"A lot of animation is just studying your own movement" - Very true... When i'm animating i spend half my time doing slow motion around my living room trying not to fall over lol
Well, thanks a lot Charlie. Been using UE4 for years but I've never really went into making my own animations. I was a bit overwhelmed with Mr Mannequin, but your video has provided lot more help than everything I could find on the official YT channel. Thx for the free tuts! 👍
What I find is helping a lot is looking up "biomechanics" videos on youtube and finding ones that have a good horizontal shot of the movement you want to animate. Then you can pause the video and use , and . to move frame by frame through to find the key poses. Try searching for "walking gait biomechanics", "sprinting gait biomechanics", "vertical jump biomechanics", etc, they are very helpful references.
Seeing how this is a year old now you might have caught up on it, but anyway: When blender is closed, it clears datablocks that aren’t associated with any user. So what the shield does is that it creates a “fake user” for it :) Thank you for the amazing videos!
Ty for your work! I would love to see the use of "Root Motion". Edit: me stupid. It will be up next! Therefore moving the circle at the feet in blender effectivly. The combination of animation driven, curve driven and procedural/ physics keeps my heart racing. Mind u...my heart racing but not making me productiv 😅
I dislike blender animation very much to be honest. But I was assigned to do a short walking animation for my uni course and your optimism and attitude make it bearable for me. Thank you very much!
No worries! Blender definitely isn't ideal for animation in a lot of ways - if you still need to do character animation in the future I'd definitely check out Cascadeur!
Some tips: Animating the arms in fk is easier The hips counter rotate the twist of the torso and the hips should rotate up as the leg fully extends to stabilize the up and down movement of the body, To move the feet in if you switch to the graph editor and select the x translation curve you can reposition the placement of the feet without having to redo the keyframes
Good points, but using FK for arms, that’s personal preference as far as I can tell. My instructor is a professional animator and when i told him I heard FK is better for arms on a forum, he couldn’t disagree more.
@@AndrewByrnes1 oh I didn't mean that fk is better over all, just specifically for the swinging motion of a basic walk cycle. Being able to control both the upper and lower arm's follow through independently is the main benefit. So it's not that one mode is better than the other, they both have their uses.
@@mgrabbe yeah I mean for the arms too. The negative with fk is if you decide you want to make changes to any joints in the hierarchy that have influence on the arms (like spine, shoulder, waist, etc), you will lose the nice lines of motions thst you worked on for the fk. Ik will keep those lines more or less intact. I guess what I’m saying is it’s not as simple as “fk is better for arms”, as it’s really a matter of personal choice and what you prefer. That’s what I’ve seen and experienced personally. End of the day do whatever you want if it works it works
I think IK vs FK is purely preference - I find that using IK to follow the hand trajectory makes more sense when I'm working, even for things like walk cycles. As for the graph editor, I didn't want to overwhelm first-timers with that monstrosity hahaha so I just decided to explain how the up/down keys can work to snap to next keyframe. Appreciate the tips regardless :) I'll definitely be doing a video on the graph editor in the future as it can be a life saver haha
@@AndrewByrnes1 World space orientation at the shoulder joint will preserve your arcs if you add rotation to the spine, hips, etc. Doing so can have other problems, but it's an option. I've always found that it's easier to use FK when doing locomotion cycles, it's far simpler to modify in a graph editor and doesn't require excessive keys to maintain a perfect arc. Personally, I block in FK, bake animation and polish with IK. Best of both worlds. That said, it is all just preference. The only thing that really matters is how it looks in game. :)
you earned my sub. im doing this but on UE5. as blender has no twist bones for the fore arms for mr mannequin. so i just went ahead and stuck with uding the manny in ue5. keep this up man. maybe a tut showing us walking sequence and how youd do it in UE5?
Great video! Been learning to animate myself and its quite fun, but consumes a lot of time XD In a related topic. Could you make a video on how to make a turn in place animation when not moving and looking over a certain angle behind you? Thanks for your videos! They're really helpful 😁
I first did this some 20 years ago in 3DS Max and spent a lot if time walking around looking like a mindless zombie trying to work out how humans walk...
Thanks for these videos. Super helpful. I'm used to manually posing bones (old school) and the idea of using an whole rig is completely new to me. I'm having so much trouble moving the arms and legs how I need them. I can't seem to freely rotate the arms and legs at all, and the hands and feet are glued? I'm still not sure what all the toggles and options are though. An explainer type video would be great.
