UE4 Animation Hitch Custom Bones HELP ME!
GIFS AT BOTTOM
Alright folks, here is the rundown, i have this squidy sort of bone structure. You can see in the GIF from 3dsMax the motion is smooth (aside from the slight jump at the end of the gif) Then there is the one from UE4 where, when the tentacles are approaching each other there is a very clear hangup in the motion (not the pause at the end of the gif, but before that as they are coming together).
I dont understand why this is. I have tried various import settings in UE4, including the one that makes sure that all incoming animations are interpreted as 30fps and not 24. That helped, but did not fix the issue.
These bones do not have IK systems, which i expect may be to blame, because the Biped has never given me these issues and every piece of it has I. I did not use it because I was unable to replicate this motion where the tentacles would arch back and forth in opposite directions, and from varying points on the hierarchy.
I would like help with eiher A: exporting/importing the skeleton and animations in a way that UE4 accepts neatly, or if necessary, replicating these motions with an IK system instead.
All help is appreciated, Thank you too all out there who can help.
Replies
More than likely it is how unreal is interpreting your animation curves. When you export, set it to Key Per Frame and see if the problem goes away.
You should have a key on each joint, at the beginning and end of your animation. You should try to get your curves to flow as smoothly as possible. In Maya you would turn on "Infinity curves" in the curve editor. In 3dsmax, I think you add an out of range controller and set it to loop. It's been a while since I animated in max...
Also make sure there aren't extra keys in your timeline when you export.
Also re -import the FBX file into your 3D program and see if the problem exists in the file or in Unreal.
Key Per Frame sounds like a lot of data but Unreal prefers it because it's lighter than running custom tangents and curve interpolation.
Key Per Frame is big on file size but faster computationally speaking, in some aspects. But that is why unreal has some aggressive key reduction tools but I don't think it runs automatically, I think you have to purposefully do it after you import. The more aggressively you crunch the animation more it has to interpret, which leads to wonky animation. The unreal key reduction works best on works best on linear curves, so depending on your animation and your file size budget you might want to keep that in mind.
@Mark Dygert Again, yeah, Mismatching was what i was thinking. I really appreciate all those suggestions, like reimporting the animation back into max to see where the problem truly lay, i considered it for a moment earlier, but never did it.
In max you do (or at least i do) put out of range frames on the animation. However, I havent looked into the the whole Quaternion/Euler thing because i have never heard those words in my life; I am almost entirely self taught. Next time i have a moment i will look into that.
Frame Compression does also sound a likely culprit and i too will look into how to re calibrate UE4 to not compress, or to at least compress differently that it does right now. My budget for this character sizable because its likely to be one of, if not the, only skeletal mesh in the whole game. Its a simple spaceship game so most of the ships would be be static meshs that fly around.
Thanks both of you for your input, and next time i get a moment to work on this i hope to be solving this issue.