I know Unreal Engine supports natively FBX as static mesh only. What about animated meshes?
There are a lot of 3D modeling softwares such as Cinema4D, Blender, 3DS …
FBX isn’t for static meshes only. It works perfectly with skeletal meshes too if your modeling software can export in FBX format. OBJ is for static meshes only and you can use that too, but it has its limitations.
All of the ones that export fbx are suitable, but Unreal Developers created an animation kit specially for Autodesk Maya because is the one they use at Epic. So you choose.
Lots of people use blender because it is free and legal to use even for commercial projects and since epic donated to help create a better fbx pipeline, import goes fine from blender to ue4 (at least, since last blender version, i haven’t got import issues which were not from my mistake or from a trouble from downloaded mesh.)
+1 for blender
In my opinion it’s also pretty easy to use (but when you have to switch to another 3d software, it’s will be pretty tricky -> blender has a very special UI) + you can find plenty of tutorials for it 
+1 Maya
Just because I am bias
+1 for Maya, if you can afford it…
FYI, the A.R.T tool is only available for the full version, not the LT/sub version, if I remember correctly…
So, if I create an animation in Blender, and I export it as FBX, could I use it as an actor animation? For example, a walking actor? Will the texture be kept?
What do you think about Cinema4D?
Does it export FBX?
+1 for Blender ( just because I’ve evaluated all of them)
- Yep -> my team and I are currently doing everything in blender
- yes, C4D is abel to export fbx files
If you’re looking for a great modeler look into Modo. I’ve been modeling for about 15 years now and nothing beats it. I haven’t looked at Blender (I do work with 3d professionally so can’t be bothered learning something nobody use) but the price is hard to beat.
Modo and Maya is a darn hard to beat combo these days and as far as I know, it’s two apps Epic use as well. I’m guessing Maya for animation and I’ve seen a lot of videos showing them using Modo for environments and modeling, which is what I’d recommend as well. They play to each other’s weaknesses well - or should I say Maya is standard for animation and pretty bad for asset creation, which Modo excels at.
My experience so far has little to do with Modo/Maya with Unreal so can’t speak much for data transfers to Unreal at this point. It seems to work well from both from what I can see posted online.
I have seen others say the same. What exactly is better in Modo? I always found Maya easy to model in, but it is also the first app I started using, so that is natural…
I guess I will have to get a hold of a Modo license somehow.
If you’re used to Maya that matters too mind you, it’ll take a while to swap from anything you’re comfortable with. I’m not hired as a modeler but when colleagues who are and use Maya to model look over my shoulder their jaws usually drop when they see the speed you can go at and the things you can do.
Do try it out, Maya’s modeling is getting better after AD bought Nex but it’s still behind. I mean, before Nex it couldn’t even do symmetry properly and that’s just for starters.
If you have some extra cash, mesh fusion is pretty awesome but’ll require some retopo afterwards for game use (retopo is part of Modo as well, and multires sculpting too mind you, incl vector displacement output):
I’d recommend just checking it out, you might have all you need in Maya but I just can’t do without it… And if you do test it, feel free to send me a pm about any questions or whatever.