@@PrismaticaDev I think I found the problem. The red handles for the hands and the feet blend in too much with the yellow ball at the feel and the finger controls. It took two of us 3 days to find it.
@@wrstldev742 Ahhh yes yes haha. It can be hard to tell them apart sometimes, knowing what does what etc. I find that adding the bones that I use to their own visibility layer really helps :)
When I press export it does not export, does anyone know this issue or is it something on my end, I have tried reinstalling the plugin a couple of times but nothing seems to work, please help!
that was nice. would it be hard to make your character taking a sword or hammer with 2 hands and both hands need to be attached to the handle? i really dont know where to look for it for this mannequin. some kind of constrains? but how to release one hand if needed? too complicated for beginners i guess :D thank you for this tutorial was really useful!!!
I've been tackling the same problem and have come up with a few good solutions :) Constraints are a big part of it - you can automate/keyframe the Alpha of the constraint along with the animation etc which is nice. I'll be making a video about it in the future :)
seen a few of your videos now and i was wondering how did yu make that shader or texture pack effect liek the way your graphics look are badass kind of cell shader do you have a tut on that ?.
@@PrismaticaDev cool and also i was wondering when i make the animations after i put into unreal engine the animations are above the ground a few inches idle ,jog, and sprint all are above the ground a bit and when i lower the root the character bends the legs a bit and lowers yes but the fet seem to have an invisible boot or something on they are always a few inches above the ground level ?.
Hey Charlie awesome video!! Keep up the good work! I just started using Mr.Manni I had two quick questions. Which layer would you recommend for adjust elbow angles? And is there a way to keep the Ik's in place, mine seem to b all over the place.
Brother, I know it's not how things are typically done. But could you please consider putting out a video on how to create animations in Unreal Engine 5? There are a handful of videos that go over how to do this, but it seems like such a rare thing. The problem is I am trying to create a specific scene. So I am currently having to use live link to have Blender and Unreal open at the same time. So then I animate in real time over on blender, so this way I can see my character in simulation mode on Unreal and make sure that he isn't moving through the world incorrectly. It's very tiring work, and I just want to be able to create the animation in the world with the character in it.
Hey hey! Honestly, I would if I had any knowledge about it at all haha. I've never used Unreal to animate, only external programs. However, it might be worth exporting a blockout of your scene to your animation program so that you can do it more accurately in there
@@PrismaticaDev I appreciate you taking the time to reply! I'm trying to figure out if the reason no one seems to do this is because Unreal Engine is trash for animating, or if it's just that everyone is used to doing everything in other software, and so why bother trying to figure out Unreal's method? And to make matters worse, when you go check out the learning material (not sure about the old stuff in UE4, but all the new stuff), the Unreal staff are EXTREMELY LAZY in how they try and showcase it. Skipping the important information, and just showing you a quick run down of how to use pre-existing animation stuffs. The handful of videos I have found showcasing it best were on TH-cam, and they involved piggy backing off other animations, via making alterations to the character rig while in the sequencer. It's deeply discouraging. =( appreciate you man!
@@yearight1205 Yeah I think the vast majority of users only use the in-engine animation tools for touching up animations so that they don't have to export/reimport things
@@yearight1205 check if it is what ur looking for mate th-cam.com/video/w9mijf-gKOg/w-d-xo.html , u don't need to configure it all actually, UE5 already have an control rig mannequin in characters< mannequins < rigs folder, and at the end of the video he explain how to animate it in sequence while it is on your level at 51:38.
Hey Filipe - do you mean inside Blender? Or do you mean once you've imported the animation in to Unreal? Both of them are possible, although your character model will need to conform to the Unreal default Skeleton if you want to do it the easiest way. You can also Retarget animations to othre skeletons inside Unreal :)
Hi 👋 I am making a team and this is my first time and I wanted to know how to share files I don't mean to be rude but the engine is not my main language
Hey hey! You can use GitHub for all of your code files and source control, and use DropBox/Google Drive for your large files (art, textures, meshes etc) I might be producing a video on how to share files in the future, but it would be in a couple of months time. Hopefully you can find some good guides on how to set up GitHub for UE4 :)
hey sir, first of all good job!! still impressive how you doin.. short question, i thought about using this new cheap motion capture thing just for the lulz.. maybe u should check it out, if it works well it could save a lot of time. im pretty sure that software would be nice anyway for face expressions but idk how far u will go there :`D
![Animation Notifiers | Adv. Anim Application [UE4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wi4xlNULyWk/mqdefault.jpg)
![Animation Notifiers | Adv. Anim Application [UE4]](/img/tr.png)
![Root Motion Basics | Adv. Anim Application [UE4/UE5]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eUeHhh4ZuEw/mqdefault.jpg)
"A lot of animation is just studying your own movement" - Very true...
