Heres what I want to export, animation of a simple uv sphere achieved with mesh deform. If I export the file in FBX, the sphere remains idle. Ideally I would like to export a character, one with a bouncing fat belly, as an animated character with a skeleton. The mesh deform modifier works but only in blender. I would like to use such deformations inside of unreal engine, so what is the method I should follow? can I convert this animation into shapekey? Or theres a better method?
Unreal Engine can handle USD and Alembic format.
Export in one of this format.
This is one option.
But maybe I havent explained precisely what I want to do. I have this character, it is a fat dog that carries an armature. Of course I want to export it with an animation, the tutorials I followd use the fbx format to do so. Should I instead use the alembic format? that would basically erase the need of having a rig, am Iright?
I want to apply the physics deformation on the belly, the fat and large area of the belly. In my tests, I was only able to export the animations achieved with bones, not everything else that was done with physics or modifiers. I was wondering what was the solution.
There’s no answer even in the unity forum.
Why is it so hard to do?
Four hours and no answer… the world can be a bitch…
(How would blender shapekey work better??? )
If I find an answer I am going to subscribe to unity forum, unreal forum, youtube and everywhere else to tell all the people who asked how to do it. There is a method but nobody knows about it. If I find out yuo will see my copy pasted answer everywhere on the internet.
this is for shapekeys. there are other videos to do similar things on unreal. The idea could be to convert the modifier somehow I dont know how.
Is it really that hard to do that? Impressive. I didnt know that such a “simple” issue caused so many problems.
Do you think the world waited for you to re-post the answer? … if you can find something then why should find someone else… did i mentioned that i also posted an idea and something else…
(There are some hidden sarcasm in my posts… )
I dont know if I find an answer I am going to give it to others with same issue.
Your mesh deform modifier was animated over time… and this really can’t be exported with FBX enabling the back animation (default) option ??? Did you even read the linked article or any of a search with:
blender export animation to unreal
(I think im wasting my time here …)
I have no problem exporting animation, both with fbx and alembic. No probem with rig either since I followed a course that told me how to. My aim is to export some physics bakes. Example were given: dog with a fat belly that bounces while he runs and moves the legs. That ball I showed as an example is another thing I wanted to test…
I could in theory do physics with unreal, but my specific goal here is to export a baked file. Alembic is an option, but I dont want to use it and I was trying to figure out how to use fbx, since my character has a rig and a pack of animations.
Well then let talk about this (and not you publishing ideas)… so maybe someone can find the problem… You did bake the simulation ?? (sorry i’m offline soon)
Edit: Typo
seems like its not possible. ANother guy asked same thing about the wave modifier. Here discussion: Wave modifier as shape key animation
It is possible, you just have to use Alembic. Just because you don’t like the possible option doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I say this mainly for the seek of anyone else who comes across this thread, I’m not trying to criticize you, it’s just important to note that this is possible
Problem is that alembic file is much bigger than the fbx.
I noticed that I can convert physics settings into shapekey, which would solve my issue if I had to simply import an animation of a file. But what I do is basically add proxy meshes to a character so it has bounce on the belly. Would you advise to do that for game engines? If thats the only option then I will do it. But the alembic doesnt carry any armature.
You may have tried this already, but you can export shape keys into FBX, allowing you to keep your armature:
I prepared an example. Here I have 3 Spheres. One (green in the middle) has physics cloth on it. Red is another sphere, with mesh deform modifier. The third yellow is alembic with meshsequencecache.
What I want to export is the red one. The intent I have is to use proxy meshes, on body. There is an addon called “xmuscles” that does exactly this, it converts the animation of the muscle into a shapekey, and this allows to export it, as you say, its possible. But without having first converted he action of the modifier into a shapekey then the thing doesnt happen.
By the way I think I am one of the few people around that is actually using this addon: https://blendermarket.com/products/x-muscle-system
I am showing you this just to make an example, but I am sure you understand. Basically, the xmuscle addon works only inside blender, but you can create shapekeys.
Well, with the mesh deform modifier applied I cannot create a shapekey, if I try, the action of the sphere is empty, theres nothing. Because the physics is happening on the proxy mesh.
Ok I have a test file to demonstrate the proxy mesh method. I used discord pig test for this purpose.
I have a pig with some stiches on the belly that follow the mesh because parented to a triplet of vertices. I have some proxys, and here we have a jump animation. If I had to export this “jump” I would not be able to do that if not with alembic. because of the issues discussed here. its not possible to apply shapekey of a “mesh deform” modifier.
But, not everything is lost, I think there are methods inside unreal to do this type of thing, even if I would have favored this idea of having baked physics calculations.
