Static Mesh Animation Import.

Fwap · Nov 2014

I'm trying to import some static meshes into UE4 with simple transformation animations, no bones or anything.

I've asked on the UE4 forums, and it seems possible

You don't have to use bones, just animate like normal, make sure that everything that you want imported as a single skeletal mesh has a common root object (can be a Dummy object) and then export to FBX, make sure that Bake Animations is used in the FBX options. When you import to UE4 check the Import Rigid Animations box.

Stopped getting replies over there so I thought i'd jump over here.

Everything seems to work, right up until its meant to animate something.

The mesh's are there, its parented to a dummy, it detects that there's 100 frames, and that there's an animation there.

But nothing plays, i'm stumped.

I've seen 'Import Rigid Bodies' thrown around, but i can't seem to find its option on the FBX import if that has something to do with it?

http://1drv.ms/1xo1JR7 File if you wanna have a burl at it.

Obscura · Nov 2014

I'm not sure, but I think an animated object shouldn't be imported as a static mesh (maybe just the title is misleading?). Are you trying to import it as a skeletal mesh?

Fwap · Nov 2014

Yeah sorry about the title, I am importing as a skeletal mesh.

Fwap · Nov 2014

Okay guys, I managed to get it to work if anyone is interested in doing some simple animations for unreal without having to use bones and or blueprints.

As well as baking animations, i also Re-sampled all the animations and exported the Curve Filters.

marlonbrando921 · Mar 2016

Create your mesh, Duplicate it - I used "MyMesh" and "DeformedMesh"

Select all the he edges of MyMesh and run Edge To Spline command. That will make a spline object of you edges. Now in the Character menu choose Conversion | Convert Spline to Joints.

This gives you a load of joints in a hierarchy, select them all and in the Character menu choose Commands | Unparent.

Make a Null, call it Root and put all the joints in there.

Select all the joints and then My Mesh, in the Character Menu choose Commands | Bind

This may not do any actual weights, I just selected all the joints, went to the falloff tab and made spheres to create the weights, then in the Weights Manager select all the joints and click Bake Effectors.

Now you have a skinned mesh ready to follow your Deformed mesh.

My video is a little out of order (sorry)

Now, select all the joints, right click, Character | Constraint

Select all of the Tags, and tick Clamp. In the Clamp tab, change it To: to 'Surface' As: to "Normal" and tick "Lock Position"

Now your joints are clamped the verts of DeformedMesh

Create your spline, add the spline deformer under DeformedMesh, do the animation on the Spline Deformer.

My Mesh should get dragged along by it's joints.

Now in the Timeline, make sure you go to View | Link | Link TL/OM Selection (Link the Timeline and Object Manger together)

Select all of the joints once again

In Timeline go to Functions | Bake Objects..

I normally untick "Create Copy" but you can do this for safety

This will bake the motion of the joints from the deformed mesh into keyframes

Now you can delete the constraint tags and the DeformedMesh and finally export you FBX file.
I have requested with Maxon that they add a way to bake joints on export.

vignesjoseph · Jan 2017

But you could set it up in UDK to use PhysX to cause an explosion and have the mesh fall apart. But you can't import that type of animation made from 3ds Max or whatever, unless you individually animated the pieces with bones.

musashidan · Feb 2017

vignesjoseph said:

But you can't import that type of animation made from 3ds Max or whatever, unless you individually animated the pieces with bones.

You can now import vertex anim directly, as of 4.13, with Alembic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E63e_z3C31k

Static Mesh Animation Import.

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