Static Mesh Morph in Blender?

Development Character & Animation
1

Hey,

I was wanting to setup some morphing between static meshes and found this in the docs:

But it uses 3dsMax, and I only really use blender for animation/models.

Is there a way to achieve the same thing with blender?

Any and all help welcome :slight_smile:

2

while i have seen anyone do this i beleive its been an option for a while now, afaik create your blendshapes in blender, export all then on import make sure you tick the box import morph targets

this doc’s page might help with the naming conventions
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/FBX/ImportOptions/index.html#namingconventions

3

Alright, I’ll have a look around, Thanks :slight_smile:

4

quick google and you get this from teslaDev Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial - Morph Targets (Blender) - YouTube

bit old but should still work

5

Bit old and no static meshes ^^

6

Do you know if this fonctionnality is still working without plugin ? I tried but without succes, I have the feeling that Blender don’t export Shape Keys.

7

It has been a while but since people like me, trying to figure this out, end up googling this, here is what I found out:

Blender exports Shape Keys just fine, Unreal Engine imports them just fine as long as you import your mesh as a Skeletal Mesh and enable the Import Morph Target option in the import dialog.

This is what you want to do 99% of the time, if you just want morph targets use a Skeletal Mesh (it works just fine even without any bones). You then control the morphs from the Animation Blueprint rather than in the material.

The StaticMeshMorphTargets node for creating morphs using static meshes is a bit of a hacky way of doing things by encoding up to 2 morph targets as UV coordinates so that you can use them in the shader. That’s why it uses a 3DS Max script to do this non-standard conversion. You could make a Blender script to try to do the same but unless you have a very specific need using a skeletal mesh instead is much easier.

8

Should still work, I’ve imported morph target mesh to Unreal without any problems.

But it still needs to be a skeletal mesh and whatever material you apply, tick “used with morph targets”.

9

Use the “anim-all” addon which comes with blender, with that you can have static meshes with vertex animations, without ■■■■■■■ around with the unreal stuff or expensive plugins ^^

But I haven´t used that a long time, I need to test it again, maybe I will add a tutorial later, how it works (on my yt-channel)…

Static meshes should always be preferred to skeletons, because skeletons eat up more power even without bones…

Or was that it?

10

I’m not familiar with anim-all. Took a look at it on YouTube. Looks like it allows you to store key frames for all sorts of mesh data. Don’t know if it has anyway of exporting it to use in Unreal. You posted a link to my repo though. It has both vertex anim and static mesh morph target scripts. You can have two morph targets stored in a meshes UVs it works with existing Unreal material functions.