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Mastering Animation in Unreal - Full Beginners Tutorial — Transcript

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0:00if you give me 2 hours I'll give you
0:02everything you need to create and edit
0:03character animations for your games
0:05movies and whatever it else it is you'd
0:06want to do with them I'll even take you
0:08through implementing them in game so you
0:10can execute the full game animation
0:11pipeline all I ask in return is that you
0:14hit like on this video drop a comment
0:15with how you feel about this course and
0:17what other content you'd like to see oh
0:19and subscribe in this full step-by-step
0:22course that I'm giving away absolutely
0:23free I'm going to take you from zero
0:25animation skills through everything you
0:27need to create edit animations using
0:28Unreal 5.5 that can then be used in any
0:31engine or 3D animation software if
0:33you're already an expert animator this
0:35course will give you all the knowledge
0:36you need to use onreal for your
0:38character animating all you need to get
0:40started is unreal 5.5 installed and I'll
0:43take you through everything else
0:44including implementing the animations in
0:46games you'll go from concept all the way
0:47through usage in your projects but don't
0:49worry the blueprint stuff is super easy
0:51and you'll go right through it like a
0:52hot knife through butter we'll start
0:54with a cartoony forward Dash animation
0:55to show you the ropes of creating an
0:57animation from scratch then we'll move
0:59on to a sweet idle break where the
1:01character looks at their watch we'll
1:02then go through how to transplant that
1:04idle break onto a walk animation through
1:06the power of Animation layers and we'll
1:08finish up by editing and polishing an
1:09existing animation to make it more
1:11weighty lively and well good in that one
1:15I'll show you how to fully decrapify an
1:17ax wield animation as well as getting
1:19you started working with props or
1:21weapons with your animations all of that
1:23in 2 hours I also encourage you to join
1:25the Discord where you'll be able to talk
1:26about this course and pick up any of the
1:28dozens of animations I've released for
1:29free this year okay no more stalling
1:31we'll start by setting up the project
1:33let's get into
1:38it we're going to just create a from
1:40scratch 5.5 project that has tattool
1:43version two in it and is ready for us to
1:45do our animating so you start in your
1:46epic games launcher you go to the
1:48library if you don't have 5.5 installed
1:51you go by engine versions press the plus
1:53sign and then you can select the version
1:55you don't have which would be 550 from
1:58here and then click install and follow
2:00all the instructions to get the
2:01prerequisites and everything else so you
2:03can get it once you do have it installed
2:04you come down to your Fab library and
2:07search for game animation sample if you
2:09don't already have the game animation
2:11sample you just come here and then just
2:13add it to your library you just get it
2:15it's free and you can just get it that
2:17way now I have the game animation sample
2:20so I'm going to go ahead and create a
2:22project select the folder where you want
2:24it put it here Select 55 as the version
2:27that you want to install and hit create
2:31okay so that should now be in here so if
2:33I just type 55 let's see I have tat
2:37tools 2011 u55 now before I actually
2:41open this I want to go ahead and add
2:43tatol 2.0 plugin once it's up on Fab
2:46you'll just be able to pull it down the
2:47same way and add it to the project or
2:48add it to your engine down here but
2:51until then you go to show and folder
2:53that'll open this up we're going to go
2:55ahead and open a browser github.com
2:57threp game3 anim tools links in the
3:03description and you can the easiest way
3:05to do this you can if you have Git You
3:07can just do a get clone of this repo
3:10using this URL um but if you want it
3:12instead just pull it from the release
3:14you can go to releases and then under
3:15tatol V2 550 you just go pull this ZIP
3:20file right
3:24here all right so once you have that zip
3:27file you can come over here you create
3:30in this uh project directory you just go
3:33ahead and create a new folder which you
3:37can do control shift n in Windows or
3:40just go select new folder up here and
3:42you name it
3:45plugins capital P and then I'll go aead
3:48and move in my zip
3:52file and then just extract this here
3:55it's probably going to create one too
3:57many folders but we'll just hit
4:02extract and sure enough this creates one
4:06too many folders so we're going to go
4:08ahead and grab three repat anim tools
4:09crl X come back up to the plugins
4:13directory and then paste the threee anom
4:16tools directory back in your plugins
4:19directory you can delete everything else
4:21and to give you just a general you want
4:23to make sure to make sure you got it
4:24right plugins 3p anom tools you just
4:26make sure the U plugin is under that and
4:28you have all these folders and now we
4:30can start our project so I'll close this
4:32down I'll come over here and double
4:35click the reason I select the game
4:38animation sample typically from all my
4:39animation projects is it already comes
4:41with some of the metahuman stuff you can
4:43still add the metahuman plugin of course
4:45as well as the control rig samples and
4:47you can bring in the third person
4:49template content if you need some ui5
4:51mannequin animations and things like
4:53that you can bring that in directly into
4:55the project but I feel like the game
4:57animation sample provides the ufn man
4:59the UI 5 mannequin ui4 mannequin has all
5:02the skeletons that you would want to be
5:04working with for generic animations and
5:07things like that so it's just a pretty
5:08good jump start to get everything you
5:09need for animating all right so we now
5:13have new plugins available and so when
5:14you go here you should see three repeat
5:18anom tools and it's enabled if it isn't
5:20enabled you just hit the check boox and
5:22then restart your editor and you'll have
5:23it but now that means if we go down to
5:27plugins 3 anom tools content picker and
5:31we just right click and say run editor
5:33utility
5:35widget that'll give us our three p anom
5:37tools picker which I dock down here by
5:42details and now that we have everything
5:44set up let's go ahead and do some
5:45quality of life improvements to make the
5:47editor actually conducive to animation
5:50so I'm going to show you a few things
5:52just real quickly and we'll get into
5:53this in a lot more detail in a minute
5:55but for starters this Gizmo just makes
5:58animation a little difficult but you'll
5:59notice it's also I'm not being able to
6:01be very precise in my positioning of
6:05these controls and that's because I have
6:06snapping turned on if you see these blue
6:08highlights right here there's
6:10translation rotation and scale snapping
6:13and now I have a much easier time I can
6:15get a much more precise rotation exactly
6:19how I like it additionally if you come
6:21up to edit plugins and type
6:24TRS you'll see new TRS gizmos if you
6:28turn on that plugin and then restart the
6:29editor you'll get
6:31a gizmo that is much more conducive to
6:35animation and it's really just going to
6:37be preference you can stay with the old
6:38gizmo or move to the new one let's go
6:41ahead and we'll just select our control
6:44rig and I'll show you what the new Gizmo
6:46can do and so in this case we now have
6:48Arc ball rotation we can grab anywhere
6:51on the Gizmo so we don't have to go to
6:53the specific axes we can still do that
6:56and get constrained rotation or we can
6:59just grab anywhere and get a more
7:01precise rotation exactly how we like it
7:03we're ready to
7:09go this course is a course on animating
7:12characters in unreal but to do that you
7:15first need to be able to use the unreal
7:17editor and understand some of the basic
7:19concepts when unreal starts up with the
7:21game animation sample you're in the
7:23default level and you can move around if
7:25you hold the right Mouse button down and
7:28use WD you you can move around just like
7:31in a
7:32game if you move your mouse it'll just
7:36rotate so if you hold alt left click and
7:40drag then you'll orbit around whatever
7:42you're centered on if you want to Center
7:44on a given object you can just click it
7:46and hit F now you're centered on that
7:48and that's what you'll orbit around if
7:50you hold alt and left click and drag
7:52your mouse wheel will scroll you
7:54out and if you hold down the right Mouse
7:57button and roll your scroll wheel back
7:59that will change the speed that you move
8:02around so there's my scroll wheel
8:04forward there's my scroll wheel back and
8:07that's very handy when you're trying to
8:08do fine grained viewport changes if you
8:12get your viewport in a good position
8:14that you like you can press control and
8:16then a number key so control
8:18one and then if we get
8:20another thing that we like control2 so
8:23I've saved those bookmarks so if I hit
8:25one now it'll go to the first two will
8:27go to the second and that's very handy
8:29when you're trying to move around a
8:30character so now let's talk about
8:32animating an unreal so to do so I'm
8:34going to go ahead and just add a cube to
8:36this level so if I come up to the plus
8:38sign come down to shapes and Cube for
8:42moving objects in the unreal editor you
8:45have three main controls W gets you
8:49translation which is moving objects from
8:51one point to another and you can move in
8:54the three major
8:55directions x y and z e is rotation and
9:01allows you to rotate an object in the
9:03three dimensions if you have the new
9:05gizmos with arcball rotation you can
9:07then freely rotate them however you like
9:10R it allows you to scale an object in
9:13each of the three directions or if you
9:16select the center of the control can
9:18scale it uniformly across all of its
9:22Dimensions we'll take this and so I'll
9:25hit F so that we're circled around it
9:27and let's say I want to animate this
9:29Cube I'm going to do that using a level
9:31sequence there's two ways to add a level
9:33sequence I can come up here and add
9:35level sequence but that's going to
9:36actually add it into the level it's
9:37going to do a bunch of things I don't
9:38want it to do so typically what I'll do
9:40when I'm trying to create a level
9:41sequence is I'll control spacebar to
9:44open up the content browser we'll just
9:46make a folder called
9:48overview so now we're in the overview
9:50folder and I'm going to right click and
9:53if I just start typing level sequence
9:56it'll find it for me and that's under
9:57cinematics so the other way to get there
9:59is right clicking go to cinematics and
10:02level sequence but all right so now we
10:04have a level sequence but it's not open
10:06and you can tell because the sequence
10:09editor would pop up if it were so we'll
10:11go ahead and control shift s to save I
10:13have my level sequence and I'll double
10:14click it and that opens that sequence
10:17and puts me into animation mode you'll
10:19notice I have this toolbar over here
10:21this UI if I go back to selection mode
10:24that's the default mode of the editor
10:25I'm still editing this level sequence
10:27I'm just no longer in animation mode so
10:29now we'll go back to animation mode
10:31which is done via this dropdown and you
10:33notice we have nothing in our sequencer
10:35I can hit shift space bar and that'll
10:36play it but it's playing nothing because
10:38there's no animation built yet so now we
10:41want to add this Cube into our sequence
10:44so that we can animate it there's two
10:46ways to do that you can come in here and
10:48hit add actor to sequencer and pick the
10:50cube that's you know if you know have a
10:53lot of stuff in your thing you know
10:53exactly what you want to pull in that's
10:55one way to do it or you can select it
10:57and hit contr a and that'll bring it in
10:59brings it in as a possess meaning this
11:01level sequence just references that Cube
11:04so if you went to a different level and
11:06then tried to load this level sequence
11:07it wouldn't know where the cube was if
11:09it wasn't already there so the easiest
11:11way to make portable level sequences is
11:13take any actors that you put into them
11:15right click on them go to convert
11:17selected bindings to spawnable actor and
11:20now this cube is no longer in the level
11:22it's in this level sequence which
11:24happens to be open in the level so I can
11:27open this sequence in any other level
11:29and I'm going to have the cube and I'll
11:30be able to work with it now let's
11:32animate this Cube real quick so if you
11:34look he's got a transform track location
11:36rotation and scale and let's just move
11:38the cube so a couple key elements that
11:41we want to make sure we have in this
11:43sequencer is we want to have Auto keying
11:45turned on that's what this blue around
11:48this button is so that whenever we
11:49change anything like for example about
11:51any actor in the sequence whenever we
