Hi, I am a beginner in unreal engine and I am struggling with skeletal mesh and skeletons. I imported a skeletal mesh asset from cgtrader. I will not make animations for it. It will standing still on the map. The only thing I am trying to change is the positions of its arms and hands.
It seems like a simple problem at first. I opened the associated skeleton of it. I clicked the related bones and set the rotations of them. However, this does not affect the skeletal mesh on the map or content browser. What I am doing wrong?
a skeletal mesh bones position in game is controlled by animation. so you need an animation file (can be one frame long) that you can add on the skeletal mesh at runtime.
either you have the skeletal mesh already changed outside unreal (so the default animation is the changed one) or you have to add an animation to it.
where it gets complicated is how to create these animations in unreal. if you can try using an external app for this, if not then you need to find a tutorial on how to create skeleton keyframe animations in unreal.
related this is one of the only points where unity is better at, is very easy to create keyframe animations for a skeletal mesh in unity. is way more involved in unreal.