Learn The Animation Pipeline For Game Characters In Unreal 4

Take your animated characters from Maya - to moving around in your level in Unreal Engine 4

What you'll learn
Import characters into Unreal Engine 4
Set up character Blueprints to accept input
Understand basic animation systems in the Unreal Engine
Share animation scripting between characters
Set up advanced features like IK and head look-at
Requirements
Students will need to know how to make basic character rigs in your 3d animation package of choice
The course uses Maya - but if you are familiar with rigging in another software package you'll still be able to follow along
Access to Unreal 4
Description
In Animation Pipeline in UE4, Chad Morgan will giving a comprehensive overview of all things animation in Epic's Unreal 4 Engine. Starting with exporting our character from Maya using the FBX format, we’ll import it into UE4 in such a way that will allow us to share animation blueprints across different characters. Then we’ll go over how to import animations and setting up things like additive aim poses and navigational blend spaces. We will cover the basic concepts of the blueprint scripting system in the Unreal Engine so we can set up our character and then our animation blueprint. We’ll cover how to hook up our character with input from the keyboard and gamepad, connect it to our anim blueprint, and have our character running around the level in the engine. In discussing anim blueprints, we’ll discuss concepts such as applying additive animations and setting up state machines. We’ll add extra features like ik systems, head look-at systems, other procedural animation systems.
More about the Instructor:
Chad Robert Morgan used his veteran’s benefits he earned from his tour in the US Navy to go to Sonoma State University where he earned his bachelors degree in Computer Science. He got his first job in the industry right after graduation with LucasArts where he learned how to rig characters in SoftImage and Maya, as well as how to apply his programming knowledge with MEL. Chad has worked in both film and games for nearly 20 years. Currently he runs his own company which published its first mobile game, The Last Rite – Endless Nightmare, as well as working at Whitemoon Dreams, the makers of WarMachine:Tactics and Starblood Arena.

Overview

Section 1: Setting up our Character for Import

Lecture 1 Download Source Files here!

Lecture 2 Introduction

Lecture 3 Preparing Character for Export

Lecture 4 Importing Character into Unreal

Lecture 5 Persona and Migrating Characters

Lecture 6 Level Of Detail Meshes

Lecture 7 Sharing Skeletons

Lecture 8 Sockets

Lecture 9 Exporting and Importing Animations

Section 2: Blending Animations and setting up Functions in Unreal

Lecture 10 Introduction

Lecture 11 Retargeting

Lecture 12 Blendspaces

Lecture 13 Additive Animations

Lecture 14 Blueprint Concepts

Lecture 15 Variables and Functions

Lecture 16 Casting Comments and Collapsing

Section 3: Section 3

Lecture 17 Introduction

Lecture 18 Setting up our Character Pawn

Lecture 19 Setting up Navigation

Lecture 20 Setting up Aiming

Lecture 21 Intro to State Machines

Lecture 22 Advance State Machines

Lecture 23 Randomizing Animations

Lecture 24 Hooking up the Pawn

Section 4: Section 4

Lecture 25 Introduction

Lecture 26 Child Anim Blueprints

Lecture 27 Using Structs in Anim Blueprints

Lecture 28 Sub Anim Graph and Post Processing

Lecture 29 Arm IK

Lecture 30 Skeletal Controls

Lecture 31 Conclusion

Lecture 32 Bonus Lecture: Further Learning with 3dmotive

Anyone interested in learning how to make characters animate in the Unreal Engine,Character riggers and animators