Unreal Engine 5.4: Animation Deep Dive | GDC 2024

Get an in-depth look into how we rigged and animated LEGO® Fortnite in Unreal Engine, and how we reinvented Fortnite Battle Royale’s locomotion with Motion Matching. This talk will show the tools we’ve developed and share details on the content we’ve built, including the transition to Motion Matching on a live title, how we landed on the animation style within LEGO® Fortnite, demos of our minifig rigs and highlights of the benefits to animating in Unreal Engine to allow for no ‘round tripping’ for quicker iteration and testing.

[@medhue]

In the game we are working on, I have rarely needed to go outside of Unreal to do anything. It's not something I expected, but it is quite nice to do everything in the engine.

[@bee3D]

are you making a quixel megascan showcase game?

[@MegariskyYT]

@@bee3D Quixel Megaflip bodycam retro analogue horror with Roguelike elements (it's an allegory for mental health)

[@LewdSCP1471A]

@@MegariskyYT Releast comment under here.

[@CoffeeOrBust]

​​​@@MegariskyYT As opposed to a AAA quixel megaflip that they then make 300 artists toil away in the mines to supplement, and lie about their 'innovations' and 'fidelity' (the artists are actively striking and being replaced by a.i, the narrative is arguably brain-dead, the game is multiplayer focused always online, season pass or deluxe version pre-order at €100)

[@SonnyBear5]

Been dabbling with UE5 lately. Thanks to all the forums and tutorial videos for helping me understand this crazy tool, one feature at a time.

[@lFunGuyl]

Its all I ever want to do! It's terrific to have such a powerful and free tool, that you can also be proud of using because it's pretty much the best in its class!

[@MrYoungfly1]

Sooo is it just me, or did the new animation features just kick the door down and strut into the room like they own the place? Mic drop. lol. Remember the days when our jaw-droppingly gorgeous characters moved like they were secretly part of a robotic mime troupe? Straight winter Olympics. Those days are gone, folks. I'm over here practically vibrating with excitement, itching to get my hands on these updates. I mean, throwing a punch or swinging a sword that reacts like it's part of a dance with physics? That's not just an update; that's breathing soul into our creations. Huge shoutout to the Unreal Engine wizards - you've outdone yourselves. I'm sending you all virtual hugs and a mountain of gratitude. My heart (and my characters) are doing backflips of joy!

[@internetbard]

The fact that this tech is being made available to anyone virtually for free is mind blowing to say the least

[@SirWade]

Such great new features and fun insights into the production! I'm going to make soooo many tutorials on all of this.

[@bboyg1]

Just subbed to your channel can't wait to see and learn

[@UnrealRealism]

I cant express how excited I was for UEs announcement of 5.4 and the updates / features especially the 500+ free animations . Super cool!

[@i.sebastian.c6563]

Maya it's history now, Autodesk should take notes what a real feature means. And it's free for starters!

[@post1440]

Motion matching is such a cool tech. Thank you guys for your hard work. You are unreal!

[@MichaelEmbers]

yeaaah baby been waiting for these features to finalize

[@Shrooblord]

SO EXCITED FOR THE NEW ANIMATION TOOLING!! What a time to be alive!

[@xshaide]

Stop motion animation looked so sick

[@S1su]

Cant wait!

[@SpikeTheSpiker]

@24:45 you've been able to hot reload animations and anim blueprints while pie is running since 4.24. This isn't just exclusive to this new anim sequence stuff, if you edit an anim, export and hit reimport on an anim sequence while PIE is running, it will fetch the new animation during runtime. It's funny how so much old cool stuff isn't documented and the new UE devs are slowly rediscovering these things

[@ermilburn02]

I can't get one quote out of my head: "just coming off the Collision event on the Fortnite team". Collision was in June of 2022, although the update containing it had been out since mid-May, so that would mean that they only had a year and a half to put this all together. This is just incredible.

[@albertkim1809]

That was amazing. Motion Matching will completely democratize access to amazing animations

[@asdfman7007]

until gamers start complaining all our projects look the same...

[@brightamoako1368]

@@asdfman7007 Doesnt matter because as long as there is more games no one will complain rather than waiting like 5 or 6 years for a game

[@jiiiiim_xyz]

Constantly mindblown.. Thankyou! Maybe one day I'll also be able to actually understand a fraction of the things your talking about :)

[@xxxxRouvenxxxx]

Amazing work!

[@m.d.4231]

cant wait for this

[@illyay1337]

Whoa! I was also doing that dynamic additive layering system in my own game. Makes it so you can have a weapon holding pose that's also affected by running animations instead of leaving the upper body stiff. Mine was kinda simple in comparison and just figured out an additive spine pose. As an added bonus, I also had crouching for free since the upper body would lean forward due to the locomotion pose leaning forward. This motion matching tech is insane. I spent years trying to tweak my character's animations and I think this will just finally solve locomotion and make it look super smooth almost for free, and with just about any arbitrary set of animations.

[@heytraile]

Not buying into that temporary pivot system yet until I use it and it actually works! sidefx introduced something similar in houdini 20 and the current iteration doesn't work like you'd want in terms of rotation around temporary locator pivots being way off! lots of manual work needed in sidefx version, so let's see what unreal actually brings with that.

