Weapon animation workflow?

Greg DAlessandro

I plan on making several animations for a playable level in UE4. But I'm not sure how to go about animating with props. What is your workflow for props? (rigging it/constrains?/etc) It's been a while since I've animated and could use some help/tips. Thank you.

Edit: specifically I am going to be using 3 props: shield, a 1h sword, and a bow. (but in the game you get them over time, so I'm not sure how to go about this.

KielFiggins

Are you asking for workflow specific to Unreal or inside your 3d package?

Connecta

There's probably a thousand different ways to animate for props, but this is how I've done it for my sideproject. As long as the props don't use their own animations it's really simple (okay-ishly simple if they do have their own animations), so for the sword and shield you could do the easy way:
Rig your character with extra joints for where the weapons will attach (for example: "r_hand_itemjoint"). Do the animations as usual, with the item parented to the corresponding attachment-joint. In the engine do a simple blueprint to attach the item to said joint, and do a check in the state machine if the character has the item then go into a new animationSet where the animations are made for those items.
You'll simply have to make specific animations for each item combination, so if the player will be able to only have a shield then you could do a specific animationSet for this scenario.

If that makes any sense:) Or maybe I missunderstood your question...

Greg DAlessandro

A little of both to be honest. I wasn't sure if sockets (in UE4) replaced the need to create joints for weapons in Maya/3d modeling software. Also, I'm not familiar with how sockets work in UE4, but I'll do some research and  google it as well. 

For the bow it will have its own animations in the sense that there will be a blend between 2 states: default, and pulled back. (potentially just with set driven keys)