I’m new to importing animation into game engines. When I animate characters that are interacting with props in Maya, I just use parent constraints. For creating animations to import into Unreal Engine however, I’m not sure how I should handle the animation of the props. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding that props need to have their own skeletal meshes, with at least one bone/joint, in Unreal Engine. The props can then be attached to the character’s skeletal mesh by using sockets.
So when I’m animating something like a character taking a pistol out of a holster and aiming it, do I need to animate the pistol along with the character in Maya and then export two separate FBX files? Or do I only have to animate the character since the pistol will follow the character’s hand once it’s attached with a socket in Unreal Engine?
Also, how would I have the pistol change what it is attached to? For example, if I start with the pistol attached to the character’s hip, how do I switch to it being attached to the character’s hand once the character is supposed to be drawing the pistol out of the holster? In Maya I would just set keys on the parent constraint so that the pistol changes from being constrained to the hip and then to the hand over the course of one frame. Is there a way to do something similar with sockets in Unreal Engine? Can you create two sockets, one on the hip and one on the hand, and have the pistol switch between them? What’s the proper way to handle this?
I would appreciate any help that anyone can offer. Thanks!
