BLENDER to UNREAL Shape Keys and Morph Targets (UE4/UE5 tutorial)

Using Shape Keys and Morph targets is very powerful tool to animate your models id subtle ways, allowing you to have direct control over the morphing of your model in engine during runtime! This tutorial works for both unreal engine 4 and unreal engine 5.
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[@davidfrench6790]

Not sure what I did wrong, but my Morph Targets just aren't importing. And before anyone asks, yes, I did set "Import Morph Targets" to true. Any idea what I did wrong?

[@IndieScapeGames]

Life saver man.. I imported over 20 different versions of my model trying to get my blendshapes imported but was forgetting the dang 'Import Morph Targets' checkbox.

[@tiberiusgames1109]

Thnx for the short and clear tutorial. You should have more views and subs 😁

[@thegamedevcave]

thanks i'm happy to help :D !

[@SuthernZero]

Everything up untill UE Coding. Are you using C or node based coding. Doesn't help much to teach a tutorial and cut out the most important part

[@GAMEBR0VIP2462]

Hey i have this issue when i use morph targets at runtime the mesh is flashing between the current morph target and the original shape , if i slowly change the morph to the desired value it will look good and work as expected in some cases but if i quickly drag my slider bar from 0 to 1 or -1 it will glitch the mesh out and cause it to be flashing between two morphs could you offer any info on this subject ?. (EDIT) turn on Precompute Skin Cache In Project Settings

[@faxin-studio]

how to import blender shape keys animation to ue5？

[@lolaswift111]

this bring a smile on my face. thank you for your wonderful videos

[@marcus_rigonati]

Unfortunately this does not solve my problem, I'm trying to make an animation of a circle disappearing in a clock like style, I was able to accomplish this by creating a tall rectangle and then applying Simple Deform to it (bending around an empty object) in order to make it like a circle. I was able to even make the animation in blender, using the timeline and two frames with the initial and final properties. In Blender the animation plays nicely, the problem is that I have no idea how to export this to UE, I've tried multiple ways and nothing works. If anyone has any tip about this, I would appreciate a lot!

[@WolfgangIX]

I've issue when exporting Blender 3.6 to UE 4.25, the morph doesn't showed up. to fix it on Blender Export window disable Triangulate Face & Apply Modifiers, disabling those 2 fixed my issue

[@mareknovotny5833]

Thank you very much

[@deebee5378]

Thank you for the informative video, do you know if you can attach the morph key to a driver like you can in Blender? Like let's say, make the elbow stick out when the arm bends?

[@thegamedevcave]

i'm not sure, this is mostly used to morph shapes, it doesn't work as well with full animations for humanoid characters, for that you're probably better off using normal skeletal animations and looking into making an IK rig

[@ConstanzaRigazio]

Cool tutorial, very useful. Just one thing: Blender's mascot monkey is a girl and her name is “Suzanne”😊

[@thegamedevcave]

oh that's right XD

[@JshPerky]

Would there be a better method than this for changes that should happen to the character once? This seems good for things that would change a lot during runtime. I'm looking to make a character customization system that's dynamic and different values (weight, height, bone structure/facial features, muscle definition) can be customized with a slider, rather than just having a bunch of different static pieces of the character mesh and letting the player pick with part they like best from the selection. Something likes baldur's gate 3 or guild wars 2 character customization

[@thegamedevcave]

character customization will usually also be set up with the use of this. especially since those are skeletal meshes anyway, youre not adding that much extra overhead by having some blend shaped/ morph targets on them

[@MrCompassionate01]

Magnificent video! Out of curiosity if it doesn't play well with Modifiers how does it deal with the Armature modifier? Is it safe to use Skeletal animation AND Shape Keys?

[@thegamedevcave]

it should be yeah, as far as i know shape keys are just local offset so if you move somethign with a bone, and then turn on the shape key value, it should work fine together. probably good to create the shape keys from your Tpose though, just to be sure. (but in theory, even creating shape keys on posed models should work I think)

[@yuwong5850]

How do you animate it?