11:53change a property that's going to be
11:55reflected with a key in the sequence and
11:58we also want time snapping I have the
12:00curves editor open it doesn't open by
12:02default but you can get to it VI this so
12:05here's your sequencer editor and here's
12:07your curves editor curves are where
12:09you're going to handle all of your key
12:10framing all of your keying moving around
12:13smoothing out your arcs and the way
12:15properties change over time because
12:17that's what you're seeing this is time
12:19in the x-axis and then angle or position
12:23depending on whether it's a location or
12:25a rotation will be here so let's show
12:28that or cube is here so if I want to I
12:31have the cube selected I can just hit
12:33enter and that's going to create a key
12:35at frame zero when I hit enter I need to
12:38be in either the curve editor or the
12:41sequencer to get that to happen so now I
12:43have a key there and let's just move
12:44forward just over a second and we'll put
12:48the cube over here and we'll hit e to
12:51rotate it that brings up the rotation
12:55widget I'll go W to put it back here so
12:58what's going to happen
13:00is the cube is going to move from here
13:02and rotate to here so it'll be a
13:05rotation and a translation so let's hit
13:07shift spacebar and sure enough that's
13:10what happens we're going to focus in
13:12just on this time period where I have
13:14these keys so this green and red bar
13:18right here are the start and end of this
13:20sequence so I'll drag it in so it ends
13:23right as the cube
13:26hits so there you go so you notice he
13:29starts out slow he goes fast and then
13:31slows down at the end that's the easing
13:34so if I hit F in the curve editor you'll
13:37notice that green line which represents
13:41location y you can see it if you hover
13:44over it so if we go and just isolate
13:46location y so we'll come down to the
13:48transform open up the location select y
13:51we'll see that it eases in and out cuz
13:53it's using Auto tangents you have a
13:55bunch of tangents to choose from which
13:57you can get from the right Arrow here
14:00and you can choose what type of tangents
14:01you want to use there's also hot keys
14:03for them so Auto tangents or Smart Auto
14:06tangents are zero and then four is
14:11linear so now when it
14:13moves it's just going to go straight
14:16from one point to the
14:18other and control Z will undo as it will
14:21and any pretty much anything but now
14:23here's where we can create breakdowns so
14:25for example say I want a lot of natural
14:28movement tends to
14:30go it starts to move like with inertia
14:35then it moves rather
14:37quickly to get to its location and then
14:39it
14:41settles so let's take a look at how that
14:43looks see how that looks a little more
14:45natural and also a little more
14:47Dynamic now if we extend out our thing
14:52we can actually do an overshoot and
14:55settle so here's a case where I can just
14:57middle click and create a new key
14:59or I can select and drag or I can move
15:01my time scrub wheel hit enter to add a
15:05key there or S to add a key there so
15:08we're going to move up then he's going
15:10to come
15:13down like this and then at the end he
15:16will just settle back at our destination
15:18location so we'll add another key here
15:21so we can make that a little
15:23more
15:25subtle and now you'll see
15:29okay so that's a case we can go select
15:30just these keys and we see we have not
15:34an ideal settle and it's because he just
15:37moves way too
15:39much there you go so now it feels a
15:43little more let's go ahead and do
15:46this there you go so now it just feels a
15:48little more like something had weight
15:51it's overshooting and then settling back
15:54and all this is done just by editing the
15:56curve so this curve is showing how the
15:58location y changes over time time being
16:02in this direction it's value being in
16:04this direction okay so we now have
16:06edited that you've just created your
16:07first animation and now let's move on to
16:10characters so I'll go ahead and control
16:12shift s to save hit control space bar to
16:15bring up the content browser and we're
16:17going to come up we can just go to
16:18content and if we just type ufn
16:20mannequin that'll bring it but what I'm
16:22going to do is go to characters ufn
16:24mannequin meshes and there's my skeletal
16:27mesh the ufn mannequin
16:29and I'm going to drag up like
16:33this the sequencer view control space
16:37grab this and drag it into the sequencer
16:40and I now have a character in The
16:42sequencer I can't do anything with it
16:44but the character is there I've just
16:45added that skeletal mesh into the
16:48sequencer as a spawnable so it's going
16:50to move around portably with this level
16:52sequence as we go now let's say I want
16:55to animate this character you hit plus
16:57sign on the actor and then go to control
17:00rig and then pick a control rig I'm
17:02going to pick my control rig which is
17:03the ufn Manny tat Tool's rig and now
17:06you'll see I have a bunch of controls or
17:09circles hexagons things like that a
17:11bunch of things around the model that I
17:14can use to animate him we'll go ahead
17:17and select hit enter to add keys on
17:20every property and now let's do the same
17:22thing so
17:24we'll first thing we can grab the body
17:26offset for this character and let's just
17:28make him slide
17:31forward so you notice we're already Auto
17:33keying if we click here and then hit F
17:35you can see that happened and all the
17:37same rules apply he's just moving
17:40obviously that's not terribly realistic
17:42so we would probably do that using his
17:44legs and make him walk but that's how we
17:47move so I'll hit control Z take off that
17:49curve and now let's go ahead and animate
17:52his arm so we'll select the shoulder hit
17:55e to rotate because we don't translate
17:57FK controls so these control controls
17:59are FK which means they're forward
18:00kinematics or you are directly
18:02manipulating The Joint that you've
18:04selected that's not to be confused with
18:06I which the feet are currently in so the
18:09arms are in FK the feet are in ik which
18:11means they're trying to reach a Target
18:15where that Target is this control right
18:17here this Cube so if I move the cube
18:20which I can also rotate it but if I just
18:22move it now the ankle the knee the hip
18:28they're all going to rotate to match
18:31that Target and for example if I hit e
18:34to go into rotation I can now twist and
18:37you notice it's the joint's rotating as
18:40well so the knee joint is rotating
18:43everything is moving along with it and
18:47that is ik so we're trying to put the
18:50foot here as opposed to in the case of
18:54this arm if we wanted to put the arm
18:56over
18:57here we would do
19:01it from the joints out as opposed to
19:05from the Target in and let it solve it
19:08itself the body control right here
19:11allows you to change where the hips are
19:13and you'll notice the entire upper body
19:15moves along with it so they're children
19:18of this body control everything from the
19:21spine bones all the way up and so we can
19:23move the character this way we don't
19:25want to move the character forward in
19:27space using using this we really only
19:30ever want to move the character forward
19:31in space using the body offset and
19:33certainly if we're making root motion
19:35animations here's your root control this
19:37arrow and you would want that to track
19:39along with the rest of the character so
19:42now we know a few things about this
19:43character I'll just take you through
19:45another couple features of the control
19:48rig these Circle controls these are
19:50actually for ik you'll only see these
19:52when the charact when a limb is in ik
19:54mode and they they dictate which way the
19:57knee will be pointing
19:59so you can control
20:01rotations you have some more controls in
20:04here like a foot roll now the foot roll
20:07control really only makes sense when
20:09you're on the ground but it's an easy
20:11way I'll show you a few of the the
20:13treats that are in the unreal control
20:17rig if I select rotation and I rotate in
20:20the Z so just remember red green blue is
20:24roll pitch and yaw the yaw control right
20:27here blue allows you to roll the foot
20:29and you'll notice it stays firmly
20:31planted on the ground and say for
20:33example you want it to rotate the foot
20:35you can go to the tip
20:37control and you can rotate it and it'll
20:39pivot around the
20:41tip okay if you want to switch I have
20:46everything in FK but I want this to be
20:47an ik so I can move it like I'm moving
20:49the feet right now I need to key the
20:51entire rig right here on this key and if
20:54you want to move between the keys like
20:57let me select I'll just go select this
20:59box so you can see what I mean so you
21:01see how you have multiple key frames
21:02here so there's a key on this Frame a
21:04key on this Frame key on this Frame if
21:06you want to move between them you can
21:07use comma and dot dot will move forward
21:11comma will move back and it'll jump very
21:13quickly the arrow keys will go one frame
21:15in any given Direction so it makes it
21:17very easy to move especially if you're
21:19doing a poset to pose workflow
21:20reanimating entire poses and then
21:22jumping forward in time and doing it
21:23again that's available so let's go take
21:25this arm that we had animated in FK and
21:28I'm going to key the entire rig so if
21:30I'm going to convert from FK to ik and
21:32I've made modifications I have to make
21:34sure there's a key on every single
21:38control once I've done that I can go
21:40into my Global control which is under
21:42the tat tools rig Global control and
21:44then come down and you'll see the ik FK
21:46switches right here so I want the right
21:49arm and I want to change him to be ik
21:54and sure enough there we go we now have
21:56control so up until this moment he was
21:58in
22:00FK and then this time we switch it to ik
22:03so I can
22:06now let's go ahead and just we put the
22:09hand onto his knee which you'll notice
22:13with the I
22:15controls is just a whole lot
22:18easier than if you were to try to do
22:21that in the FK
22:24mode I'm being a little precious with
22:26this it's not like we're actually going
22:27to make an animation out of this but
22:28it's always good to practice and you
22:30want to get very
22:32comfortable putting the hands so now
22:35let's bring this other foot up so now
22:38he's going to
22:39uh leave the realm of the physically
22:42possible or he's going to just we'll
22:45Pretend This is a matrix movie now let's
22:48put the left arm
22:51onto the knee and you'll notice it's
22:55just a lot more difficult to do and it's
22:58lot easier to get into a
23:00situation where you're doing something
23:02that isn't necessarily physically
23:06realistic like if I want his arm so his
23:10arm is pretty much up and down right now
23:12it's like straight across which is a
23:14little he looks a little stiff
23:16right on this arm if I wanted I couldn't
23:19even get it to the arm very quickly but
23:21for example if I want to have him not
23:23look so stiff I can do a couple things
23:26very quickly with this I can switch so
23:27this is I'm in
23:29local space which is why you're seeing
23:31it not up and down along the world axis
23:34so I can switch from local space and the
23:37easiest way to show this is let's use
23:39this
23:40hand in local
23:43space the red axis the x- axis is
23:46directly along the hand the green axis
23:48is side to side with respect to the
23:50wrist Direction and blue is straight up
23:53and down if I go to world space which is
23:56denoted by the world here you'll notice
23:58I now have direct control over it just
24:01like it was any other random object
24:02where I have the axes are the actual
24:05World axes ZX and Y and that is useful
24:08especially in this case where what I
24:10want to do is just take this and drop it
24:12straight down and you see how much
24:14easier that is than if I were to try
24:16to
24:19manually rotate this
24:22control bring this down then select this
24:26control bring it back up br bring it
24:28over bring it down whereas it was
24:32literally just moving up moving
24:34down these are the clavical these arrows
24:38so if you want you always want these in
24:39local
24:40space and we can go ahead and bring his
24:42shoulder up or down if he has posture
24:45like me his posture his his shoulder's
24:46going to be moving forward uh one good
24:48thing is you can control these both at
24:51the same time if you're in local space
24:53and there are definitely situations
24:54where that's what you want to do and now
24:55you have a pretty good idea of what the
24:58character can do essentially all of
25:00these controls if it's not a cube like
25:03this you pretty much only want to rotate
25:05it so the circle and these ik cubes you
25:09can you're going to translate them
25:11everything else you're only just going
25:13to rotate can you translate
25:18absolutely but do so at your own risk so
25:22now if you're animating from scratch
