Using other artist's animations for my own character inside unreal

ChrisTheArtist

OK so I'm new to this how do I set this animation up to my own character that I made? is there a video I can follow or something? I am character artist to I am completely blind to animation but not really lol. Any advice or tutorials will help I REALLY WANT THIS FOR MY CHARACTER and game Idea.

the video below is the animation that I want to use for my character and possible future characters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1e2UxWyUw8 

Mark Dygert

Yep, you rig your character up with the default unreal skeleton and any animations that they have in their store will work.

Advanced Skeleton 5+ supports the unreal skeleton.
Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPX9gy2RrbA
Site: https://www.animationstudios.com.au/advanced-skeleton

So does the Epic Animation and Rigging Toolkit.
Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbZ_g8Hgvk
Site: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/maya-tools

At the bare minimum if you don't need a rig, just skin your mesh to the skeleton. You can export it directly from Unreal or you might be able to find it online somewhere. 

 Note: you can change the joint positions around a bit just don't change the hierarchy at all or rename any of the joints. The animations will still play but you might need to adjust some of the retargeting settings if you've made some drastic proportion changes.

ChrisTheArtist

thank you so much

ChrisTheArtist

Could I also add new bones say that my character has extra limbs or clothing accessories and the such?

Mark Dygert

sorry I’m late catching this I’ve been heads down crunching at work.

if you don’t change/interrupt  the hierarchy, then you can use those animations straight out the box in unreal.

Graft a limb, ok.
New branches like a limb or another head are fine, but they won’t animate only the base skeleton will. But there are plenty of ways to transfer motion between controllers in Maya and Max, or just animate the extra bits.

Additional joints
You can add joints outside of the hierarchy such as floating bones for things like gear (pouches, a frying pan, a flappy shoulder pad, straps ect) or for clothing, (skirts, dresses, tabards, ect)  but usually those things have a copy of the main skeleton, plus the extra joints.
Note: that in unreal, when you import a skeletal mesh that has extra joints, it adds them to the unreal base skeleton. 

Dynamics for secondary motion

Depending on the animation needs, you might not ever need to animate them, you can apply dynamics to small things that need a bit of secondary motion. That way they react, jiggle and flop but you don't have to animate/capture that secondary motion.

Complex gear/weapons

In the cases of slightly complex gear like animated weapons or guns, it usually doesn’t share the main character skeleton. It has its own mini-skeleton and it is attached to a particular joint like the hand at runtime.

Back to the hierarchy

So backing up, as far as the overall hierarchy is concerned, you could add another set of limbs, a new head or a tail, they are branches that don’t change the original skeleton, they are just pieces grafted onto it. BUT You couldn’t cut the spine apart, graft an entire horse skeleton onto the pelvis and then stick the human torso on top and expect everything to function. You've blow apart the core hierarchy and there isn't a simple way for unreal to reconcile that.

Porting anims to different skeletons

You can say screw the unreal skeleton hierarchy and still use animations from their marketplace or other rigs/skeletons but you need to take the additional step of transferring those to your rig/skeleton using something like MotionBuilder or HumanIK. Those tools handle porting motion between different rigs really well.