Tip: How to add animations from the market place to your existing character's skeleton

Development Character & Animation
1

Quick tip for anyone who stumbles across this:

I found if you have just purchased some animations, they will come with their own skeleton.

When you add this to your project, you never get a chance to target your existing skeleton.

The way I got around this was to simply delete the marketplace assets and replace the reference with your existing asset.

once you have done this for the skeleton, phys asset and mesh (I did it in that order) fix up redirectors and you’re done.

You may also want to delete folders the engine may have left behind after the deletion in your file explorer of choice.

You may also need to restart the editor after such a heavy operation. I had mine crash (Epic, a bug was filed for this)

Hope this helps anyone.

Best,
Minxies

2

Seems like a bit of a heavy operation… why not just load them new anims into a dummy project, export them back out to .fbx and import the via regular asset import into your actual project?

3

That’s a good point.

Part of the reason I posted was actually to get alternative ways to do this, as my way seems a little clunky.

So with your way, though elegant, I’m not quite sure if this would preserve the blend space objects?

Also you would loose animation notifies, and any sockets etc etc that might be attached to the animations in Unreal?

Regards,
Minxies

4

Actually… yeah, it would export the raw animation fbx data… Is good if you want to retarget these files externally onto a custom rig or whatnot. But that wouldnt require a post since its common knowledge.
I see what you mean there. But wouldnt migrating the content do it? I guess not right? since the skeleton for those anim clips has been pre-defined and cant be changed afterwards unless you do an actual retarget in the editor.

so yes, makes sense. Thanks.

-S

5

Minxies is on the right pathway but along the way Epic as usually made it easier to transfer one set of animations to a different skeleton.

6

Awesome. I knew there must have been a better way.

Thanks for sharing that.

Considering this is an integral part of buying assets from the Marketplace, you’d have thought there would be a written docs on it. Epic, you’re missing a trick!

Thanks,
Minxies