Player Character conversion to Blender and reanimation for Unreal

[Zweitholou]

Hello everyone!

I've been working on setting up blender files for all the player characters and reskinning the existing meshes to the Ue4 skeleton hierarchy, then reanimating for unreal. A big focus here has been on understanding what unreal can do that we can take advantage of, which is why I'm focusing on using skeleton retargeting to have a standard animation set all characters can use with a few unique animations for things like spell casting that differ by race. The hope is that this framework will lower the barrier to adding new specific animations by only requiring the animation to be done once for all instead of 19 times for all the different races. I'll post updates as I go here and talk through the workflow I'm figuring out to make this happen.







Thanks!

[Volki]

I'm focusing on using skeleton retargeting to have a standard animation set all characters can use

This should be so for pretty much every animation in the game, differences being for the more unique races and gender differences. 100% very good and wonderful idea.

I was considering making a base character mesh that would be modular so it could be tweaked for each race. Didn't have any time for a while until recently, so haven't been able to get to it at all. But now that I have time, it's something I'm interested in. Would be easier for upgrading old models and adding new ones.

Are your files available anywhere?

[MishkaL1138]

Do an Enki next! Make sure you get the beastfolk crouch right!

[Zweitholou]

Hey Volki, glad you like the approach. We actually have a modular approach in place already for armor types and robes, and now I plan to extend that to animation with the new rigging and the retargeting ue4 offers. Do you have experience with weight painting or animation? These are the 2 areas it would be great to have some help on.

Hi Mishka, it will probably take a bit to get though enkis because their skeleton is the most different. But they are of course on the list!

Here's a diagram of what all goes into the characters at this point using the tweaked setup I'm trying to develop.

Thanks for the comments!

[Zweitholou]

Hello everyone! Just a quick update here since I haven't posted anything in a while: all the existing races have been rerigged except the enkidukai, but they've been started. Also, almost all the animations have a first draft for testing so that is going forward as well. Right now I'm looking into some translation errors to the walk animation on export and of course finishing up the menki and fenki rigging. I'll post more updates as I keep making progress!