25:24this is a great way to do it and even if
25:26you're not animating from scratch if for
25:28example example you want to edit an
25:29animation you can actually just
25:31rightclick anywhere in this control rig
25:35rightclick import ANM sequence to this
25:38and let's just go pull in we'll just
25:41do a walk Loop so we'll go find I don't
25:46know a forward walk Loop maybe there we
25:48go neutral walk Loop forward so if I
25:51bring that in and bake it to the control
25:53rig now I did it in the middle of my
25:56animating but you'll see I have the walk
25:59loop from the game animation sample in
26:01my sequence and I have all the keys for
26:03every control but if I just want one
26:06specific pose or I just want to go pull
26:09step right there I can go click and drag
26:11grab a bunch of keys delete and now I
26:14just have that one little segment that I
26:17can edit or if I just want one
26:22frame and I can zoom out I still have
26:25this key over here so I can come over
26:26here delete this key frame and now I can
26:29start
26:30animating if I wanted to use this frame
26:33for something specifically like to blend
26:35in or
26:36out I can do whatever it is I want to do
26:40maybe not what I just did but go nuts
26:43there is however an easier way control
26:45shift s to save even though I've pretty
26:47well botched this uh animation close the
26:49sequencer control space bar and let's go
26:52find that walk Loop animation so if we
26:53come up to content we don't have to go
26:55searching through a bunch of folders We
26:57can just type walk walk space Loop and
26:59it'll find anything that has walk and
27:01Loop in its name and there's walk Loop
27:04forward so here's our walk Loop and this
27:07is the animation editor and the
27:09character is walking you can investigate
27:10what each of the each of the bones is
27:13doing how the animations working all
27:14that kind of stuff but what you can do
27:17if I want to create that level sequence
27:18super fast with this animation and a
27:20control rig ready to go I come up to
27:22edit and sequencer bake to control rig
27:24and then I select the ufn manic tat
27:26tools rig
27:28this will pop up sometimes this will pop
27:30up behind all the other windows and you
27:32have to go select it click bake to
27:35control rig and then one final step come
27:38up to edit and sequencer and unlink the
27:40level sequence if you don't unlink the
27:42level sequence changes you make in the
27:44level sequence that is open now will
27:46potentially change this animation so
27:49which you may not want obviously if
27:51you're creating a new animation from
27:52this walk you don't necessarily want it
27:54to get ruined by whatever thing you
27:58happen to do but see I've already got my
28:00character I've got the actor I've got my
28:02control rig I have everything completely
28:05ready to go so I can start animating so
28:07now let's take this knowledge and make
28:10your first
28:20animation so for your first animation
28:22we're going to do this Dash and we're
28:23going to do it quite quickly so control
28:25spacebar we'll open up the content
28:27browser I just just made a folder called
28:29your first anom and now we're going to
28:31go find the idle Loop because that's the
28:33pose we're based off of this is an idle
28:35to idle so if I just type idle space
28:37Loop that'll get me the stand idle Loop
28:39right here I can double click that to
28:41open it edit and sequencer bake to
28:44control rig pick my ufn Manny tattool
28:47rig and then bake remember we always
28:50come up and hit edit and sequencer and
28:52unlink it and now this we've got this
28:54idle Loop but we don't really need the
28:56idle Loop we just need one pose and if
28:59you ever just need one pose like
29:01whatever pose you happen to be in at a
29:02given moment all you have to do is if
29:04it's not already open you can open your
29:06curve editor select the entire rig and
29:08you can actually just delete every
29:10single key so contrl a and once it
29:13selects it'll highlight in white
29:17delete and you'll notice the character
29:19will actually just stay in whatever pose
29:21they're in right here move over to frame
29:23zero hit enter and key the entire rig so
29:25now we have the beginning of our Das
29:28granted Dash isn't doing very much right
29:31now so let's change that whenever
29:33performing an action or an animation
29:36there are really four major phases
29:39anticipation where the character
29:41prepares to perform whatever that action
29:43is the action itself the follow through
29:46and then the recovery back to your
29:48neutral pose or whatever state the
29:50character is going to be in after the
29:52action has been performed for the dash
29:55we're going to even make it a little
29:56simpler we have an anticipation pose
29:58where the character is going to bend
30:00down to prep to do the dash we have the
30:02action itself we have the recovery
30:05there's really no follow through it's a
30:06three pose action and then we recover
30:09back to the idle position animation
30:11should always go big to small so we're
30:13going to start by moving our root and
30:16our body offset control so I'm going to
30:18bring up tat tools and the easiest way
30:20to do it is I can then just select root
30:22hold shift and select offset and I've
30:23got them both so if I'm going to move
30:25the character I can move the character
30:27like this
30:28but I need to bring that root control
30:30around if I want the game to know that
30:32the character is actually moving
30:33otherwise the character will just snap
30:36back to wherever it started whenever you
30:38execute an animation so we're grabbing
30:40both of those we know we're going to do
30:41this in about well there's an
30:43anticipation so let's do like a I don't
30:45know 8 frame anticipation and then about
30:4812 frames after that so just under half
30:50a second we'll hit enter again but now
30:53we're just going to
30:55drag to where we want the dash to end up
30:59and I'm going to select deselect
31:00everything so just click into the curve
31:02editor hit F and so now we've got motion
31:05and we can watch this real quick let's
31:07go ahead and bring in our playback so
31:09this defines the length of the animation
31:11so the start is at the green and the end
31:13is at the red so you can move these
31:14around and Define how long your
31:16animation's going to be in my case we'll
31:19just say it's going to totally be so
31:21that's not bad you notice how it does
31:24the ease that we talked about earlier so
31:26we're going to fix all of that but
31:27before before we end I want to make sure
31:29we have a settle so after this we'll hit
31:32enter so you know about five frames
31:35later remember comma will bring us here
31:36so 21 then frame 26 and now we'll come
31:39back to frame 21 deselect everything
31:41open up our tween machine and we'll
31:43blend this back so we get a nice little
31:48slide the tween machine or tween in
31:51unreal editor are a phenomenal way to
31:54adjust the motion dynamics of Any Given
31:57movement
31:58in an animation so let's come up to
32:00tweens there's only three really that I
32:02use on a regular basis so I'm going to
32:04walk you through those the first is
32:05blend a nearest and so if I'm trying to
32:07create an ease here and I want there to
32:09be more Dynamics in this movement I
32:11might come forward say 11 frames and
32:13then if I drag this all the way toga1
32:16you'll notice I went back to where I was
32:19when I started but say I just wanted to
32:21have it start
32:23slow move quickly and then if I drag
32:27this to one it's going to blend and
32:29we'll do that it's going to blend
32:31towards this key so if I drag in the
32:33negative Direction it's going to blend
32:35to the key to the left of wherever I'm
32:37editing and if I go to the right it'll
32:40be the key to the right so if I go to
32:42the positive side it's this key that is
32:44blending to and if I go to the negative
32:46side it's this key it's blending to I'm
32:47going to hit F so we can see this a
32:49little clearer if I have a different key
32:51selected all together and I do this it's
32:53going to blend the key I have selected
32:55to the key to the left or right of it
32:58but if I have nothing selected it'll
32:59just use the current time and if there
33:00is no key at the current
33:02time it'll create one let's get rid of
33:05that one and now let's look at
33:07this so now it moves faster it starts
33:11out slow and then speeds up and then do
33:13it again now let's say for example I
33:16wanted to overshoot and then settle back
33:18so I could grab this key drag it up and
33:22I can get an overshoot
33:24right but there's another way to do it I
33:27won't call it an easy easier way because
33:28it's not but it can sometimes be easier
33:30if your hands are on the keyboard and
33:32you're really trying to just do
33:33something quickly is use the tween the
33:36tween mode is whatever key I have
33:40selected so let's say this key right
33:42here and I don't have it selected or
33:43it's under the play head so either the
33:44time if nothing's selected or the key if
33:46something is tween is going to be zero
33:48is exactly halfway between the right key
33:51and the left key so it's going to snap
33:54if I touch this at all it's actually
33:55going to snap and put me halfway in
33:57between if I go to negative one it'll go
33:59to that key and positive one it'll go to
34:01the one on the right this is a little
34:02jarring so really I only ever actually
34:04use this one um in this way so I'll be
34:08in tween mode I'll come here and I'll
34:10just type 1.1 and that'll give me a nice
34:13overshoot so now let's take a
34:16look and if I want to do a true cartoony
34:18anticipation where it moves in the
34:20opposite direction I can do negative 1.1
34:23and now it'll move backwards before it
34:26shoots forward
34:29kind of like a wind up now let's talk
34:31about the last one that I really use
34:33which is blend relative and what that
34:35allows you to do say for example I
34:37didn't want to move anywhere near this
34:38far but I wanted this overshoot to stay
34:40in place and I want to keep this Dynamic
34:42I can select these keys and if I drag to
34:44the left it's going to blend it towards
34:47the key to the left of my selection but
34:49it's going to keep the
34:50shape so now I can just have a nice
34:53little uh it's really just an
34:54oscillation at this point but if I drag
34:56out the other direction nothing will
34:58happen unless I have a key out here so
35:00we'll go ahead and put a key in
35:02place move it
35:04up and so now if I have this overshoot
35:07and settle I can blend it towards it but
35:09I will never go farther than it and so
35:12now we
35:14have our overshoot and those are the
35:16three main modes of the tween machine
35:18that I find incredibly useful and speed
35:21up making my animations more realistic
35:23and that's the tween machine and the
35:25unreal editor so let's take a look at
35:26that and we're going to tune this so
35:29there you go so I think it could
35:31probably settle a little less so again
35:34we'll hit F so we have everything
35:35invisible to us and we can either use
35:38the tween machine and let's see okay so
35:40that's not enough or we can come select
35:42this control shift middle click and drag
35:46down there we go one thing that we may
35:48want to do there's a couple ways we can
35:50do this we don't want them to move at
35:52all and once we do we kind of want it to
35:54be a little less subtle so to achieve
35:57that there's there's actually a couple
35:58ways we can do it if we move over here
36:00and since we have two controls selected
36:02we have to hit enter to get both
36:03controls grab all of the keys that we
36:05want to
36:07move and we can kind of just
36:10force it to be a little bit more
36:15Snappy right and so I would assert
36:18that's actually still just a little too
36:19slow so I'm going to grab all the keys
36:21control left Arrow let's see if we can
36:24get a snap here
36:35so let's see how that feels so now we'll
36:37get kind of into a game
36:42view that's not bad okay so that's our
36:45gross motion and now we have our
36:48anticipation right here at frame eight
36:51so we'll come back to frame eight and
36:53let's pose this guy before we do that we
36:55know if we collect select the rig notice
36:58we don't have keys on everything so
37:00we'll put keys on our anticipation frame
37:02for every control in the
37:03rig we'll come over here we'll actually
37:06leave these alone and then once he once
37:09he settles
37:12back here we want to key the whole rig
37:14again because we want to make sure that
37:16the character resume goes back to
37:18standing up after they move so I'll hit
37:20the dot key to get onto this Frame and
37:23let's go pose this anticipation
37:25remembering the three phases we've got
37:27an anticipation where the character is
37:29going to bend down and get ready for the
37:31event so I'm just going to select the
37:33body control I'll rotate
37:35him before I do that I'm going I know
37:38I'm going to drop him and the easiest
