What is the correct workflow for creating & importing animated models into Unreal?

Dubious_Fellow

Howdy, I have a flying drone that has movable parts on it. These parts include:

• Rotating camera
• Landing gears
• Propeller
• Flaps

I've made the Hi & Low models and am getting ready to unwrap and texture them, but I'm stuck...

-Should I texture and export the various parts as separate objects? Do they all go on the same UV sheet etc?

-When should I animate these: in Max or in Unreal?

-What is the correct terminology for these types of hard surfaced animated meshes (are they animated 'static meshes')?

As you can probably tell I'm completely lost here. I've tried finding tutorials online, but the only ones I can find are for animated skeletons etc (would I use bones to animate this type of model?). It probably doesn't help that I don't know the correct terminology -any help would be greatly appreciated.
 

musashidan

4.13 added limited support for Alembic vertex animation but creating a rig in Max is the way to go. Aside from Alembic UE needs a rig with a single root bone hierarchy whether it's a swinging door or a player character.

You can create one quite easily using CAT(as the hierarchy is already established) Just create a bone for each moving part and assign all the verts of each part to the respective bone.

Create your animations.

Export a selection of all bones and geo in a single .fbx. This will be your skeletal mesh in UE.

Export just the bones as your anims and target the skeletal mesh on import to UE.

Sorry, I have to leave for work now but will elaborate and provide some links later.

Eric Chadwick

Moving this from Technical Talk to the Unreal section, you're likely to get additional responses here.

Dubious_Fellow

Thanks musa' - If you intend to write more can I ask this: My landing gear has a cylinder that slides up and down a tube. I'm confused as to how I bake AO with moving parts like this (that's if I even need to bake an AO map for UE4?).

theironpaw

Dubious_Fellow said:

Thanks musa' - If you intend to write more can I ask this: My landing gear has a cylinder that slides up and down a tube. I'm confused as to how I bake AO with moving parts like this (that's if I even need to bake an AO map for UE4?).

Have a read of this & this, it really depends on your preference.