Unreal Engine Animation FPS Tutorial
TUTORIAL HERE:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/89722101/FPS-Tutorial-Unreal-Engine
Also at the end of the article, you will find links to download the a playable build for Windows 64.
In the tutorial I'm covering some basic technical aspects regarding rig, animation, and how to import/implement animations into the game engine to build a working prototype, using a standard First Person Shooter project as an example.
For the most part, this article would be useful for beginners and just a bit contains some more advanced tricks. Please keep in mind that the tutorial is not about 3D art/modeling/visual, etc. It's about animation, and more about technical aspects and how to put it into the game engine to test things out.
List of described features:
- Scene setup & rig in Maya
- Animation layers
- Useful links about FPS Animation
- Export FBX files
- Overview of the basic logic of UE4
- Import FBX files into UE4
- First Person Character blueprint
- Animation Blueprint
- Walking (Blendspace)
- Sprinting (State machine)
- Jumping (State machine inside of another state machine; Animation notifies)
- Aim Down Sight (Blend between different state machines; Camera FOV control; Interpolation using timelines)
- Shooting (Montage Play; Gates; Camera shakes; HUD)
- Reloading
- Melee attack
- Aim Offsets (Additive animations; Calculating delta between 2 ticks; Smooth interpolation using tick)
- Files management
- Download the build
- References
Link to the full article:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/89722101/FPS-Tutorial-Unreal-Engine
Play the build:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SL22JkDHgX0ZxgJJozzuMSca0aUVLMJq/view?usp=sharing
Final State machine. There are two types of locomotion (regular & aim down sight), jumps, montage play, and aim offsets.
Walking and sprinting animations - main state machine
Transitions are based on the anim speed variable, which is defined by WSAD input from player
Jumps - we take the whole previous state machine and use as a "grounded" state in the jumps logic
Transitions are defined by the "isInAir" bool, which is taken from the character movement "is Falling" state
Aim Down Sight - a separate state machine switched by a blend poses by bool node
The bool variable is defined by pressing the right mouse button
Reloading animation - montage play
When you need to make a transition from "any state" - montage play is the way!
Melee attack - montage play
Aim offsets - an additive pose is applied in blueprint to add more physicality to the weapon animation
Aim offsets blendspace
Animations used in this project
Al right! This is the end, thank you very much for your attention, and I hope animation blueprints won't make you feel like Travolta anymore :D
Thank you for watching!