37:40way is to do it like this I'll go ahead
37:42and
37:46rotate and let's see I
37:50might I don't know if I want to bring
37:52him backwards or actually bring him
37:54forwards but we can switch from local
37:58to World space I'll bring this knee back
38:00to kind of anticipate that it's going to
38:02move and we know we want to rotate this
38:05uh foot here so we'll go find the tip R
38:08control and the easiest way to do it is
38:10to select any of the foot
38:12controls and then tip will be somewhere
38:15around them these are all the foot
38:16controls that we have and let's just
38:19rotate this out a little
38:20bit Yeah like that so we're getting
38:23ready to rotate getting ready to take
38:26the dash to kind of shoot off his it's
38:27going to be a cartoony Dash not
38:28realistic so we rotate spine
38:31three get that kind of ready to go and
38:35then we'll bring the arm up and remember
38:38I'm still I'm in local coordinates
38:43again yeah so we're going to overdo it
38:45we
38:49know we going want the character to
38:52be like this and we'll actually do more
38:54of a superhero pose here so we'll bring
38:58this arm up a little
39:00bit and then we'll rotate it in like
39:06this roll it in because we're going to
39:08bring the arm
39:10up in that
39:15classic okay and I feel
39:18like this is a little
39:22too obnoxious we'll bring that out a
39:24little bit there we go so that's a looks
39:27is about to take off in flight but we're
39:29going to use that for our our forward
39:31momentum so we already have a dash
39:33technically but I think we can do better
39:35so now let's define our action
39:39so he just started to take off and bang
39:42by here we'll hit enter and this will
39:45now be our action pose so this is pose
39:49two of three that we're going to be
39:50doing and I think during the
39:55event we want our character
39:59to be really low we want his arm to be
40:03dragging behind meaning exactly along
40:07the path of
40:09travel like this and we're actually
40:11going to fully straighten out that
40:16arm so let's go take a
40:21look
40:24and we'll go ahead and bring this AR arm
40:27up like
40:29this around like
40:32that and we'll tilt the head
40:35down which we'll also do via the neck to
40:38bring It Forward a little bit and then
40:40lastly we'll grab this foot and we'll
40:44just slide it
40:46back and bring it to the
40:50center so this could be a better more
40:52balanced pose and actually I'm going to
40:54show you a little additional thing so
40:55I'm going to over rotate here
40:58I'll bring it just a little farther than
40:59it can go and then I will solve that
41:03fact that that knee has popped using the
41:06foot roll so now we'll
41:10rotate like
41:13that so now let's take a look at where
41:15we
41:17are oh yeah this is already good so now
41:20we just need to fix our recovery he
41:22comes back up in a very not natural way
41:24so like right here I'm going to select
41:27the whole rig but just the body parts so
41:29I select body that doesn't grab you
41:31notice it doesn't grab the root it
41:33doesn't grab the offset or the global so
41:35the position the global position of the
41:36character so is not included in what
41:38I've selected which means I can now come
41:41back here I'm going to go key everything
41:44at the right about let's see we're
41:47sliding I want them to still be down and
41:49then just take a step to stand back up
41:52so now we'll come back to this key right
41:54here and we're going to Tween it back
41:57back so that we're still in that pose I
42:00mean we do have the option here I'll
42:02show you what that looks like and now he
42:04stands
42:06up maybe we want him to still be moving
42:09and sliding while he's standing up which
42:11is totally fine um so to do that let's
42:14go back and select body again we'll come
42:17here and we'll make it so that he stands
42:20back up we all we have to do is just
42:22move since we don't have the root or the
42:24offset selected we can move these Keys
42:26using the control arrow keys and now
42:28he'll still be
42:29sliding when he's standing
42:32up and so the main things we have to do
42:36are make this look a little less robotic
42:38it is cartoonish but we don't want it to
42:40look robotic so from
42:44here to
42:48here we're going to add a breakdown so
42:51we'll
42:53select this we'll actually lean a little
42:56more forward
42:57we'll push forward so we're going to
42:59bring the body
43:01forward there you go so now that's a
43:04good and
43:05then we're going to probably overshoot
43:07and then settle to make it feel a little
43:09more realistic but the other thing we're
43:11going to do is we're going to save
43:12ourselves the problem of the weight
43:14shift of this foot and we'll select this
43:17foot and unlike everything else here by
43:20the time he gets here so it will be
43:22about here hit enter on that foot and
43:26then hit dot to go to the next frame and
43:28here we're actually going to Tween it
43:29forward to make sure you don't have
43:31anything selected when you use the tween
43:32machine or it's going to modify the
43:33selected keys so we bring this like this
43:38and actually we'll let it have just a a
43:40minor slide now let's watch
43:46that nice okay and you can add more
43:49slide if you want or you can make it a
43:51step but there we have what feels like a
43:54pretty robotic coming back up at the
43:58end so we can slow that down a little
44:02bit and so we do that by again selecting
44:05body and just moving these out a little
44:07bit we're we're not going to want
44:10to there you
44:18go so I do think we're going to
44:22want to make it pop less
44:27there we go all right and so now I'll
44:31just show you what a overshoot and
44:35settle what dragging the arm looks like
44:37as we come back up we're moving here so
44:41what we'll actually do we'll delay the
44:43arm
44:45rotation so this will actually grab them
44:48all control right arrow three frames and
44:52so we'll delay the arm rotation so it's
44:54a little yeah there it is
44:57all right and then we're actually going
44:58to do an overshoot and settle on that
45:00elbow so let's hit F we'll come in get a
45:03little closer to it and I'll show you
45:06what that overshoot and settle looks
45:07like so all of our rotation is going to
45:08happen in that blue axis which we know
45:12is yah or Z so we'll go to the rotation
45:15yaah and we're just going to create an
45:17overshoot and settle so we know we want
45:20him to end
45:23up there so we're going to to have him
45:28end at that position I'll go and put
45:32that right over here which means we're
45:34going to overshoot so we select this
45:38key control shift middle click and drag
45:40down and we'll let it come back out a
45:44little
45:46bit and the settle means we're going to
45:49kind of
45:51oscillate so that's a little too fast so
45:53we'll fix that by extending out our
45:55animation and giving is the time it
45:57needs to breathe so we'll move these
46:00out and then we'll cause that settle to
46:02happen much
46:04slower see that okay and so now what
46:08you'll notice is it's just a little
46:11too there it is so you see how that
46:13feels just a little bit more and so if
46:16we do the same thing and so oddly enough
46:18we can just grab these Keys control+ C
46:21come over here and we can do the exact
46:23same thing in the
46:24YW for this control as well well so if I
46:27go
46:29select this key contrl V we'll notice
46:33it's probably going to
46:35be too much that's actually not bad so
46:40we'll just go in
46:43here and we'll bring him a little
46:49further
46:50so there we go
47:02and we're actually going to let
47:04it let it come
47:07out there you go so now it's doing a bit
47:09of what we call screen door where
47:12everything is moving at the same time so
47:14I think what I want to do is take this
47:16out even
47:22further there we go
47:30so I'm going to let
47:33this come out even further there we go
47:37so that's a nice settle on that arm you
47:39see how that looks so now I would go do
47:41that in the left arm I'd go do it on the
47:45head i' do it on the chest so I drag the
47:47chest behind everything
47:49else right so I'll show you what I mean
47:52by that so when I come drag this
47:55chest further I think he's actually
47:57going to still be hunched over at this
48:02point
48:06so and we'll just grab these keys and
48:10move everything way
48:17over so we'll go even
48:25further so that's too much so now we hit
48:29here and then when we come
48:32up we'll do the exact same thing so now
48:35with the spine we know that that's
48:37rotation is the roll the red Dimension
48:40and so we'll come
48:42add our overshoot and settle and you
48:45notice I'm not really paying attention
48:46so now I'm going to watch it to tell me
48:48what I needed to do so that just looks a
48:50little bit too
48:51springy so
48:54we'll bring that down that so we're just
49:01removing um that could
49:05be a little more so we'll drag this
49:09down and bring this out further so it
49:11takes it longer to
49:14settle there we go so now you're just
49:17seeing some of the things that we can do
49:19to make it feel a Little More Alive make
49:21it feel a little more natural obviously
49:23we need to fix that head because the uh
49:26easiest way to do that is grab this neck
49:28control that had his head pointed Way
49:32Forward and we can just bring it back to
49:35where it belongs go
49:40here
49:43yeah I think what I'm going to do is
49:45speed that up so this right
49:49here this animation I'll just cause all
49:52of this to
49:54occur much sooner
49:59yeah so it's a little uniform everything
50:02is kind of coming up at the same time
50:04but that's just pretty much what you
50:06kind of need let's get it so it feels
50:10Snappy good okay you notice how the left
50:13arm feels good the right arm feels like
50:15he's a robot and so you would go do the
50:18same and that's it so let's export this
50:20animation we now have an animation that
50:22feels pretty good so you come up to the
50:24top you find the actor which is this
50:26track right here right click bake
50:29animation sequence and then we'll go
50:31find in our forward Dash your first anom
50:36we'll call this forward
50:39Dash export and then save off our level
50:43sequence control spacebar go find our
50:46forward Dash uncheck like get rid of the
50:49filter and there it is control shift as
50:51to save let's open it up and we just
50:52have to fix one thing asset details you
50:55want to enable enable root motion and
50:58that will cause the character to
51:00actually move along with this animation
51:02contr shift s and now we can implement
51:05it in game now implementing this forward
51:07Dash into the game animation sample in
51:09engine is actually really easy so let's
51:11get into it the first thing we're going
51:13to do control spacebar to open up the
51:14content browser go to content Blueprints
51:18and then let's start with the CBP
51:20sandbox character in the event graph you
51:22can just pick anywhere we're going to
51:23rightclick and we'll say debug key we'll
51:26do R for dash doesn't really matter and
51:29when it's pressed we're going to play a
51:32montage and for this Montage we know we
51:34want to play it on our skeletal mesh so
51:37we come up here and find mesh drag it
51:39over right on top of skeletal mesh
51:41component and then we need a montage for
51:42it to play control space bar we'll go to
51:45our first anim the forward Dash that we
51:47just created right click on it
51:50create and in
51:53montage and in that case I'm just going
51:55to put am in front of it that's just a
51:58good habit to get into and then I'll
52:00grab the Montage and drag it into
52:03Montage to play now there's a couple
52:05other things we need to do as soon as we
52:07fire this Montage we want the system to
52:09stop paying attention to user input
52:11we'll come down to variables traversal
52:14and doing traversal action and drag it
52:15out here we're going to set that so when
52:18the Montage
52:21starts we'll say we're doing a traversal
52:24action crl c contrl v V to paste it and
52:28we'll turn that off if it's
52:31interrupted or if it's
52:34completed so once the idea is we kick
52:37off this animation we tell the system
52:40that we're doing a traversal action and
52:42then once we're done or something else
52:44preempts it we will turn that off and
52:48that's it for the blueprint this is now
52:49completely implemented now we can go
52:51over to the animation blueprint so we
52:54got to content blueprints ABP sandbox
52:58character and we want to turn off foot
53:00placement and leg ik during this event
53:04so the first thing we'll do is right
53:05click and get sandbox
53:09character and then we will get whether
53:11it's doing traversal action so get doing
53:14traversal action and based on that we're
53:16going to select a
53:18float the main idea here is when we're
53:21doing a traversal action we want the
53:23blend or Alpha of this to be zero so
53:25that it's not leg I and the foot
53:27placement aren't used at all and then
53:29when we are not doing it we want it to
53:31be one so that we have foot placement
53:33and leg ik so we'll just drag this over
