If you want your custom model to behave not like an Axe, you will need custom animations as well.
In particular for the first person arm mesh of the player.
Not sure if the ARK SDK provides these.
For the default UE4 Playermodel, it’s possible to export via .fbx, which gives you the skeleton at least.
Turning it into an animatable rig is the much bigger task.
Belive me, you wouldn’t want to animate every joint manually.
Also i’ve experienced flaws with the import of animated meshes from C4D to UE4, that are caused by the coordinate system conversion.
By default all animations will end up facing the floor unless you set up the axis of your root objects a certain way.