When i'm animating i spend half my time doing slow motion around my living room trying not to fall over lol
It’s fun though. And actually really good exercise sometimes if you’re doing attack animations.
Hahaha mine usually consists of me accidentally punching everything in my studio
Well, thanks a lot Charlie. Been using UE4 for years but I've never really went into making my own animations. I was a bit overwhelmed with Mr Mannequin, but your video has provided lot more help than everything I could find on the official YT channel.
Thx for the free tuts! 👍
Me at 17:23 : Does exactly what he says
My Mannequin: Starts walking like a mentally disabled bird
I am so proud of my self for making my own walking animation. Thank you!! You are amazing
So glad to hear it!! Animation isn't as scary as it seems haha
Bruhh this channel is so underrated! The amount of detail in your videos is sick. Thank you!
What I find is helping a lot is looking up "biomechanics" videos on youtube and finding ones that have a good horizontal shot of the movement you want to animate. Then you can pause the video and use , and . to move frame by frame through to find the key poses. Try searching for "walking gait biomechanics", "sprinting gait biomechanics", "vertical jump biomechanics", etc, they are very helpful references.
Seeing how this is a year old now you might have caught up on it, but anyway: When blender is closed, it clears datablocks that aren’t associated with any user. So what the shield does is that it creates a “fake user” for it :)
Thank you for the amazing videos!
what the fuck- prismaticadev - 2022
Great video! Thanks so much!
Very impressive man.
Ty for your work!
I would love to see the use of "Root Motion".
Edit: me stupid. It will be up next!
Therefore moving the circle at the feet in blender effectivly.
The combination of animation driven, curve driven and procedural/ physics keeps my heart racing.
Mind u...my heart racing but not making me productiv 😅
this was awesome
You’re awesome!
finnaly you are back.
Sure am! More to come this week :)
I dislike blender animation very much to be honest. But I was assigned to do a short walking animation for my uni course and your optimism and attitude make it bearable for me. Thank you very much!
No worries! Blender definitely isn't ideal for animation in a lot of ways - if you still need to do character animation in the future I'd definitely check out Cascadeur!
strap in boiz, this gonna be epic \m/
Hope you enjoyed it dude! :)
Some tips:
Animating the arms in fk is easier
The hips counter rotate the twist of the torso and the hips should rotate up as the leg fully extends to stabilize the up and down movement of the body,
To move the feet in if you switch to the graph editor and select the x translation curve you can reposition the placement of the feet without having to redo the keyframes
Good points, but using FK for arms, that’s personal preference as far as I can tell. My instructor is a professional animator and when i told him I heard FK is better for arms on a forum, he couldn’t disagree more.
@@AndrewByrnes1 oh I didn't mean that fk is better over all, just specifically for the swinging motion of a basic walk cycle. Being able to control both the upper and lower arm's follow through independently is the main benefit. So it's not that one mode is better than the other, they both have their uses.
@@mgrabbe yeah I mean for the arms too. The negative with fk is if you decide you want to make changes to any joints in the hierarchy that have influence on the arms (like spine, shoulder, waist, etc), you will lose the nice lines of motions thst you worked on for the fk. Ik will keep those lines more or less intact. I guess what I’m saying is it’s not as simple as “fk is better for arms”, as it’s really a matter of personal choice and what you prefer.
That’s what I’ve seen and experienced personally.
End of the day do whatever you want if it works it works
I think IK vs FK is purely preference - I find that using IK to follow the hand trajectory makes more sense when I'm working, even for things like walk cycles.
As for the graph editor, I didn't want to overwhelm first-timers with that monstrosity hahaha so I just decided to explain how the up/down keys can work to snap to next keyframe.
