Problem with importing paired animations/wrestling/throws/grapples etc

[Retroguy82]

Okay, so I’ve had a decent bit of success creating throw sequences using the Contextual Anim plug in, and wanted to try my hand at creating my own animation in Blender

Yes it’s pretty horrible but I can work on my animation skills later

Now, to transfer it into Unreal, my method has been to start by deleting the dummy being thrown, then export the FBX of the one performing the move, this works fine and I’m able to get the animation into Unreal. Once I’ve done this, I reopen the saved sequence, this time deleting the first dummy, and repeating the process to export the one being thrown.

That’s when I get this problem

For some reason my target skeleton isn’t able to recognise the core of the throw victim, causing the axis of the animation to be all messed up. I’m deleting all the armature and elements of the first dummy before I export the second, so I’m not sure what’s causing the confusion?

Can someone with experience in creating paired animations like this point to where I’m going wrong?

Thanks in advance

[brs-sebascova]

Hello there @Retroguy82!

Hey, that throw looks awesome! Also, welcome to Unreal and Blender’s rocky relation.

Considering the error you are getting, I think the first dummy still has data from the second dummy tied to it, and UE is looking for that second armature during transfer. To fix that, test by renaming both dummies as “Armature”, then adjust Blender’s export settings like this:

• Set the Armature node to “Root”
• Uncheck “Add Leaf Bones”
• Check “Only Deform Bones”

Personally, I would suggest trying a few addons on Blender side to ease the transfer process:

GitHub - EpicGamesExt/BlenderTools: Blender addons that improve the game development...

[Retroguy82]

Hello again Seb, thanks for the quick reply and the kind words

Okay, so I took a better look at the scene and saw both dummy’s Armature’s are referenced separately, I’m not sure if the .001 changes anything? But anyway, after deleting the throwing dummy (red) and preparing to export the one being thrown (blue), on a whim I decided to try renaming it, seeing if this might address the confusion when exporting, and this popped up, it seemed worth a shot?

I then followed your advice when exporting, updating the root and checking deform bones

And this seemed to eliminate the previous problem highlighted in the yellow text

The suplex itself looked to have also imported correctly, and I figured I was good to go

However!

Attempting to pair the two via the Contextual Animation Scene I’d been using for throws resulted in this chaos, the animations sitting weirdly in their capsules and that’s before warping through the floor :-/

I feel like I’m making a load of rookie mistakes due to my inexperience which are all compounding on each other?

[brs-sebascova]

Hello again! Progress has been made, excelent!

So, renaming and adjusting exports solved the initial issue, but now we have a new one. The whole tilting animation is more of a classic problem between UE and Blender transfers.

What’s happening here, most likely, is that the armatures were not at world origin during export, and they probably have different origins as well. Both characters need to have their world set at 0 in all three axis, before export. Any left over offset will result in the chaos you are seeing.

The same thing applies to their orientation. UE animations care a lot about which way the root is facing at frame 0. If the thrower exported facing +Y and the victim exported facing -X, the scene will rotate one of them to compensate and result in more chaos.

Both armatures need to be facing the same direction (typically -Y in Blender = forward in Unreal) at the start of the animation.

For starterts, set X=0, Y=0, Z=0 for both dummies, and place them facing the same direction (-Y in Blender, forward in UE) at the start of the animation. Then, apply all transforms, and re-export them.

Now, in the engine itself, there are a few things to check as well. Once you have your new animations in the scene, open both sequences, and ensure that Enable Root Motion is set to On, and Root Motion Root Lock is set to Zero. These changes should prevent the capsule from having strange interactions.

Alternatively, if the issue persists, you could go for a different approach, by exporting both characters together, and keeping the throw animation as a pair.

[Retroguy82]

Hello again Seb, I’d forgotten about applying Location, Rotation and Scale to the dummies and think this may be my issue, if you look at the throwing animation gif in my previous post, you can see the axis appear to shift during the animation by popping up through the floor?

But do these resets need to be done need to be done right after importing the dummies to Blender, BEFORE I begin making an animation, as I’m attempting to do it now with the scale, and it’s repositioning?

And thank you for your patience in answering my questions so far, this is an important problem I very much want to try and figure out how to fix, and I appreciate your help.