[@thegamedevcave]

you can find more about that in this video : kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpzCf2iMqrFshdE

[@hotsauce7124]

Hello, does Blender do corrective blendshapes that are driven by set driven keys like Maya? For example, when you bend an elbow the inside of the elbow will use corrective blendshapes to correctly deform the elbow when it bends?

[@TheBlackGamerPT]

I dont know about maya but on blender you can drive the blendshapes/morph targets/ shape keys (its all the same). You need to set it up ofc but yeah you can

[@xiaocongwang4227]

can we make unreal shape keys to blender?

[@m0rph3u5.]

I've done morph targets before but was a long time ago in blender 2.8/UE2.26 but now forgot how to do it .. this video is short and right to the point! thanks a lot for sharing ;)

[@thegamedevcave]

Glad it helped

[@fransalazarco]

Hello. I used shape keys to create expressions. In Blender, I finished all the animations and they work perfectly, but the problem occurs in Unreal. When I import to Unreal the morph targets, which in this case act as shape keys, don't work properly. For example, if I modify the morph target of the eyebrow on the left side, both sides activate, and if I activate the right side, the expression becomes exaggerated. That is, if I move only one side, both sides activate, but they look fine like in Blender. This is reflected in my animations, as in Unreal they will be extremely exaggerated expressions. To visualize it, if I created a normal smile in Blender, in Unreal the smile will be like the Joker's. Do you have any idea why this might be happening? Please help.

[@Polychi1998]

what if I'm using a armature rig and a shape keys and they're separated in NLA?

[@thegamedevcave]

if you want to export shape key animations into unreal i believe you have to drive them with bones, as all other animation data is lost when exporting to fbx. from there, it should import your separate NLA strips just like any animation.

[@Polychi1998]

@@thegamedevcave mind making a quick video on how to do it? I kinda have a hard time seeing it. 😅 I just wanna make sure I do it correctly.

[@thegamedevcave]

@@Polychi1998 been meaning to get around to making that video, i've had more people ask so i'll try to get to it, might be a while though so if you're in a hurry probably faster to look up another video on it for now :/

[@Polychi1998]

@@thegamedevcave ok! Just don’t forget about it, ok?

[@RWBKelly]

Just about to jump into this and you've explained everything I need to know quickly and concisely. Thank you dude

[@PrinceBrosnan]

Dude, you're a genius. is it possible to add 5% random to all this? (mb left right top bot 1-5%) I have 3000 identical objects for morphing, I need to add randomness to them, not just linear morphing from 0 to 1 Please answer, I won't be able to Google it myself.

[@thegamedevcave]

Check my infinite idle animation video, that pretty much does what you need

[@PrinceBrosnan]

damn it's so cool that you already have a video answer thank you!!@@thegamedevcave

[@MrReactric]

it works. thnx. But, can we use this as a animation like bone animation ?

[@thegamedevcave]

i dont think you'd be able to do that to use it in something like an animation blueprint, as the morphing itself is only a paramater, not an animation asset by itself like you'd usually have with a skeleton. if you really need to be able to drive the animation with bones you could look into "dem bones" , this will generate bones inside blender from things like simulations, i would assume it'd work for this too, but i'm not sure, i've never used it myself. This video on the topic might be useful though : kzbin.info/www/bejne/qIqapJJofbOqbqs&ab_channel=Gamefromscratch

[@MrReactric]

@@thegamedevcave yeap thank you for answer. I will take a lool at this link.

[@marcus_rigonati]

3:11 This feature you mentioned here would be fantastic for my game, how can I find more information about it? Is there a name for this feature?

[@thegamedevcave]

i made a followup video about that :) kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpzCf2iMqrFshdE

[@marcus_rigonati]

@@thegamedevcave That's awesome, thank you for the reply!! :)

[@SkegakisInc]

Any way to import with either gltf or usd? I tried a few combinations of settings but it never seems to recognize it as a skeleton. fbx works np.

