Need a simple animation tutorial (Blender>Unreal)

Development Character & Animation
1

I’ve been trying to learn Unreal for the last few days, and I am getting stuck on animation.
All I want to do is have an object float (move a little) in place, but I can’t even get a cube to go from point A to point B, and have it successfully import.
I keep getting various error messages like ‘failed to import, failed to create asset’ and ‘Mesh contains bone as root but animation doesn’t contain the root track.’

I guess what I’m asking for is a very simple step-by-step tutorial on how to get the most basic animation from Blender into Unreal. Like, just a cube moving from A to B.
I need to know where I’m going wrong.

2

Hi Catkinsv3,
for your question, consider some pros and cons.

If you want do it in Blender, you must follow some rules:

  • You need root bone
  • You need bone what you will animate, child of root bone
  • Be aware of normal scales for your objects/bones, before doing animation stuff (every axis must be normalized (1.0))
  • And test it, like a lot. Sometimes rotations of bones can make some issues. Only was is through try and error…

For simple animations, what you discribed is better use blueprints.
Just import/export it like static mesh, set it to moveable and use some basic in-engine animation techniques. F.ex. Lerp from A to B, for start. You can upgrade it later with timeline and make really good animations. And I’m not talking about interactions with level, something what will be very diffucult to do with prepared animations.

Hope my answer helped you

3

Had you a look into Makehuman http://www.makehuman.org/
Install addon inside Blender, errorfree ex/import. Export from MH with Skeleton. Easy to animate, bacause its rigged.
Look out for Makeclothes, to generate assets inside Makehuman, then they fit nearly every creature you create and you do things only one time per asset.
You even could do load some mocap *.bvh files.
Thats a very quick way to generate humanoid based creatures in perhaps 30 minutes, from creation in MH export to blender, load Mocap and export in unreal editor, blend mix swap animations…
Sure that has nothing to do with keyframing animation per hand, but for a beginner it is so easy to generate good results.

for converting original *.bvh to blender Creative Bloq | Art and Design Inspiration
some helpful stuff http://blender.freemovies.co.uk/motion-capture/
5,5 gig free mocap to play with, here is a list of easy to use mocaps https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/cmu-bvh-conversion/bvh-conversion-release---motions-list
For make clothes/hairs… (multiusable for every model you do) MakeHuman Tutorial - (Pt.4 ) Make Clothes that Fit 3D Models with Blender Addon by VscorpianC - YouTube
If you ask me, yes it is more easy to learn that, then to be stuck for long time with keyframing.
When you export such a model, you can be sure (relative ^^), that it is looking in UE like expected.
Really funny. ^^

zombie_nomnom_by_luftbauch-d8r8huw.png
zombie_nomnom_by_luftbauch-d8r8huw.png496×793 390 KB

4

Simple animation such as moving a cube will be done with code in UE4.

Complex animation will be done with an Armature (although it’s not always that complicated, could just be a weapon firing)

I don’t think UE4 supports Blender-keyed static mesh animation without bones…but don’t quote me.

For what you’re trying, adjusting the object’s location with math and translation is probably the best bet. You CAN make an armature with a root bone, and make an animation for that…import it as a skeletal mesh, create an animation blueprint, etc…but it’s probably not the simplest route.