53:35here into foot placement as well as
53:41into leg I so now when we're doing
53:46traversal action it's going to pick a
53:48which is zero and feed these Alpha
53:51values or the blends to zero and those
53:53won't be used compile and now we should
53:56be be able to go into game and if I
53:57remember the key I pressed I think it
53:59was
54:00R let's just
54:02see there it is and we now
54:07have a
54:08dash it's just that
54:12easy we go ahead and take a look at this
54:14from the
54:18side it's actually not bad
54:20looking looks pretty good and that's it
54:23you've made your first animation and
54:25you've brought it into the engine and
54:27implemented it in your
54:33game we are going to create an idle
54:35break animation where the character
54:37looks at their watch just to break up
54:39that idle Loop so it has a little more
54:40Dynamics to your game we're going to do
54:43this using animation layers which are an
54:44incredibly powerful tool that was
54:46introduced in UE 5.5 that lets you do so
54:49many things and I'm going to show those
54:50off in this video let's get into it
54:52first thing we do is we need a animation
54:54to edit so control space to open the
54:56content browser and then at the top
54:59level I'm I'm going to go try to find it
55:00I'm just going to type idle Loop and if
55:03you're in the game animation sample
55:05you'll have two of them the Crouch and
55:06the standing I'm going to select the
55:08standing double click it to edit then go
55:10edit and sequencer bake to control rig
55:12then bake it to my ufn Manny tat tools
55:14rig if you don't have that you can bake
55:16it just to the standard ue5 Manny
55:18control rig so that's baked but now
55:20we're going to come back up to edit and
55:21sequencer and unlink that level sequence
55:23animating this from scratch is quite
55:25easy there's a couple things that we
55:26need to do before we get into that we're
55:28going to put the arms so we have our
55:31animation we're not going to end up
55:32needing all this time so we'll be
55:34trimming this up once we get there but
55:36we're going to turn this into a
55:38animation where the character looks at
55:39his watch so first thing that we need to
55:41do is go to the go to the global control
55:44open up in the sequencer and come down
55:47to the arm FK ik switches the easiest
55:51thing to do here is to we'll just make
55:54this a little wider control
55:56and scrub the mouse wheel down we'll
55:59zoom out to get you some area that you
56:01can come in here and get the when you
56:02really want that plus sign cursor so
56:04that you can then drag select so we're
56:06going to drag out all four of these
56:08which is your arm leg arm leg and I'm
56:10going to delete them and then we'll set
56:12keys and we'll set a key by checking
56:15this box checking this box and now we
56:18are in ik for both the arms and the legs
56:22and the animations will still be there
56:24everything is still fine it's just now
56:26we can control this via the ik Target
56:29right here once we have that done we're
56:31going to create an animation layer so we
56:33select the controls that we want in our
56:36animation layer and in this case I know
56:39I'm going to want I'll select over here
56:41I'm going to want the neck
56:43controls and
56:45then I'll probably want the clavicle
56:48it's possible don't know so I'm going to
56:50get it just in case and I'll come over
56:52here shift click and select the ik hand
56:56and then I know for sure I'm going to
56:58need a hold shift and press the right
57:00hand here I'm going to need all of those
57:03so that's probably it I don't really
57:05anticipate having to adjust the spine
57:07but just in case we'll go ahead and pull
57:09the spine in as well so now I have all
57:12the controls I want I come over here to
57:14layers display animation layers and that
57:17brings up this window right here I add a
57:20layer and that's going to automatically
57:21add it with all of the selected controls
57:23you'll notice I just have the controls I
57:26had selected the hand all the hand
57:28controls the spine the head clavicle and
57:30the neck and then I should also have a
57:33hand ik in here
57:36somewhere so now we can go ahead and
57:39just animate that and we have two
57:40options layers can be additive or they
57:42can be in override mode additive is just
57:45what it sounds like a zero key
57:48will execute the animation you see his
57:51his arm moving back and
57:53forth if I switch it to override it's
57:56going to put the character into his
57:58default movement you notice now I have a
58:01completely static arm for the entire
58:03animation it's not moving around except
58:05for where the whole body is moving given
58:07that we'll go back to additive and so
58:09there's our standard idle Loop and now
58:11we can get to work so the first thing we
58:13know he wants to do is start from here
58:16and we
58:19will bring the
58:21hand is going to end up first just to
58:24make this the easiest to can possibly be
58:26we'll go into local rotation we'll put
58:30the
58:31hand how we want
58:34it and we're going to just go we're
58:37going to make this as easy as possible
58:39by just putting it at its final point so
58:43we know over
58:45here oh we need to add this so select
58:48the control that isn't in the layer
58:50right click and add
58:52selected and then when you reselect this
58:54it'll pick it in the thing so we can go
58:57ahead and write make a key with the S
58:58key and if that doesn't work you come
58:59over here if that doesn't work you can
59:01also just hit enter and that'll make a
59:03key as well but okay so we start there
59:06and then let's go find if we select the
59:09hand we can just hit Dot and go right to
59:11the next key and we can bring this over
59:13where we know we need it to
59:15be sometimes I accidentally select but
59:19all right I'll just bring it over
59:23here yeah that looks good and then we'll
59:25go back to the
59:28hand rotate
59:33it and then you just do this to your to
59:35whatever style you're looking
59:39for and
59:41so let's go take a look at that I don't
59:45like how that's just a linear straight
59:48line up to the top it just doesn't look
59:49natural so we're going to fix
59:54that there's a couple different ways
59:56we're going to fix it actually but
59:57before we do that let's let's just make
59:59sure timing is the way we like it well
1:00:01that's way too slow we're just going to
1:00:02select the check watch layer and we're
1:00:04going to speed it up and it's pretty
1:00:06easy to speed up you just select all the
1:00:07keys once you have the whole layer
1:00:08selected and then you can use control
1:00:10left Arrow to make it go faster and
1:00:13since we know this is going to be
1:00:16returning back to his original position
1:00:20we can just grab this zero key at the
1:00:23front and control V at at the end and
1:00:27now we'll
1:00:28have arm up arm down we know we want to
1:00:31have the arm stay up for quite a lot
1:00:34longer but we'll do that in a moment
1:00:38so but now that we know this and we
1:00:43can take this key crl + C put it here
1:00:47contrl + V and now if we select these
1:00:49two key frames or two frames of keys
1:00:52sorry we can control and decide how long
1:00:55we want them to look at as
1:00:58watch all right and so I know this is a
1:01:01much longer animation than we're going
1:01:02to need so I'm going to zoom out I'm
1:01:04holding alt and rolling back the scrub
1:01:06wheel now I'm right click and
1:01:10dragging and let's just go grab we'll
1:01:12just stop it somewhere around here
1:01:14because we know it's going to be that's
1:01:15going to be plenty long enough to get
1:01:17the job
1:01:17done so we'll probably want to he'll
1:01:20probably
1:01:21want so control Arrow to bring this out
1:01:24even more and we haven't added added any
1:01:26Dynamics we haven't done
1:01:28any um of the actual animation the
1:01:30easing any of those kinds of
1:01:32things there we
1:01:39go we'll let this one take a little
1:01:46longer and now we're going to fix the
1:01:49head and the neck but before we do that
1:01:51let's go ahead and just make the hand
1:01:52animate the way we want to and we're
1:01:54going to do that using tween so first
1:01:56control shift s to save we'll come over
1:01:58here to
1:01:59Tween and he's in a good spot right here
1:02:03and now I have it selected so deselect
1:02:05and then it'll work on the frame that
1:02:07you're actually on so if we hit if we
1:02:09select this right here pick our frame
1:02:11where we want it hit s or in this case
1:02:14hit enter to key all of
1:02:16the things we can now blend so and I'll
1:02:21show you why we're doing this
1:02:26yeah so we're going to want to blend it
1:02:29even more
1:02:31down so you want that there it is and so
1:02:35and now we're going to want another set
1:02:38of keys right
1:02:40here where it ends up and then if
1:02:44we comma it'll take us back to that
1:02:47prior key we got to
1:02:49deselect add a little bit of an
1:02:54ease okay
1:03:01okay so that's going too slow at the
1:03:02beginning so select these
1:03:06now we want to go a little slower want
1:03:09to be a little more deliberate and then
1:03:10just ramp up real
1:03:15fast interpreting the curves editor is
1:03:18pretty easy if you just look at the x-
1:03:20axis is time and Y AIS is the value of
1:03:24whatever control you have selected so
1:03:26for example if this is location X we're
1:03:30going to start at Point a we're going to
1:03:32slowly ease into the movement and then
1:03:35switch over to a more rapid movement for
1:03:37the predominance of the traversal
1:03:39whatever we're going from point A to
1:03:41point B and in this case we're going to
1:03:43overshoot past it to a point D come back
1:03:46and kind of oscillate back down short of
1:03:49our Target before finally resting on the
1:03:51target this is called an overshoot and
1:03:53settle you don't need this in all of
1:03:55your motions it will make them look a
1:03:56little too springy in a lot of cases but
1:03:58in certain cases especially Arms This
1:04:00tends to produce a nice natural movement
1:04:02but so you have this slow ease into the
1:04:05movement the movement then moves
1:04:07nonlinearly so you can see when I say
1:04:09nonlinearly you have the slope of this
1:04:12line right here is a certain speed
1:04:14pretty slow and then once you come up
1:04:16here it converts pretty rapidly into a
1:04:19faster movement before slowing down
1:04:21smoothly overshooting the Target and
1:04:24then settling back on target and the
1:04:26reason you'll see a lot of this type of
1:04:29shape of movement or you'll see the
1:04:32mirror of this over here where it eases
1:04:35in moves rapidly and then eases back out
1:04:39is linear motion if this was just to be
1:04:41a straight line from here to here where
1:04:43the motion was constant during the
1:04:45entire time whether that's a rotation or
1:04:47a translation looks unnatural in almost
1:04:50all cases unless you're purely talking
1:04:53about traversal through space like walk
1:04:54a walk animation
1:04:56you would expect for the most part your
1:04:59along track meaning the direction of
1:05:01your walk traversal of that body control
1:05:04or the body Offset you would expect that
1:05:06to be fairly linear if not completely
1:05:08linear in most game environments it is
1:05:10completely linear just to kind of have
1:05:11that nice stable motion forward because
1:05:14we're trying to tie it to that capsule
1:05:15that you're moving through
1:05:20space and you know what it is is he's
1:05:22going he's not going fast enough for the
1:05:25portion that matters this is this little
1:05:27ease right here is just taking way too
1:05:29long so we're going to just shorten that
1:05:31up real quick now it's going to make it
1:05:33look faster so we're going to have to
1:05:34fix we're going to have to fix that for
1:05:37sure there we go that's not
1:05:40bad and now we can fix so if we comma
1:05:45back over here we have to
1:05:47fix the fact that he's just coming
1:05:50straight up we're going to let him
1:05:53that's actually not terrible
1:05:56but we're going to bring this
1:05:59one we'll go to world W to adjust it
1:06:05that's too
1:06:06far and just very slightly we're going
1:06:08to bring it out so that it he tracks a
1:06:12loop kind of an arc with his there it
1:06:16is and we have that rotation we're going
1:06:18to go fix that rotation um I think you
1:06:21turn your wrist faster than your arm
1:06:24comes up so now what we need to do is go
1:06:26look at those rotations so let's go see
1:06:28which
1:06:29uh Dimension we're dealing with so
1:06:32rotation feels like it's that red axis
1:06:35which is the roll so we'll come up and
1:06:37look at rotation roll and really all we
1:06:38want to do to make this happen
1:06:42is we're going to shorten up this ease
1:06:47time we're going to bring this in like
1:06:49this and actually I think try that so
1:06:55now now let's watch that hand come up
1:06:57yes see how his hand is already turned
1:07:01there it is that looks a little more
1:07:02natural all right so there's still some
1:07:04robotic obviously he's he looks like a