[@activemotionpictures]

6:50 - so do you create a variable where if it's set to true, it will (influence) the morph target?

[@thegamedevcave]

I go more into detail about it in this video : kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpzCf2iMqrFshdE

[@efsfsesegsgesg8775]

Supaaaaaaaaa nice

[@Pouk3D]

How do you make sure your Shape Keys tracks are named as anything other than Key 1, Key 2 and so on after import? I can rename them in Blender Shape Keys panel, but it seems to be only a cosmetic change, as for Drivers for instance they are still called just Key 1.

[@thegamedevcave]

i'm not sure what casues that issue, renaming them in blender should carry over. maybe you need to save you blender project before exporting?

[@Pouk3D]

@@thegamedevcave I just founf out, it's the Shape Key Collections plugin that does that. (Sorry, sometimes you can't find the answer for days and then you figure it out just as soon as you ask...)

[@Pouk3D]

@@thegamedevcave But thank you for the answer!

[@thegamedevcave]

ah great glad you worked it out! :)

[@felixg2062]

Well my character editor is coming 😁

[@hotsauce7124]

Does export "Inbetween Shapekeys" to UE5? For example, if you are doing an eye blink, can we do a 1/3 eyeblink Shape key, a 1/2 eye blink and a 2/3 eyeblink shapekey and have those as inbetween shapes when we use a blink slider in UE5? This way the eye lids do not cut through the eye ball when doing the eye blink.

[@thegamedevcave]

in theory this might be possible, i'm not sure. making shape keys that are based on other shape keys first being fufilled is possible bit tends to be messy. for that kind of thing you really want to look into giving your chracter a ficial rig with more usual animation techniques using bones. (which is the reason I usually avoid making characters with detailed faces, as making them animate smoothly can be a lot of extra work)

[@NikitaBirukovich]

Super!!! THNX!!! one problem - How to add Morphs to sequencer in unreal engine 5

[@thegamedevcave]

i'm not sure, i haven't treid that yet but I think you should be able to just make a public variable on your blueprint and animate that in the sequencer.

[@aprilhamlincom18]

Hola ... Awesome Tutorial! I just tried it in 5.31 and it never imports any morphtarget ... did you try it in 5.3? Which Version of the Engine did you use for the tut? Best regards

[@thegamedevcave]

newer versions of the engine should still have this working, make when you import it it's a skeletal mesh, if it's just a static mesh it won't have any morph targets

[@aprilhamlincom18]

Thanks for the answer - it was my fault - i should have listened when you talked about modifiers ... arghhh ... did you ever animate the shapekeys in the Blender timeline, push them to actions or NLAs and import those to be used as animation assets inside UE? This should be very possible, but somehow i am too stupid or something. I got a rather complex animation and its way easier to do the timing in blender already - thats why i am asking ... @@thegamedevcave

[@thegamedevcave]

@@aprilhamlincom18 never tried that, I imagine it would be possible, but I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if that kind of data isn't baked into FBX exports either

[@aprilhamlincom18]

@@thegamedevcave i got a blender addon which is called "better FBX exporter" - which is supposed to be able to export vertex animations and unity / UE optimzed FBX files ... but even there its not working - could you maybe give thta idea a try also? Maybe you check an option i didnt see ... would be a great help and actually also a part two for this great tutorial you published already ...

[@thegamedevcave]

@@aprilhamlincom18 from a little bit of quick research it seems like what you should do if you want to animate blend shapes is make them driven by a bone so add a bone, constrain it between 2 positions and add a driver to the blend shape value to go between 0 and 1 as the bone moves between its min and max position. that way it should be able to be exported and imported into a game engine. Possibly a few things you''ll need to look up if you dont know how to work with bone constraints and value drivers but that info is pretty easy to find :) I will also note this down to do a video on in the future, it seems like useful info to put out there!

[@LawsOnJoystick]

Very helpful. Is there any way to alter shape keys once in unreal?

