Hello,
I’m new to unreal engine i animated two characters action scene using maya and i want to render it real-time using UE4. i don’t know how to export Multiple character animations from maya to UE4. and play same as in maya? any help will be highly appreciated.
Thank you.
First you need to export those two characters separately in their T pose ( or A pose ), basically set them to their bind pose, then select only the skinned mesh+skeleton and do an Export Selected ( in FBX format ), repeat for the other character.
In UE4, in order to keep things organized, create two folders, name them as your characters, then go into one of them and drag&drop the FBX you exported from Maya0 choose your import options, and you’ll see a bunch of files that UE4 automatically creates ( skeleton, physic asset, materials and so on ).
The Skeletal mesh that is created is your bind pose character from Maya, and is what you need to use in your scene.
Do the same thing for the other character as well.
Now if you go back to Maya and load your animated scene, you’ll have two animated characters ( fully rigged I suppose ), so my advice is to bake the entire animation onto the joints rather then on the control rig, because UE4 is going to use the joints to move the character, since you can’t import the full rig into UE4, so bake the animation onto the joints, then remove any constraint from the control rig to the skeleton, then select the hierarchy of the skeleton and export selected.
In UE4 drag&drop the animation you just exported, but remember to set the skeletal mesh of the character performing that animation ( use the dropdown menu to select your character ), and once the import is done you can double click on the animation you just imported and have a preview of what it looks like.
Do the same thing for the other character.
Now to play the animation for both without going too technical, you can create an ActorBP, then in the component tab choose a Skeletal Mesh, drop that skeletal mesh into the Event Graph, drag a pin from it and choose “Play animation”, and from the menu choose the animation you have.