is very useful for short animations - just be aware of the bugs it comes with, because it took me about 7 hours of reading online and trials and errors to get it to work.
Avoid Alembic Cache if you can for simple objects like this, just use helper nodes that follow the vertex of the wire and then link bones rig ik to that and have a second copy of the wire mesh skinned to those bones for export. I am a max user so i dont know how you would go around this in Maya, must be tutorials out there. Its more efficient and faster performing that way.
If the mesh is only deforming and does not change vert counts instead of using the vertex cache use the skeletal mesh option. This option will re-create your effect using blend shapes making it super cheap to render. I have used this to make cloth that can be ripped.
