I just noticed you neglected to animate the IK bones in the third person template. Maybe this helps explain why so many marketplace animation packs have bungled IK bones. Please fix asap. These templates shouldn’t have such bad practices in them.
Im going to +1 this comment, since this is the source for many to understand, learn and create compatible stuff as creators, otherwise we will sooner or later start on seeing bad practices spread and will be too late.
Oh, can you perhaps post a screenshot if possible? I have been using the Third Person template and never realized there is such a problem. I probably won’t even be able to notice it, but it’s good to know that I can’t use these animations.
@spacegojira He is talking about IK bones. Those are used for weapon position and proper feet placing. But only by utilizing blueprint nodes. I haven’t seen anyone used those for animations.
As animator myself I found this request silly, there are 0 reasons for adding animation data to IK bones.
More info here: [https://forums.unrealengine.com/deve...equin-ik-bones
[SPOILER]](Explanation of the mannequin IK bones? - Animation - Unreal Engine Forums)
Why exactly is the request silly? If the IK bones aren’t animated correctly then the animations are effectively worthless for game dev. Having this in the template teaches bad habits and is probably partly responsible for why so many animation packs on the marketplace are totally unusable.
extra bones add up to the skeletal mesh cost. if they are really useless then they shouldn’t even be there 
Look what you’ve done, Epic. These people don’t even understand the importance of IK bones.
I do understand the importance of IK bones (I’ve gone through the pain of making IK in a game without them)
I’m merely stating that even with the (wrong) argument of “they are useless”, there would be something wrong with the current setup 
if you want me to spell it out for you: I agree that the IK bones should be fixed
Hi. I just stumbled upon this thread, since I’m trying to wrap my head all around the subject of IK and one uses it, so.
First thing I do understand the feelings BlackFangTech have, such things could give more confusion and bad practice and all that stuff 
Second thing, there are Virtual Bones feature implemented in 4.17 I think, which pretty much eliminates the need to animate IK bones during the animation creation process.
Please take a look at Virtual Bones documentation, in short: you can create your “IK bones” at the Skeleton Editor it would take few clicks and you are good to go.
You very well could use virtual bones to fix the problem, but there should be no need to to that. There are already bones in the skeleton for this, and animators literally only need to apply two constraints to each before they bake out the animation in order to do it correctly. Also, the virtual bones are going to generate their animation automatically, which is going to be dependent on your current skeleton asset, which means the results may not be the same depending on the proportions of your mesh that the skeleton is considering the ‘default’.
Er… I… I am honestly not quite sure if I am the idiot here or if this request is really stupid. The IK bones in the Epic skeleton are meant to be placed via BP so you can then drive the FK bones and align them to that, yes? Like, move the IK bone to the location of the door knob so that the door opening animation grabs the door knob properly? This means that not only would there be no need to animate them, you musn’t animate them so that the animation doesn’t screw with your manual placement.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding something here but if what I wrote is true then the request is an inane as it gets.
No. That really isn’t what they are for at all. In that case, you would use a socket on the doorknob as your IK target.
IK bones are meant to be animated to match the hands and feet of the model the animator is using to make animations. Because they are linked down to the root, they are not effected by the varying proportions of different models that share the same skeleton. So when you play these animations back, regardless of arm length, the hand IK bones end up where the animator placed them. You can then use them as IK targets for the limbs so that the hands and feet still end up where the animation intended for them to be.
Example: Animation is of character holding something with both hands, directly in front of chest, but the model in game has longer arms than the animation model. Result: The arms cross in front of the chest.
The foot IK bones are also important to doing foot placement.
I stand corrected then, thanks for the info.
It’s somewhat complicated and hard to explain without a visual example. If only there were some kind of template that came with the engine that could be used to demonstrate this…
No worries I know what you’re referring to.