Root Motion isn't Working

[Tate_Hertel]

I have checked the boxes under Root Motion. Enable RootMotion is set to true, Root Motion Root Lock is set to Ref Pose, and Force Root Lock is set to true too. But the character is still moving forwards. Any help would be great! Thank you!

[J0hn-C0nn0r]

I wish there was somebody that knew what caused this…apparently nobody knows though…I have looked everywhere and even people with 20 years working with Unreal don’t know what causes it.

[FrankieV]

Change animation to "stay-on-the-same-spot"

Hi, it’s been years since this was answered, but what should I do if I turned on the Root Motion and enabled Force Root Lock, but none of them worked, and my animation keeps moving forward? By the way, when I checked the animation, it seems the root NEVER moves, but the animation does for some reason.

[J0hn-C0nn0r]

After personally investigating this at least in my case it seems that the root motion was mapped too the skeleton. I think that with root motion animations and I could be wrong, I don’t know because everyone that does apparently refuse to tell…but I think that the root motion animations are supposed to be set up so that the motion left/right forward/back as well as any rotation around the Z axis…is all setup on the root and the limbs only slightly move. I could be wrong and probably am but I’ve noticed that when I put this theory to practice and apply it too an animation it seems to fix ‘Force Root Lock’ in Unreal Engine so that it actually stops moving like it’s supposed too.

But since the Knowledge Nazi’s won’t tell us how things work, I guess we just have to guess.

[Teella]

Hey J0hn-C0nn0r

You can check if the root motion is correct or not by opening the animation sequence in Unreal. Then click on the skeletons tab and click on the pelvis bone. If the pelvis bone is moving away from the root bone on the X and Y axis, then it’s not root motion.

This commonly happens when working with motion capture animations from my experience. It’s easy enough to fix if a 3D authoring software. You just need to copy the X and Y motion on the pelvis to the root bone. Leave the Z alone. Then remove the X and Y motion from the pelvis.

See Video example below:

Check if root motion is valid

[J0hn-C0nn0r]

I went back and checked and the Root Motion is following the hips…that isn’t the issue…The animation for example, turns left 90 degrees…Go look at the Advanced Locomotion System TurnInPlace Animations…They Turn when Force Root Lock isn’t enabled…when it is they don’t turn or rotate…they are anchored in place facing the screen and the legs and arms wave a bit…When I redid these animations in iClone8 and spent 4-5 days trying different things…no matter what I tried the animations would Alway’s do the exact opposite of standing still…their rotation would double…

In case you don’t know what that means…Imagine someone standing still, they turn to the person to their right…ok now that’s what the animation does…normally…when I ‘Force Root Lock’…Imagine that same someone is now turning to the person directly behind them instead of someone next to them…that’s what the animations are now doing.

[Scomatra1 (Scomatra)]

How is this done my friend?