[@thegamedevcave]

don't think so, you'll have to change in blender, re-export and then in unreal you can reimport the file, which should just update your skeletal mesh with all the changes you made that way

[@LawsOnJoystick]

@@thegamedevcave back again, is there anyone to keyframe shapekeys in blender, then have your keyframes in ue once ported?thanks

[@thegamedevcave]

@@LawsOnJoystick i believe you have to drive the blendshaped with bones, if you do that it should be part of the exported animation. i'm not 100% sure though

[@LawsOnJoystick]

@@thegamedevcave I got it in the last hour :) I had to goto object and then bake animation i think it was, i just find it easier doing facial animations in blender.thank you for the reply

[@ukmonk]

awesome!! thank you so much!! been looking how to do this for ages!

[@thegamedevcave]

Great! Sweet I could help you out :)

[@SantaAna4]

I don't understand xd, and how to create the final animation?

[@thegamedevcave]

This video goes into more detail about that : kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpzCf2iMqrFshdE

[@daany7579]

Thanks a lot for this detail of the modifiers, my subdivision was totally interfering with the import of the morph targets.

[@danskinner8533]

just a small question when making shape keys would it work with scaling a certain part

[@thegamedevcave]

that should work fine yeah

[@interista-1908]

Thanks for the tut. How do we get create the Blueprint from 6:40?

[@thegamedevcave]

This tutorial should pretty much show the techniques to do that! kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpzCf2iMqrFshdE

[@gabrielzim212]

DUDE THANKS SO MUCH OMG

[@japaneseextremme3811]

Having a problem. Amazing tutorial by the way. But I have a mesh made of multiple meshes using the same blendshapes. I'm having an issue with importing them to unreal engine as a single object. For some reason it only imports a single mesh with the blendshapes and ignores the other meshes

[@thegamedevcave]

are all the meshes separate object in blender or all part of the same object? you probably want to make them all into 1 object my selecting them all and joining them (shortcut is Ctrl+J i believe). still weird because unreal should import all the meshes from an FBX file either way, so maybe when you're exporting you might need to double check all your export settings and more sure you're not just exporting the selected mesh or something

[@japaneseextremme3811]

Ah figured it out. I just had to group all the meshes including the blendshapes into a group in Maya and then export the group. That brought in the mesh as a single object.

[@japaneseextremme3811]

@@thegamedevcave Thank you for the swift reply! Sorry about that, was able to figure it out and provided my solution in case other Maya users run into it

[@victordayet]

Thnk u for the tutorial! U really helped my in my project!

[@thegamedevcave]

Happy to help!!

[@gitaecookiemonster2892]

Thank you so much

[@in2fractalout]

very powerfull and usefull. thx for sharing

[@thegamedevcave]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Crashsune]

thank you!!

[@thegamedevcave]

Glad I could help!

[@stalkershano]

thank u

[@RayGatsu85]

Wooohoho great tutorial Thnx

[@thegamedevcave]

thanks! Happy to help!

[@alexandermoyle9034]

great!

[@anormic]

Noice !

[@sayonaradesu1087]

Looks great.

[@mackerel987]

Thanks for the tutorial!

[@thegamedevcave]

Happy to help!

[@imtiazsabree6562]

Thanks man.

[@thegamedevcave]

Happy to help

[@fathomlessforge8700]

Fantastic, keep it up!

[@thegamedevcave]

Thanks, will do!

[@Melekelmoula]

i want to export an avatar from cc to unrealengine and use it in character customization system does this is the best and easiest solution ? i though about morph slider of cc but i dont know if the character will be exported with the them or not

[@TommyGunsXL]

No, you will get ugly shading artefacts when you use morph targets in combination with bone driven animations. The normals effected by the morph target won't get updated during the animation. You will get black spots all over the place. There is a workaround with skin cache and recompute tangents but this will cause other problems.

[@Melekelmoula]

i thought about daz3d to cc to unreal what you think is it better solution for having a full character customization ?@@TommyGunsXL