Convert 500+ Unreal Game Animation Samples to Root Motion For Cinematic Blending | Unreal Tech Tips

[@MoinGreenbud]

That is really a good explanation. Keep posting new videos, and help us learn more. Thanks!

[@SimonePixel]

@@MoinGreenbud Will do! Thanks a lot! 😀👍

[@grimmlarworld]

Very informative. Much appreciated!

[@SimonePixel]

Thank you! I'm so glad you benefited from it.

[@wolfcircle2503]

Life Saver. I was wasting months to find a way to create a small animation video using UE. Now I have some understanding. Can you please create a tutorial of making a small environment, some camera movements, and a small animation movie? Maybe 20 to 30 seconds long?

[@SimonePixel]

Hi @wolfcircle2503 Thanks for watching! I'm glad it helped! Check out my other streams. I'm developing an Unreal created series called "The Pixelverse" (Episodes coming soon to KZbin if all goes well) and I have a stream called "Building The Pixelverse" where I share my process of developing the show in Unreal. I also have a series called "The Struggle Is Unreal" where I show my Unreal Engine learning process. Episode #20 of that series shows me starting to follow the Unreal For VFX Unreal Fundamentals course. I'm building a Batman Dark Knight scene. Once I'm done with that learning series in a few weeks I'll continue making tutorials. The next tutorial will likely be on sequential animation blending. Since you suggested camera movements and environment building I'll think about how I might create tutorials that cover those topics as well.

[@24vencedores11]

hello Sir. Well done and we'll understood. Can you just show how make motion direction in sequence in unreal engine? Is there an animation sequence series for unreal engine 5.4? Please 🙏

[@SimonePixel]

Hello! Thank you for the nice comment. I will be working on an animation blending tutorial soon. I'm focused on taking a course right now, but will start making tutorials again in the next couple of weeks. Please keep an eye out and make sure to like, subscribe and click the notification bell to be alerted about my new videos. Thanks again!

[@JyotiEntertainmentProduction]

Good informative video. This is good for creating animated clips. But for game development, what i found is, say I have four different characters, then I have to retarget the entire 500+ animations for every character, and its gonna be around 2k animation sequences. The game project will be too large. Is there any other technique that we can use the same animation sequences for every character?

[@SimonePixel]

Thank you for the compliment! Just to clarify, I primarily use these animations for cinematic sequencer animations rather than for gameplay. So, I don’t actually import all of the animations for each character every time. Instead, I open the Game Sample project and select only the animations I need before exporting or migrating them into my project. One benefit of that approach is that I can preview the animations in the mannequin’s Skeletal Mesh or Blueprint editor to decide which ones to export. For game development, what I’ve read is that using shared skeletons in Unreal Engine 5 is one of the most efficient ways to reuse animations without creating a large number of duplicates. This helps keep your project size manageable while maintaining flexibility with your character animations. Hope that helps, and thanks again for watching!

[@hitmangamesyndicate5970]

just signing off my desk for the day but came across this video... is this a series? I am for sure wanting to catalog these animations and use them in my projects... Do you have a video/breakdown for that

[@SimonePixel]

@@hitmangamesyndicate5970 Hi! Thanks so much for watching my tutorial-I’m glad you found it helpful. Regarding your question, while there isn’t a specific catalog for the 500+ animations in the Unreal Engine Game Animation Sample Project, you can preview them directly within Unreal Engine or after reimporting those with baked-in root motion. This allows you to explore and catalog the animations as you use them in your projects. If you have any other questions or need more details, feel free to ask!

[@hitmangamesyndicate5970]

@@SimonePixel awesome... thanks for the reply. I have been using UE for about 8 years... (not an expert by any stretch) I use it mainly for environment art/design and now animated shorts... my pipeline consists of CC4, Iclone 8, UE5 and Maya for any other cleanup... so I would imagine I could export the animations from the project, run them through Iclone and reimport them into my project for use... (I think that is the right way... lol) keep making the videos and ill keep watching... cheers

[@SimonePixel]

@@hitmangamesyndicate5970 Great! We have similar workflows. I don’t know Maya, but my plan is to do pretty much what you mentioned… export out the animations, import them into Character Creator for facial expressions and blinks and export them out for use in my projects. Would love to chat with you about your experience. If you’re interested, join my Discord and send me a DM. Link is in my main page.

[@hitmangamesyndicate5970]

@@SimonePixel sorry just saw this... but yes would love to chat more about this... been trying to find someone to bounce ideas off of and to see what the future holds.

[@brocscogmyre5592]

You lost me at 6:22 when you talked about importing the animations, I thought about 521, you then proceeded to import Wilson and someone else, can you be more specific for people new to animation. And at about 14:23 you use the phrase 'normal blending', there are no blending animation tutorials in 5.4 that work, most of them are old and involve blueprints that many people are not au fait with, I know this from the various comments sections

[@SimonePixel]

Hi there! Thanks for your request for clarification. I cover the process of importing the mannequin/skeleton and then the animations starting at 8:28 in the video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqW7cq1vm5ebmZosi=cvuNQfzFu4oxzZfG&t=508. If you follow along from that point, you’ll see how to bring in the mannequin you exported earlier, select it as the skeleton when importing animations, and then you can proceed to retarget those animations to your custom character. Let me know if you need more info-I’m happy to help!

[@brocscogmyre5592]

Ok thanks I'll give it another look

[@SimonePixel]

I just saw your comment about "normal blending". I somehow missed that part when I read it earlier. I agree about there not being current tutorials on blending out there. I'll be sure to do one on that topic as soon as possible.

[@brocscogmyre5592]

@SimonePixel that'll be great I'll look out for it. I might add I'm one of the rare UE people who are more into making films than games