1:07:06robot because there's no keep alive so
1:07:08he's not moving his arm but from a
1:07:10perspective of let's look at that let's
1:07:11look at our watch and let's look back
1:07:13down we now have a blocked out animation
1:07:16that we can go fix
1:07:18so so first things first we're going to
1:07:21hit enter and put some keys in the
1:07:23middle and we will
1:07:27kind of move these
1:07:32around let's just try to keep it yeah
1:07:35there you go see now he's got a
1:07:38nice now he has a very nice little
1:07:42natural movement going along with
1:07:45it and now let's add we're going to take
1:07:48the pole
1:07:50vector and I think
1:07:58so during this event we'll go ahead and
1:08:02let's put some keys in we'll put a key
1:08:05here and then we'll put a key here and
1:08:07this one we're going to let come
1:08:12down to make it just feel a little more
1:08:16natural okay so that was too
1:08:19much so we're in
1:08:21local and I think we really oh I moved
1:08:26all three so really what I want to do is
1:08:28I just want to
1:08:29move this
1:08:32one that's scale all right so we'll go
1:08:35to the PB control we'll go select
1:08:37location
1:08:50Z and so we'll just go grab
1:08:54this I don't know that we want to bring
1:08:56it back it's this one's subtle we don't
1:08:58want it to be a a Herky jerky
1:09:04motion control shift middle click and
1:09:07drag
1:09:08up just make it a more subtle elbow
1:09:12movement there we go yeah that's good
1:09:15all right so now he's looking at his
1:09:17watch everything looks nice and natural
1:09:19and even coming down we can fix that so
1:09:21we haven't done we haven't done anything
1:09:24to fix the way down and we need to do
1:09:27exactly these same things so there is a
1:09:30way that we could uh achieve this but if
1:09:33you think about it so you look at your
1:09:34watch and then you want it to move
1:09:36slightly you kind of want the exact
1:09:37reverse of what's going on here but
1:09:39we'll just do it my hand so you can get
1:09:41a feel for how it does hit enter we're
1:09:45going to ease those
1:09:50up and then
1:09:52we'll and we may Let's do an overshoot
1:09:55settle just so you get a feel for how
1:09:57that looks
1:09:59um
1:10:01yeah so grab
1:10:03this contrl +v and we're going to go
1:10:07ahead and let this overshoot a little
1:10:10bit and how that
1:10:13happens is really what I'm talking about
1:10:16is we're going to overshoot back just a
1:10:19little bit just a little bit and then
1:10:22we'll come back to where we were
1:10:26but what that allows us to do is I want
1:10:27to overshoot this just a little but
1:10:29we'll see how this
1:10:31looks okay so it's happening too much as
1:10:34a he hits this Mark swings away and then
1:10:37swings back you never want to go a a you
1:10:40want to go to like ABC or CBA like you
1:10:44want this this one should now just be a
1:10:47little bit farther and so I'm going to
1:10:49select that frame and if you if you want
1:10:50to be precise you can just use the comma
1:10:52to move back frame and Dot to move
1:10:55forward for and it's going to move to
1:10:56whichever the next and previous frame
1:10:58that has a key on it all right and so
1:11:01we're going to just move this ever so
1:11:11slightly yeah he has a little bit of a
1:11:13snap to his
1:11:21uh I think what we
1:11:23want is that red
1:11:28Dimension so we want the location
1:11:32X
1:11:36to yeah there we
1:11:39go so we want this location to really
1:11:43feel
1:11:48like yeah but he's hitting a wall bam
1:11:51hits the wall so we want that to be able
1:11:53to keep moving now in this case what I
1:11:55would typically do is I would bake this
1:11:57back to FK and I would do my overshoot
1:12:00and settle in FK controls because it's a
1:12:02lot easier to do that in FK than in ik
1:12:05here I need to press zero and smooth out
1:12:14those but I might be able to see how
1:12:16he's hitting a wall here I need to just
1:12:18so now we're talking
1:12:22about the green dimension
1:12:27right here so we'll go location Y and
1:12:32we're seeing that we do we in fact hit a
1:12:35wall very much so
1:12:37let's we hit s and that'll add a key we
1:12:41can now grab that
1:12:43key I'm going to hit zero again because
1:12:46these curves don't look good and I
1:12:48really just want to avoid there we go so
1:12:51it's looking a little soft
1:12:59yeah it's looking a little soft because
1:13:02I slowed down the location X and so I
1:13:06think what I want to
1:13:11do all right so that looks good so now
1:13:14we have we now I have our arm
1:13:16everything's ready to
1:13:18go and so I just stopped when I said it
1:13:20hit a wall you notice that it just um I
1:13:24just stopped it from
1:13:26when that swing happens now it's that
1:13:28nice soft settle and I could even
1:13:30straighten out the arm a little bit I
1:13:32could move the elbow to try to um relax
1:13:36that so the last thing we have to do
1:13:38with the arm before we move on to the
1:13:39head is put his hand into a fist let's
1:13:42go do that so we'll go ahead and select
1:13:46the right
1:13:51hand and we like our posing here so
1:13:54let's go find where is he going to
1:13:57actually I'm just doing it myself if you
1:13:59ever want to know how this looks just
1:14:01you know look at your watch so okay so
1:14:04he he really he's F he's he starts
1:14:06clenching his fist probably right about
1:14:09here and he finishes it so I'm going to
1:14:12go ahead and hit um the entire right
1:14:14hand I'm going to key the whole thing
1:14:16hitting enter I know by here he is
1:14:20completely
1:14:22clenched and then he stays that
1:14:25way and we'll deal
1:14:28with that right here we'll get rid of
1:14:30this key
1:14:34so so let's go ahead and clench that
1:14:38Fist and there's a few there's somewhat
1:14:41easy ways to do this you can just select
1:14:44these all keys right make sure you're in
1:14:46local and we can just twist this up like
1:14:49this
1:14:55and we could have done this with all of
1:14:56them at the same time which I'm a fan
1:15:01of but I'm just going to do them one at
1:15:03a time to kind of get a feel
1:15:07for proper hand posing can take quite a
1:15:11long time to get right I'm going to just
1:15:14try to do a bit of an easy quick pose
1:15:18and hopefully make everything look
1:15:20somewhat
1:15:23decent yeah it's not a great hand
1:15:26pose all right and then we'll we'll try
1:15:29this last one right
1:15:36here it's not my best work I mean you
1:15:39can see how soft that hand poses we
1:15:43could all right it's not the best fist
1:15:47but it'll get the job done for what
1:15:49we're trying to accomplish so we go back
1:15:51we select the entirety of the hand and
1:15:54now we have that
1:15:55and we
1:15:57know we're going to
1:16:00just go back to nothing when
1:16:04we let's find the right
1:16:12spot okay so that so once again we're
1:16:15going to grab this we'll do some keep
1:16:17alive stuff in a minute just like we did
1:16:19with it's all the same just like what we
1:16:21did with the arm we're going to do it
1:16:23again with the hands and then we're
1:16:24we're going to do it again with the neck
1:16:27so and you can also control shift middle
1:16:28click and drag and that'll if you go
1:16:31left right it'll it'll lock it to the
1:16:33left right so it won't slide up and down
1:16:35and if you go up and down it'll do this
1:16:37exact same thing just in the vertical
1:16:39Direction so okay so we want to be
1:16:42coming out of it right around
1:16:50here yeah not bad
1:16:55there's things we can do to make that
1:16:56much more appealing um but right now
1:16:59we're just going to we'll pick a a spot
1:17:02in the middle hit enter I'm just going
1:17:06to grip a little bit more so that it
1:17:09just looks like things are being kept
1:17:13alive a little better so you're really
1:17:15just looking for just a little bit of
1:17:17dynamic motion and in this case my
1:17:20Dynamic motion is tightening up that
1:17:23fist a little bit
1:17:25while he's looking at
1:17:27his
1:17:31watch and so what that'll cause and I
1:17:33can already see it so I'm going to
1:17:34select the whole hand control a press
1:17:38the zero key and get those nice smooth
1:17:41curves see what
1:17:44happens yeah just nice natural hand
1:17:47there we go so that's not the worst
1:17:49that's a that's actually a pretty decent
1:17:52uh pretty decent hand motion for an idle
1:17:56break and now let's get the head
1:17:58involved so if you think about it the
1:18:01head doesn't get started until so let's
1:18:03go ahead and find where we're going to
1:18:05start there so we'll probably start the
1:18:08head around here so I'll hit s because
1:18:11I've got the head control actually I'm
1:18:13going to select the head and both neck
1:18:14controls so if I hold Shift come over
1:18:17here and select them I'm going to just
1:18:18key them all so I can select over here
1:18:20and hit enter and that'll just give me
1:18:22keys on everything but really what I'm
1:18:23going to work on is is let's get our
1:18:25good final pose here this is where he's
1:18:28going to start he's probably going to
1:18:29start more like
1:18:32there I don't know I'm going to control
1:18:35actually I'm going to go grab them
1:18:37again grab all
1:18:40three right click and you can do this on
1:18:42a different layer but I'm just putting
1:18:43everything on the check watch layer
1:18:45let's go ahead and tilt the head down so
1:18:46we can get a feel for how the rig works
1:18:49so okay so you see his we're going to
1:18:51have to do a lot of work with the neck
1:18:54but let's go ahead
1:18:56and go ahead and get it to where yeah
1:18:59that's going to be about right and then
1:19:01same same here we want
1:19:04to I don't think that's even the one
1:19:07that we want to work with here let's try
1:19:10this
1:19:12wow these neck controls really do not
1:19:15work with the shoulders like you would
1:19:17expect them
1:19:19to okay and then
1:19:22we'll we'll do this we'll make it a
1:19:23little more
1:19:25um obnoxious I guess would be the the
1:19:28term I'm looking for so I've got that
1:19:31look and I know I want to keep it and so
1:19:35now we're going to do the same thing we
1:19:37did before we're going to so we made the
1:19:39stay key you know the hold it's not a
1:19:41moving hold yet because we haven't made
1:19:43it move but
1:19:47um so before he so control shift middle
1:19:51click and drag
1:19:52across and
1:19:56so probably be something like
1:20:00this so he's turning too fast everything
1:20:02is too fast so let's fix that first
1:20:05let's get the timing
1:20:10right and then same thing over
1:20:16here yeah so we got to go fix that head
1:20:19control no it's it's number one I think
1:20:23yeah that so this guy we're just going
1:20:25to delete this
1:20:28key nope that's not what we wanted to do
1:20:31we're going to take these
1:20:36keys and we're going to drag them over
1:20:44here and then we're going to grab this
1:20:47and we're going to control right click
1:20:48to get it over just about it doesn't
1:20:51have to be lined up in fact if it isn't
1:20:53that's that's actually a feature contrl
1:20:54C to select that key and we'll come down
1:20:57here and
1:21:01we'll control V now let's see what we
1:21:11got okay it's feeling a little um
1:21:15robotic so we're going to move this out
1:21:18and we're going to start working on our
1:21:19eases so I'm going to delay the head
1:21:21coming back up there it is and
1:21:25now we will add some
1:21:31easing yeah so this one right here
1:21:34contrl
1:21:35C then we'll come over
1:21:38here contrl V and now dot to move over
1:21:42to the key that we want we'll go ahead
1:21:44and select it and we can just add a bit
1:21:47of an
1:21:50ease now let's see how that
1:21:52feels oh yeah that's much better and
1:21:58then we want him to overshoot a little
1:22:00bit when he's Conant things so we want
1:22:03to overshoot this head a little bit so
1:22:05let's just go ahead and select just a
1:22:06head and I think what we're going to do
1:22:11is yeah
1:22:13so the easiest way to do this like we
1:22:15can make a key here right so we got that
1:22:18and then I can just overshoot it a
1:22:21little bit like that we can that control
1:22:24a again zero to smooth out the
1:22:30keys yeah and then we'll hit enter here
1:22:34and we can
1:22:36just bring it up a little
1:22:40bit like
1:22:42that uh just a little bit more and if
1:22:45you can't get
1:22:46good uh consistency with The Arc ball
1:22:49you can control shift and just come down
1:22:51over here and you can have much better
1:22:52control with the thing I don't like that
1:22:55this is taking such a turn
1:22:57here it's going to be a little
1:23:00sharp that's actually not
1:23:03bad see how much more alive that
1:23:07feels it's a little too much I'd say so
1:23:11I think that's because this guy is just
1:23:13a little too
1:23:14severe oh there we go that's a nice
1:23:17alive feeling look at the watch and
1:23:20really at this point it's all polished
1:23:21from here but it's done so now I'm just
1:23:24going to show you how to implement this
1:23:25in game in Unreal Engine so we come up
1:23:28to the top we right click on the actor