Appreciate the tips regardless :) I'll definitely be doing a video on the graph editor in the future as it can be a life saver haha
@@AndrewByrnes1 World space orientation at the shoulder joint will preserve your arcs if you add rotation to the spine, hips, etc. Doing so can have other problems, but it's an option. I've always found that it's easier to use FK when doing locomotion cycles, it's far simpler to modify in a graph editor and doesn't require excessive keys to maintain a perfect arc.
Personally, I block in FK, bake animation and polish with IK. Best of both worlds.
That said, it is all just preference. The only thing that really matters is how it looks in game. :)
Thanks You Sir!
No, thank YOU sir! :)
Nice work
When I play the animation in blender, it pops every time the animation loops. How do I fix this?
Awesome! I'm sharing this with some friends thanks a lot for the excellent tutorial ^^. It will come in handy for me too when the time comes :)
Appreciate the support legendddddddddd
you earned my sub. im doing this but on UE5. as blender has no twist bones for the fore arms for mr mannequin. so i just went ahead and stuck with uding the manny in ue5. keep this up man. maybe a tut showing us walking sequence and how youd do it in UE5?
Great video! Been learning to animate myself and its quite fun, but consumes a lot of time XD
In a related topic. Could you make a video on how to make a turn in place animation when not moving and looking over a certain angle behind you? Thanks for your videos! They're really helpful 😁
Sure thing! I've been meaning to do an explanation on how my own turn-in-place system works so keep an eye out in early 2022 :)
when i try to pose for the keyframe the hand disconnects from the arm how do i stop that from happening?
Make sure you're moving the IK control (red) instead of the FK control (yellow)
@@PrismaticaDev ok ill try that
@@PrismaticaDev when I move the red ik control the red parts don’t stay connected to the body am I doing something wrong?
Love the tutorial keep it up
I first did this some 20 years ago in 3DS Max and spent a lot if time walking around looking like a mindless zombie trying to work out how humans walk...
Great tutorial as always. Do you know if an animation can be imported into Blender and transferred to the mannequin? Thanks!
how did you target your character with the addon in blender. is it just like ctrl+P with automatic weights? thank you.
apparently when im adding a new mannequin i dont have the colors for the bone controls. does anybody knows why?
Thanks for these videos. Super helpful.
I'm used to manually posing bones (old school) and the idea of using an whole rig is completely new to me. I'm having so much trouble moving the arms and legs how I need them. I can't seem to freely rotate the arms and legs at all, and the hands and feet are glued? I'm still not sure what all the toggles and options are though. An explainer type video would be great.
Hey hey! You’re able to toggle IK and FK in the object properties tab. If you look at my Animation Basics video I go over how to use IK etc :)
@@PrismaticaDev I think I found the problem. The red handles for the hands and the feet blend in too much with the yellow ball at the feel and the finger controls. It took two of us 3 days to find it.
@@wrstldev742 Ahhh yes yes haha. It can be hard to tell them apart sometimes, knowing what does what etc. I find that adding the bones that I use to their own visibility layer really helps :)
@@PrismaticaDev I can't find this Animation Basics video you speak of :(
how to create the animation if I alread have the skeleton and the mesh?
When I press export it does not export, does anyone know this issue or is it something on my end, I have tried reinstalling the plugin a couple of times but nothing seems to work, please help!
7:22 I feel personally attacked.
1:38 you have to click the shield because the Blender developers hate us and won't make that the default behavior 😅
Hahaha indeed :'( I took the time to make something, you'd think I'd want to save it!!!
5:50 HHHHHHH
Every time I try to lower the pelvis it just make the mesh droop down and be weird
that was nice.
would it be hard to make your character taking a sword or hammer with 2 hands and both hands need to be attached to the handle? i really dont know where to look for it for this mannequin.
some kind of constrains? but how to release one hand if needed? too complicated for beginners i guess :D
thank you for this tutorial was really useful!!!
I've been tackling the same problem and have come up with a few good solutions :) Constraints are a big part of it - you can automate/keyframe the Alpha of the constraint along with the animation etc which is nice. I'll be making a video about it in the future :)
@@PrismaticaDev thanks that will be really helpful. You're the best.
when i twist the spine the left hand stops movimg
it actually happens when i click A to select all but the right arm still works fine
seen a few of your videos now and i was wondering how did yu make that shader or texture pack effect liek the way your graphics look are badass kind of cell shader do you have a tut on that ?.