[@Fafhrd42]

Doesn't seem all that different than using the 3D cursor as pivot point in Blender, and that's worked great for well over a decade.

[@duxart]

SUPER!

[@joshnevel1504]

Thank you

[@playbyan1453]

The new gismos is looking great, I hope when it is released it will be a builtin feature.

[@deepelements]

I love Unreal Engine

[@joaoalexdias]

Great work, I would love to know how can we get the Animation Browser Widget?

[@sjyoo2677]

Sometimes, I feel the techknowledge is super fast like this announcement so I am little bit afraid to accept and learn the new features because it takes time to be familiar, even if I have many experiences and skills with other softwehres. However I am excited to be able to handle these fantastic features with my project soon so I am willing to accept it my best

[@dmosier83]

This is really cool! I’d love to learn how to fully rig and animate in Unreal and not need Maya. But man, you can tell these guys are not comfortable talking to people! 😮

[@fm_ography]

When is the animation back mentioned around ~ 45:20 coming out?

[@GoatOfTheWoods]

Yes

[@perfectionist724]

Any way to implement motion matching with foliage? 😅

[@smackmet9379]

Does anyone by any chance know if the parkour system is doable with motion matching in 5.4 ? They are showing it, but is it feasable in 5.4 or only in later versions ? The 5.3 version does not support any vertical movements, so this is pretty interesting.

[@DevGods]

I wonder how good motion matching will be for my basketball game. I feel like the animations are stiff and not fluid.

[@FPChris]

Outstanding. I hope it includes archery.

[@ergin3d]

Battle-tested! Hardships make or break people. :)

[@benhefner512]

👍🏻 good

[@user-ti6ik3xc8g]

I have a question epic !! how much does it cost for you to hire only 1 person for giving free tutorial videos every day in great depth ! is it 100k a year ?! because for now your tutorials are more like that you are saying hey people we know that u are already an expert in UE so just take these general info too and have fun !!! this is why no real developer looking at your channel and all of us should struggle to find information from various sources !!

[@sierrafoxtrot1331]

Am I the only one who noticed Paddy changed shoes during this event?

[@fray989]

My only feedback is that this feels like the presenters are reading words written by a marketing or PR team. It doesn't seem like it's their own words. It's a shame they're not given more freedom to go off script because they clearly know a lot and are passionate about this project and system. Would like to have heard them talk more freely about all of this. Still really useful content though!

[@raw_bacon_taco564]

Cant wait to see this tech not used for LEGO stuff and actually visualize real use cases with regular humans....

[@dinossauroromano]

25:36

[@agneesesaini6689]

Why can't people hold a conversation live? so weird

[@attilaszarka8837]

Does anyone here know how to setup the simplest thirdperson crosshair. I am desprate and I am a begginer in unreal and I am working on a school project and I want to have a crosshair which is accurate to where I am actually shooting. PLEASE!

[@fidel_soto]

It's kind of a trick. The trace for hit registration can go forward from the center of the camera. Then, the visual things (projectiles, bullet traces, etc) can go from the weapon's muzzle to where the hit registration trace impacted.

[@stroporez79]

Странные персонажи в программе . От первого лица нет ног , от третьего нет оружия . Не было времени прикрутить ?

[@davestomper3428]

Really hard to watch these guy read the whole conversation off of a script

[@piotrek7633]

I think unreal will soon introduce subscription and/or increase their fee by alot. You can't be so much ahead and simply charge nothing, its bound to change soon

[@fidel_soto]

Tim Sweeney will keep things good for us

[@joeschmidt6597]

Who wants to collab on a project to remake Season 8 of Game of Thrones

[@denys.martyniuk]

We definitely need a stream with some Animation Programmer showing how to setup and use Motion Matching from scratch. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to offend anyone, I'm really excited with these new features, but this GDC was painful to listen.

[@itzDrizzyyyman]

deep dive we hear women yell deeeppeerr, give us more information bout motion matchin

[@daniellQCCA]

Graphics engines change, but **the games are the same**. I will upgrade my PC in 10 years when game developers will be good and inventive **creative** and this on a desktop without any graphics engine. **EXPLORATION, IMMERSION, AMBIENCE, BEAUTY ... & death to FPS!!! FPS are for those who don't want to work **the lazy ones**.

[@Matagirl001]

Always promoting MotionMatching. Where the hell is it?

[@Takeit1500]

😴

[@gnom_anonim]

Unreal guys, give your empoyees proper 'crowd talk training'. Every unrealfest is the same, speakers have massive public speaking fear. New tools are awesome but its painful to watch those people trembing

[@pewpew518]

I had 0 problems watching it. They are engineers not entertainers.

[@GuestUser-jf8uj]

The only people that dont get nervous in these situations are people that literally train and practice for this. Like pewpew said, these guys are engineers, they're spending their time creating. Any time spent on public speaking would be a waste of time for them.

[@m.d.4231]

blame Steve Jobs for this 😂honestly, engineers who are not comfortable speaking shouldn't have to waste their time like this, find a company mouthpiece, everybody knows that one guy at work who cant shut up

[@philipxxxdj]

i was ofer a job at lego doing this many years ago but was to slow to reply pretty funny but yeah im stil making games anyway XD