Character Animation in Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN

It's necessary to use the 'Animation Template' because it contains the Control Rigs for both facial animation and body animation that we will need to do our animations.

Currently, they are only available in this Template, but we are hoping they will be added in all created projects soon.

Keep in mind that you can always 'Migrate' these Control Rigs to another project using the Migrate tool

Next, we will create a Level Sequence and then add an audio track to it.

After that we will import our dialogue track to the Sequencer.

The dialogue track was created using ElevenLabs' text-to-audio tool, which works amazingly well.

Next, we will create a Level Sequence and then add an audio track to it.

After that we will import our dialogue track to the Sequencer.

The dialogue track was created using ElevenLabs' text-to-audio tool, which works amazingly well.

The MetaHuman Identity

The next thing we will create is the MetaHuman Identity asset, which is a necessary component to achieve facial animation for our Fortnite characters.

We will also create a MetaHuman Performance asset, which will allow us to use the built-in 'Audio-to-Animation' tool to create our facial animation for the Fortnite character.

The Amazing, Magical 'Audio-to-Animation' Tool!

In this lesson, you'll learn how to use this amazing tool to create stunning facial animations from just an audio file and the MetaHuman Performance asset.  UEFN can listen and interpret the emotion in the voice and will attempt to match the facial animations to the dialogue track.

Export the animation from the MetaHuman Performance

In order to use this animation, we need to export it and create an animation sequence.

The Character Device

The Character Device is where all the magic begins. With this one device you will have access to a cast of over 1,200 characters and growing! Epic Games continues to add these high-quality AAA characters for your use in UEFN.

Once you learn the basics of the Character Device you will be able to do amazing animations and bring your game or cinematic to life.

Baking the Facial Animation to the Control Rig

Baking the animation to the Control Rig is a very important step, as it will allow us to further enhance the expressions of the facial animation should we desire.

• Eye blinks

• Moving eyes

• Eyebrow animation

• Expressions

All of these can be added to the base animation in order to improve the performance.

But the most important reason to bake the animation to the Control Rig is so we don't lose strength of the animation when we add the body animation, as you will see.

Let's Add the Body Animation

Next, we'll add the body animation to the facial animation performance.

Creating a New Animation of the Combined Facial and Body Animation

In this lesson we will combine both the facial animation and the body animation to create a brand-new animation that can be used on any of the huge cast of Fortnite characters.

Let's Add Blinking Eyes

For a believable animation, we need to add blinks. Otherwise, the character will just be open-eyed and will lose realism. Even stylized characters will benefit from blinking eyes. We will cover the following steps:

• Add facial animation to the character in Sequencer

• Bake the facial animation to the CR_FortniteMH_FaceRig

• Create an "Additive" Animation Track and rename it

• Create keyframes for our blinks (opening and closing the eyes)

• Copy and paste our keyframes throughout the rest of the animation to save time

• Create and export a NEW animation from the revised facial animation

Eye Movement: one of the keys to a great animation

Next, we will create eye movements using the same process we used with blinks. We will cover the following steps:

• Create keyframes for our eye movements (animating the eyes looking left and right, up and down)

• Copy and paste our keyframes throughout the rest of the animation to save time

• Create and export a NEW animation from the revised facial animation

Correcting the tongue, if needed

Sometimes, after baking the facial animation to the facial rig, the tongue has some errant keyframes, causing the tongue to poke through the mouth.

In this lesson we will cover how to fix this issue.

FIRST - Let's activate the IK Hand/Arm controls

You almost have to be Indiana Jones to hunt down and locate where the IK Hand/Arm controls are at, and to turn them on.

In this lesson we will show you where to find the Holy Grail and how to activate it, so you can use the Controls for easier and more direct animation.

Editing the Body Animation: Let's start with the head

Sometimes with an existing mocap (motion-capture) or any other animation, it's 90% of what you were looking for, but maybe the head is looking in the wrong direction, or you want more head movement in the animation. This is where the "Additive Track," will assist greatly.

The Body Control: Inverse Kinematics is cool

In this lesson we will use the body control to alter the animation. The Control Rig is setup with Inverse Kinematics, which allows multiple motions to occur by just moving one control. It's also fun. We will:

• Make our character squat lower by using the 'translate' tool

• Make our character turn by using the 'rotate' tool

• Save and export as a new Animation Sequence

How to blend multiple animations together seamlessly

In this lesson we will learn how to blend multiple animations together seamlessly, to create a much longer animation. Blending animations is a powerful technique in UEFN and Unreal Engine when used in the Sequencer.

Mixamo Animations by Adobe

Mixamo reportedly has over 2,500 animations that are all available for FREE.  They are high-quality motion-capture animations with everything from idle animations to fighting combat animations and everything in between.

In this lesson you will create an Adobe account if you don't have one, that will give you access to all of these awesome animations.

These are the files you can use to recreate your own mocap animation to get you off to a fast start.  Included is the video file of the dancing character, and the mocap animation file after it was processed by QuickMagic AI.