Hey there! I do have a tutorial covering my cel shader :) Here's the link! th-cam.com/video/RkFwe7JI8R8/w-d-xo.html
@@PrismaticaDev cool and also i was wondering when i make the animations after i put into unreal engine the animations are above the ground a few inches idle ,jog, and sprint all are above the ground a bit and when i lower the root the character bends the legs a bit and lowers yes but the fet seem to have an invisible boot or something on they are always a few inches above the ground level ?.
Hey Charlie awesome video!! Keep up the good work! I just started using Mr.Manni I had two quick questions. Which layer would you recommend for adjust elbow angles? And is there a way to keep the Ik's in place, mine seem to b all over the place.
Brother, I know it's not how things are typically done. But could you please consider putting out a video on how to create animations in Unreal Engine 5? There are a handful of videos that go over how to do this, but it seems like such a rare thing. The problem is I am trying to create a specific scene. So I am currently having to use live link to have Blender and Unreal open at the same time. So then I animate in real time over on blender, so this way I can see my character in simulation mode on Unreal and make sure that he isn't moving through the world incorrectly. It's very tiring work, and I just want to be able to create the animation in the world with the character in it.
Hey hey! Honestly, I would if I had any knowledge about it at all haha. I've never used Unreal to animate, only external programs. However, it might be worth exporting a blockout of your scene to your animation program so that you can do it more accurately in there
@@PrismaticaDev I appreciate you taking the time to reply! I'm trying to figure out if the reason no one seems to do this is because Unreal Engine is trash for animating, or if it's just that everyone is used to doing everything in other software, and so why bother trying to figure out Unreal's method? And to make matters worse, when you go check out the learning material (not sure about the old stuff in UE4, but all the new stuff), the Unreal staff are EXTREMELY LAZY in how they try and showcase it. Skipping the important information, and just showing you a quick run down of how to use pre-existing animation stuffs. The handful of videos I have found showcasing it best were on TH-cam, and they involved piggy backing off other animations, via making alterations to the character rig while in the sequencer. It's deeply discouraging. =( appreciate you man!
@@yearight1205 Yeah I think the vast majority of users only use the in-engine animation tools for touching up animations so that they don't have to export/reimport things
@@yearight1205 check if it is what ur looking for mate th-cam.com/video/w9mijf-gKOg/w-d-xo.html , u don't need to configure it all actually, UE5 already have an control rig mannequin in characters< mannequins < rigs folder, and at the end of the video he explain how to animate it in sequence while it is on your level at 51:38.
okay we learnt how to do it for humans(two legs I mean :D) is it the same with a dog for example ?
Can you make a video about in engine control rig animation ?
I will be in the future :)
Can I replace Mr. Mannequin with any character I want without having to change the animation?
Hey Filipe - do you mean inside Blender? Or do you mean once you've imported the animation in to Unreal? Both of them are possible, although your character model will need to conform to the Unreal default Skeleton if you want to do it the easiest way. You can also Retarget animations to othre skeletons inside Unreal :)
@@PrismaticaDev he means changing the character inside unreal
0:20 is it the angle or does the animation not have any “popping” in the pelvis? By popping i mean the pelvis going up and down as you walk
Different animation in that footage :) good pickup though!
Get reference, plenty of image references with frame numbers
pls dear youtube content creator, add music source to your video descriptions!
Hi 👋
I am making a team and this is my first time and I wanted to know how to share files
I don't mean to be rude but the engine is not my main language
Hey hey! You can use GitHub for all of your code files and source control, and use DropBox/Google Drive for your large files (art, textures, meshes etc)
I might be producing a video on how to share files in the future, but it would be in a couple of months time. Hopefully you can find some good guides on how to set up GitHub for UE4 :)
@@PrismaticaDev thanks for helping
perforce is free for up to 4 or 6 users
hey sir, first of all good job!! still impressive how you doin.. short question, i thought about using this new cheap motion capture thing just for the lulz.. maybe u should check it out, if it works well it could save a lot of time. im pretty sure that software would be nice anyway for face expressions but idk how far u will go there :`D
lol charlie ur joking right.. i thought ur already doin the super great animation.. your already ahead of bethesda in so many aspects haha :D
once more u make create a game look like a breeze.. wp
advanced am I mate shin application
Add fancy mate shin app like cake shin
@@PrismaticaDev I’m so excited for the root motion action animation video! Also, thanks for being proud, I needed that :D
hip...
I definitely have a learning disability
Yeah, it's not exporting, at all.