1:23:31bake animation sequence I'll go ahead
1:23:33and'll come down here we'll go to idle
1:23:35break and we'll
1:23:37say
1:23:38ufn look at watch and we'll call this
1:23:42idle
1:23:43break look at watch and I always version
1:23:46my things V1 and now we don't need any
1:23:48root motion we don't need anything
1:23:50special the root didn't move everything
1:23:51looks good this is a nice clean
1:23:52animation and so let's go uh implement
1:23:56this in game which is actually pretty
1:23:57easy to do control shift go over to your
1:23:59blueprints let's go ahead and clear our
1:24:02search that we did for the idle Loop and
1:24:05we'll go to the and control shift s so
1:24:06that it saves that animation we just
1:24:08created and if you want to go take a
1:24:09look at it before we do this here I'm
1:24:11going to go ahead and open up our CBP
1:24:12sandbox character which is in content
1:24:16Blueprints and I already have a couple
1:24:18uh montages playing up here so now we'll
1:24:21control space and we'll go over to um
1:24:24our idle break directory we'll find our
1:24:27idle break animation that we just
1:24:30created which is look at watch right
1:24:33here idle break look at watch V1 we'll
1:24:36right click go to create anim montage
1:24:40and I always name anim montages with am
1:24:42at the front we can leave the Montage in
1:24:44the back control shift s to
1:24:46save and now we've got this animation
1:24:48Montage so we can come in here and let's
1:24:51just I'll just delete all these things
1:24:54so
1:24:54so actually we already have it open so
1:24:57you have your debug key I just used
1:24:58debug key e for example and let's go
1:25:01we'll just
1:25:04play um if we just look for look there
1:25:08it is so we'll play Montage everything
1:25:11else is completely default we'll play it
1:25:14on the skeleton mesh component and I'll
1:25:16go ahead and create this from scratch so
1:25:17you can see it so we'll do debug key e
1:25:22which is I'm just going to delete these
1:25:23when we're done when it's pressed you
1:25:25move over here and you say play
1:25:27montage and it's this one right
1:25:30here you pick your skeletal mesh
1:25:32component which in this case is mesh go
1:25:35drag that over onto the skeletal mesh
1:25:37component the Montage to play is the one
1:25:40that we just played so we'll select it
1:25:44and we can either drag it
1:25:45in or we can just uh hit that Arrow key
1:25:49right there to pull in the one that's
1:25:51selected in the content browser and then
1:25:52whether we're doing a traversal action
1:25:54so we can come over to our variables
1:25:56doing traversal action move it over here
1:25:59and we'll set it crl c contr v or
1:26:02control D we'll also just duplicate that
1:26:04and certainly when this gets fired we
1:26:07want to tell the system not to allow
1:26:10input because we're doing a traversal
1:26:12and then whether it gets
1:26:13interrupted or it gets completed we're
1:26:16going to not do it anymore so let's go
1:26:18ahead and delete this control shift s to
1:26:20save compile our blueprint
1:26:24and I'm going to click this title and
1:26:26drag it so I can just lay it over here
1:26:28so we can get to it more easily and now
1:26:29when I hit play and I press the E
1:26:34key there we
1:26:38go now one thing that I do need to do is
1:26:41disable the leg ik so that's going to
1:26:44be required here so the upper half looks
1:26:48right but the bottom half something is
1:26:50wrong with how it's doing it so we need
1:26:52to go take a look at the sandbox
1:26:53character so we go to Blueprints and
1:26:55then go look in ABP and see if you're
1:26:58doing a transversal you'd want the anom
1:27:01graph let's go take a
1:27:03look anom graph and let's come over here
1:27:07and take a look so in this case
1:27:09specifically okay we've still got we got
1:27:11foot place going on essentially I want
1:27:13the sandbox character
1:27:25so we want to know whether he's doing a
1:27:26traversal
1:27:28action and
1:27:35then select float if he's doing a
1:27:38traversal action we want it to be zero
1:27:39and if not we want the the weight to be
1:27:42one we'll just go throw this into foot
1:27:46placement and leg ik so now those will
1:27:49both turn off I think we still want foot
1:27:51placement but let's just try this first
1:27:54so we'll compile that and now we'll run
1:27:56it and when I press e yes his feet stay
1:28:01the
1:28:04same and everything's good
1:28:08yep you can just look at his
1:28:14watch so that you can watch him look at
1:28:16his watch from every angle and that's it
1:28:24so now we've done that with an idle
1:28:25break we can take this one step further
1:28:28and how we do that is actually pretty
1:28:29cool I'm going to find another animation
1:28:32we'll go ahead and close the sequencer
1:28:34we'll go here and we're going to search
1:28:36for let's do walk
1:28:42Loop why oh I'm in the blueprints so if
1:28:45we do walk Loop and f that should find
1:28:49us the walk Loop forward right
1:28:51here and so let's open up the neutral
1:28:53walk Loop and now I want him to look at
1:28:56his watch while he's walking so I'm
1:28:59going to show you how to edit this
1:29:00animation to bring that look at watch
1:29:03without adjusting without messing up the
1:29:05bottom of the animation so we're going
1:29:06to bake to control rig again ufn Manny
1:29:08tat tools rig just like
1:29:10always sometimes the bake window shows
1:29:13goes behind all the other windows so go
1:29:16and bake to control rig as usual we
1:29:17unlink the level sequence then we can
1:29:19close this down we don't need it
1:29:21anymore we can also just save this off
1:29:24because that works well now go to our
1:29:26sandbox car we don't need that anymore
1:29:28and so now we have this walk
1:29:31animation right and so what we're going
1:29:34to
1:29:35do is bring in him looking at his watch
1:29:39and we can pick whichever moment we want
1:29:40to do it I'm going to select right there
1:29:42we're going to add a layer so we know
1:29:45the only animation area we need is let's
1:29:49see here we need the
1:29:51neck the head the CL clavicle didn't get
1:29:54animated but we're going to go and just
1:29:55bring it in anyway and then what we need
1:29:57is the ik control handwright ik control
1:30:00right
1:30:03here and the handwrite PV control right
1:30:06there so we need those so we'll go ahead
1:30:07and add that layer and we'll call this
1:30:10check watch and we could actually go
1:30:12over to the other animation grab it
1:30:14bring it over here paste it and we'd be
1:30:16in good shape but the other option is we
1:30:19can we can make override layer and just
1:30:22activate it when we want to
1:30:24so we're going to switch to
1:30:26override which is going to very much
1:30:30make things look very odd because I'm
1:30:33going to switch so what I have to do is
1:30:35I need to go back up to the top of my
1:30:37rig on the base layer I need to go to
1:30:40the global control and I need
1:30:43to
1:30:46activate ik then come over here and as
1:30:50usual we delete everything but the
1:30:52first the first key
1:30:54ke you can make sure that that's all
1:30:58that's all we have it's just one key now
1:31:00they're in ik and like I said so we have
1:31:03this really weird override
1:31:06layer that we're going to fade in and
1:31:10then fade back out just so you can kind
1:31:11to get a feel for how you would add
1:31:13these things to it so and we'll key
1:31:15where we want it to look but first let's
1:31:17bring so we have our layer selected
1:31:19right we're going to right click import
1:31:22animation sequence to the section and
1:31:24we're going to say look at
1:31:27watch we'll bake it to the control
1:31:34rig so until he starts
1:31:37moving we're right about here so we'll
1:31:39go up to our weight we we'll make a key
1:31:42right there for weight one that's where
1:31:43he should start doing what he's doing
1:31:45and right here we're going to key it
1:31:47again but we're going to set the weight
1:31:48to zero and we can do this in the curve
1:31:50editor but uh right now I just want to
1:31:53get us to where we
1:31:58go so he's looking at his watch and then
1:32:01here is where we're going to start we're
1:32:03going to start blending it out like here
1:32:07so key it and then we'll move just a
1:32:09little bit and we want them really
1:32:11Blended back by about here so we'll just
1:32:13go and hit zero and hit enter and
1:32:14that'll make the key for us and so now
1:32:16let's see how this
1:32:19looks it's nice and we can tune how we
1:32:22want that to work
1:32:28but now you have a partial upper body
1:32:30animation sitting over the top of your
1:32:34walk and it comes in quite naturally and
1:32:37moves back out quite naturally and that
1:32:39hopefully will show you the power of
1:32:41Animation layers so if you wanted to
1:32:43take your walk animation and put a gun
1:32:45in the character's hands and then just
1:32:46animate it over the top or if you had a
1:32:48nice gun animation that you wanted to
1:32:50use you can then just lay it in to
1:32:52partial or entire body and that's
1:32:58it in our last animation for this
1:33:01tutorial we're going to modify an
1:33:03existing animation to improve the
1:33:06quality of it we're going to polish the
1:33:07animation we're going to change the
1:33:08style so it better matches what we're
1:33:10going for to do this we're going to go
1:33:12to my Discord and pull down the axe idle
1:33:14Tosh shoulder V3 which will be in the
1:33:17YouTube section under anim free
1:33:20animations so we'll go grab ufn ax idle
1:33:23shoulder V3 and we'll drag that into our
1:33:27project and then on the import screen
1:33:29the things that we want to make sure we
1:33:31do is say import only animations is
1:33:33checked and then select the ufn
1:33:36mannequin once we've done that we can
1:33:38click import and that will bring
1:33:40in this
1:33:44animation now for this we're going to
1:33:46use the axe that's available in the low
1:33:48poly RPG fantasy weapons light package
1:33:51from just create which is available for
1:33:53free you just go add it to your library
1:33:55and then go to your Epic Launcher click
1:33:58Library you may have to refresh your Fab
1:34:01library but if you just start typing RPG
1:34:03web you'll see low poly RPG fantasy
1:34:06weapons and you add that to project
1:34:08select your project click add to project
1:34:10and you're there I already have it in so
1:34:13let's jump back to our project and if
1:34:15you want to test this out the way I made
1:34:17this animation was I animated the weapon
1:34:21AR bone down here I animated this bone
1:34:24so that it perfectly matches up with the
1:34:26axe which is the best way to handle
1:34:28props is to animate the bone so that you
1:34:30don't have to put in sockets or do
1:34:33anything funny now you're going to want
1:34:35to make a socket off of weapon R if you
1:34:38have an adjustment to it so I'll just
1:34:40show that to you real
1:34:41quick so first things first we'll right
1:34:44click We'll add a preview asset and I
1:34:46think it's called axe without an e so
1:34:49there it
1:34:50is and you see the axe already just fits
1:34:53perfectly in the hand so here
1:34:57let's and so what I want to do is
1:34:59there's a little bit of a lean forward
1:35:01but I just think it's not showing
1:35:03there's not enough up and down there's
1:35:05not enough heft so it's not reading as
1:35:09good body mechanics it's not reading as
1:35:11a weighty animation like that ax doesn't
1:35:13really weigh anything it just looks it
1:35:15just kind of goes up there so there's a
1:35:16couple things we want to do to try to
1:35:18heft it up and then have it sink down
1:35:21once it hits the shoulder so we'll make
1:35:23that modification but for example let's
1:35:26say you wanted to use a different weapon
1:35:30and so I'm going to go find one first
1:35:32we'll come down to LP RPG weapons JC
1:35:36under models and let's say instead of
1:35:38that we wanted to use this big hammer so
1:35:41we'll select the hammer come back
1:35:44here go to our weapon AR bone right
1:35:46click and add a preview asset and then
1:35:50let's just type hammer
1:35:54I don't have to do anything everything
1:35:55already pretty much works but let's say
1:35:58for example I wanted to try to go the
1:36:00easy route and avoid that penetration
1:36:03right there you see how it's kind of
1:36:04penetrating into his back I'm going to
1:36:06do that I'm going to do that by
1:36:07modifying the animation but in this case
1:36:10I can also create a socket so add
1:36:15socket let's go ahead and
1:36:17remove right click on the weapon R and
1:36:19remove all attached assets we'll go to
1:36:21this weapon R socket which is under
1:36:23weapon R cuz we want it to have all the
1:36:25animation from that and then we'll add
1:36:28We'll add back in the
1:36:33hammer and while it's the easiest way to
1:36:36do this is just to go into the sequencer
1:36:37and adapt it to this weapon properly
1:36:40what we can do instead is bring it up
1:36:42here to the point where it's a
1:36:47problem and we can
1:36:53adjust the animation a little bit so now
