Multiple object animation from Blender to UE4

Hey guys, hoping this is the right section to post this kind of question. I have been looking for the best practice way to animate multiple objects in blender and import to UE4. I may need to ask this question somewhere in the blender’s forums but figured I’d ask here also.

In blender, I’ve modeled a large hanger door that has 3 individual pieces. These pieces’ transforms need to change at different rates along the X axis. The only way I’ve been able to accomplish this for now, is having each piece or door panel its own object and adding a keyframe for each. This works in Blender, no issue, but when exporting to UE4, it would import with all the individual pieces. Is there a way to import them in as the same skeletal mesh? Or should I be animating this differently in blender using a single mesh with some sort of armature or bone system?

Any input would be hecka awesome!

Hi. Isn’t the issue of the bones importing as different skeletons because of the naming convention in Blender? I used to have that issue, but I think the solution was in the skeleton/bone names. For example, I do know that you will get errors if you do not rename the skeleton in Blender. By default, it is called “Armature”. I change it to anything else. Actually, my naming convention is “SK_Whatever”. So “SK_” is short for “skeleton” and whatever else is what I’m doing… Like SK_Guns or SK_Turret or SK_HangerDoors… etc.

I normally export skeletons with many moving parts and several bones animated at different speeds and intervals. They import into UE4 just fine. I can make a YouTube video if you’d like further help. Just let me know.

Hope this helps! Thanks.

That would be awesome! Not to be super cheesy, but I made a gif of simplified example of what I am trying to accomplish. YOU ROCK!

Sure. I’ll get a video together tomorrow or do a livestream of it on YouTube and that will save to my channel. I’ll update you with a link here. Thanks.

Hello @mdmoberly I have made a video showing you how I would export hangar doors (like the ones you show) out of Blender and into UE4. It’s only 15 mins long. Here is the link to the YouTube video:

Thank you.

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You, my friend, are awesome! Really… Thank you thank you thank you!!!