1:36:56when we do
1:36:57this so now we have a socket that's
1:37:01built for this
1:37:05hammer and yes the character is holding
1:37:08it a little further down the down the
1:37:10handle but it's at least if you're in a
1:37:13hurry that's one way to get that looking
1:37:15better all right so now let's go add
1:37:17some let's add some weight to this
1:37:19animation so we'll go to edit and
1:37:21sequencer bake to control rig select the
1:37:24ufn Manny tattool rig and as usual the
1:37:27bake window goes behind everything else
1:37:28so I have to bring that back forward
1:37:30click bake to control rig come back up
1:37:32to edit and sequencer unlink the level
1:37:34sequence so that we don't accidentally
1:37:36adjust the animation that we're working
1:37:37with come back to ax
1:37:39wield and so now we have this this is
1:37:42our level sequence and I'm going to
1:37:43control D to duplicate it and then we'll
1:37:45get started okay so first things first I
1:37:48want the axe just like I had it in in
1:37:51the edit view for this animation I want
1:37:53to add the axe back in so we'll go find
1:37:56the
1:37:59axe LP RPG weapons JC again models and
1:38:03we'll go grab the axe and we can just
1:38:04drag it in anywhere in the scene and
1:38:06then as we
1:38:07know it goes with this right weapon
1:38:11control now I'm not going to go into a
1:38:13full constraints tutorial here we're
1:38:15just going to use a parent constraint
1:38:17very quickly to put the weapon into the
1:38:19character's hand and keep it there and
1:38:22saramari has a phenomenal tutorial
1:38:24taking you through all the constraint
1:38:25types and how they all work how
1:38:27everything goes I'll leave a link to
1:38:28that in the description but put it
1:38:31simply for parent constraints you've got
1:38:33a child which in this case is the axe
1:38:35you want that child to follow the hand
1:38:38around in this case the right weapon
1:38:39control and so we parent selecting the
1:38:43axe first and then the hand and parent
1:38:45them together and we remove the offset
1:38:47we do we disable maintain offset which
1:38:49means that the ax is going to just be
1:38:51directly in the hand in this case we'll
1:38:54put this axe in the character's hands
1:38:55we're going to do that using a parent
1:38:57constraint so we're going to strain the
1:38:58axe to the location of this right weapon
1:39:01control right there so let's get the
1:39:03right weapon control in view we have the
1:39:04child selected which is the axe we want
1:39:07to make sure it's really easy to grab
1:39:09this left weapon control and we come
1:39:10over to constraints we hit the plus sign
1:39:14parent come up here and pick right
1:39:16weapon control nothing happened the car
1:39:19the ax didn't move because we have to
1:39:21come over here right click and remove
1:39:24the
1:39:25offset and now if we hit
1:39:27play we have an axe that will just stay
1:39:30in the character's hand for the entire
1:39:32animation and now we can start editing
1:39:35the animation one last thing before we
1:39:37do that if in case we want to move this
1:39:38an this level sequence over to different
1:39:40environments or different levels in the
1:39:42in the project we'll right click here
1:39:45convert selected bindings to spawnable
1:39:47actor and now this ax will come with the
1:39:50level sequence whenever we move it
1:39:52anywhere so we'll go off as always we'll
1:39:55save it contrl D to duplicate it and
1:39:59double click to open the next one and
1:40:01now we have a base axe animation ready
1:40:04to go ready to modify in case we do
1:40:06irreparable damage in this level
1:40:08sequence so okay so it's the weight we
1:40:12need so when
1:40:15he is
1:40:18here we need him to come down a little
1:40:22more so let's select the entire rig we
1:40:26don't need the entire rig we're going to
1:40:28only modify a few controls here but just
1:40:30in case I want to select everything if
1:40:33you have tat tools that's very easy to
1:40:35do you just select all and then you have
1:40:37the entire rig selected if you don't
1:40:40have tat tools what you can do is come
1:40:42down to CR ufn tat tools rig click on
1:40:45the first
1:40:47control scroll all the way to the bottom
1:40:49of that
1:40:51rig shift click you'll have everything
1:40:53selected and now we can go to
1:40:56layers and we can open
1:40:59up we can add an animation layer with
1:41:01all of those controls in
1:41:03it so there we go and then this will
1:41:09be let's add weight to this animation
1:41:11it's going to be an additive and so
1:41:14right now nothing's happened so
1:41:16everything is as we had it so let's go
1:41:17ahead and start working on this the
1:41:19first thing I know we want to do is you
1:41:20work big to small so the first thing
1:41:22we're going to do is affect this body
1:41:23control so what I notice if I lift a
1:41:26heavy object is there's some counter
1:41:28rotation so let's once we go
1:41:34here there's some counter rotation and I
1:41:37don't want to affect the body control
1:41:39here really what I want to do is affect
1:41:41this hips control so I want to bring the
1:41:44hips
1:41:46over rotate and then we'll come
1:41:50back and we'll bring it back down
1:41:53so let's go make sure we're keying
1:41:55properly so we'll
1:41:58start
1:42:03normally by about here we're going
1:42:06to have counter
1:42:09rotated and
1:42:11then right around here we're going to
1:42:14settle back in to where we started and
1:42:17really we're going to put this back
1:42:19where it was exactly so we select the
1:42:21keys in the beginning contrl c and then
1:42:23control V to put them
1:42:27back the timing of that's probably a
1:42:29little off so we're just going to move
1:42:31the timing around until we like how it
1:42:33feels now there's going to be a
1:42:35combination now if you don't like the
1:42:37magnitude of what I just did you say oh
1:42:39that's too much we can just go select
1:42:41these Keys control shift middle click
1:42:43and move up and we can we can lessen the
1:42:46effect so let's try
1:42:49that there you go nice little subtle
1:42:51movement and now we can work on the body
1:42:54control so we
1:42:59know he's going to be normal to here and
1:43:04then probably somewhere around here
1:43:07he'll come
1:43:08down and then
1:43:11he'll
1:43:13boom so he'll he'll
1:43:16be at his highest point
1:43:21here and then we will come back to
1:43:29zero here so now let's hit F so we can
1:43:32see this whole thing so he's going to go
1:43:34down up but we want that up to happen a
1:43:37lot
1:43:43faster so we want the
1:43:46down to stay down for longer
1:43:54and then we'll have
1:43:57this come
1:44:01up stay
1:44:03there
1:44:06before before settling in control shift
1:44:09middle click and drag to keep it locked
1:44:11so it only moves in the X X Dimension
1:44:14which is time
1:44:16here and then we're probably going to
1:44:18add just another key right here
1:44:24we may have to fix the timing but the
1:44:26idea is we're going to do a bit of a
1:44:30oscillation a little bit of an overshoot
1:44:31and settle and remember comma moves
1:44:33between your key frames so get
1:44:37here and
1:44:43we'll there we
1:44:47go so we
1:44:49need when it hits
1:44:54boom that needs to
1:44:59be that actually needs to come
1:45:03down so we take
1:45:07the we need to feel
1:45:10that and that's the sound effect it
1:45:12makes I don't know if you know that but
1:45:13you have to make sound effects or the
1:45:15animation won't actually work um so
1:45:18let's let's make it feel
1:45:20more there we go
1:45:27so we want him to come up a lot
1:45:34faster okay so that's already starting
1:45:36to feel better and if you want to see if
1:45:38you've made any
1:45:42effect we're going to do more with the
1:45:44shoulders we're going to do more with
1:45:46the chest but let's take a
1:45:48look so we can bring him back more in
1:45:51fact
1:45:53so like right here he would
1:45:57be rotated as far back as he's going to
1:46:01get whereas around here he's actually
1:46:05where so here we'll create a key right
1:46:09there and then we'll say right about
1:46:12there he's going to be about
1:46:14as far
1:46:17back as you want him we'll see how that
1:46:20we see how that
1:46:21looks yeah and so now we'll just go in
1:46:24and that rotation is roll it's red red
1:46:27means roll and now what we know we need
1:46:29to do is hit the zero key to get a nice
1:46:33tangent and let's do a let's do a little
1:46:36bit of an ease we can delete this key we
1:46:37don't need it and we'll do a nice little
1:46:41ease still going too
1:46:44fast so we'll want to keep it up
1:46:51here so now we'll let it come up when it
1:46:55does so we really want a nice
1:47:00smooth trying to create a
1:47:03nice
1:47:05soft curve
1:47:09here so he's taking too
1:47:12long so we're going to just move this
1:47:20back and we're just going to let this
1:47:22take how long it needs to take to get
1:47:24him back to zero so we'll go select a
1:47:27zero key we can also select this key
1:47:28come up here just type zero to put it
1:47:31back where it
1:47:32belongs and then we can do this so nice
1:47:36softer
1:47:38ease here we
1:47:40go yeah he's already starting to look
1:47:42now if you want to see the effect that
1:47:44this is having we can just come over
1:47:46here to this no sign and mute the layer
1:47:49and so here's what we had when we
1:47:51started right if you now looking at it
1:47:53it feels incredibly
1:47:55robotic but now just with that little
1:47:58bit of extra
1:48:00heft we've already got that which is a
1:48:04much more Dynamic much more fluid much
1:48:06more polished animation but we're not
1:48:09done yet so let's we like that layer
1:48:11right so we're going to go ahead and
1:48:13create another layer you know how to do
1:48:15it so I'm going to hit all
1:48:17here and I'm actually going to dedicate
1:48:20a layer just to
1:48:23my spine
1:48:26controls I zoom in so I can grab all
1:48:29three if you have tattool it's much
1:48:30easier you just shift click each of
1:48:32these and so now we'll add a layer call
1:48:35this spine and it's additive again and
1:48:37if you have all three selected so I'll
1:48:39just do that again so you can kind of
1:48:40see it I'm going to move my layers up
1:48:42here so if you have all three selected
1:48:44and you rotate you notice it will
1:48:45additively rotate all three so you'll
1:48:48get that nice ease that's not what I
1:48:51want to do here like I could
1:48:53do quite a lot of horrible things with
1:48:55it but what we're going to do instead is
1:48:57we're going to select this and and he
1:48:59rotates so the first thing he's going to
1:49:03do is he's going to B counter
1:49:07rotate and then he'll end
1:49:10up around the same spot so we'll go
1:49:13comma back to this Frame and we're going
1:49:15to
1:49:18rotate and then here is where that
1:49:22animation so let's hit F so we get
1:49:24everything in View and again we'll use
1:49:27our tweener which you can find right
1:49:29here under tween and we're going
1:49:36to and so I think we want the chest to
1:49:39come over
1:49:43last
1:49:46boom and we'll do a overshoot and settle
1:49:49so we'll come over here we'll add our
1:49:51key we'll hit comma to go back we'll go
1:49:56we'll overdo it just a little
1:50:00bit so we get a
1:50:03nice yeah and so now we'll take this
1:50:08we'll extend out that ease it's going to
1:50:10be a little too
1:50:11linear
1:50:13right so we'll take away some of the
1:50:17linearity and then we'll
1:50:26we'll do that and then settle in hit
1:50:29enter and then we can just go
1:50:33select select
1:50:37this Jah rotation which is the blue
1:50:40select it and put it back to
1:50:46zero so he's he's moving a little too
1:50:50fast so we'll let him come out there
1:51:01so I think what we
1:51:04want
1:51:07yeah there it is so now we can take a
1:51:11look at just what the effect is so this
1:51:14isn't bad right without the spine
1:51:16animations but if you watch when I turn
1:51:17them
1:51:19on you just have that little bit more of
1:51:21the body d dring a little bit more of
1:51:23the chest coming around it just feels a
1:51:25little more
1:51:27weighty and now we can say if you don't
1:51:31like see that it's the arc tracking of
1:51:35this isn't
1:51:37ideal so I'm going to fix that in a
1:51:41separate level sequence so control shift
1:51:44s to save I might be able to correct
1:51:46this Arc yeah I'd have to correct it
1:51:50let's go take a look at our base
1:51:59layer let's see if I can just fix this
1:52:01using the one menion it's probably that
1:52:04I'm going to have to create a new
1:52:04animation but I'll just try it real
1:52:08[Music]
1:52:18quick actually I did I just fixed it
1:52:21okay so this animation is
1:52:23done wow you made it nicely done I hope
1:52:27you found this tutorial useful let me
1:52:29know in the comments if you ran any
1:52:30issues with it what your favorite part
1:52:32was what you'd like to see in the future
1:52:34and whether you'd like your zero dollar
1:52:36back all feedback is much appreciated
1:52:38thanks for watching and see you next
1:52:40time

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