Exporting Alembic files to Unreal Engine 5 from Blender
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ย. 2021
- Exporting Alembic cloth simulation files to Unreal Engine 5 from Blender with smooth normals.
1:03 - Blueprints Alembic play and pause geometry cache component
1:44 - Blender export settings Alembic
2:25 - Unreal Alembic import settings
#UnrealEngine5
#UnrealEngine
#Blender
#Alembic
#Cloth
#Simulation
#GeometryCacheComponent
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![Additive Animations | Adv. Anim Application [UE4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/flHL3qJB3_I/mqdefault.jpg)
This was so helpful! Finally imported my model right, thank you so much for sharing this!!
Dude this is so much easier compared to the morph targets method, thank you!
thanks a lot man, it worked, keep up the good work.
Alembic Files, that is a new thing for me, thanks for sharing!
You are most welcome. I enjoyed your blender to unreal export tutorial too.
THIS IS THE WAY! Thanks so much!
You'd think the alembic export behavior would be self-explanatory and obvious based on the absolute lack of documentation. Thank you for sharing your findings!
this is the only way i could export an animation i did with geonodes! thank yoou sir!
Glad it helped :D
thank you so much. this really helped. keep making vids
You're welcome and I appreciate that, thanks. I will continue making these whenever I get stuck on something and cannot find an easy solution somewhere else on youtube.
amazing man
thanks mate! that worked!
the best! Always help me
nice tutorial thank you! i just wish it was much easier to export over with mats etc
Yeah me too. I mean it looks like each frame is cached in the file so a UV texture should be able to export along with it somehow. I just do not think it is supported at the moment ... but I could be wrong.
What if I wanted it to carry a solidify as well? Can it be done?
So it will work with geonode too?
Very good tutorial. One more thing I don't want to auto active animation by default. I want to activate animation through Blueprint input command. Can u guide ?
I have a question about an alembic export video you did a while back. I came across your tutorial and tried it out, but no matter how accurately I mimic your steps, my alembic file comes out as blank. It's a character animation I'm trying to get into UE, but no luck so far. Do you know what I'm doing wrong? I'd really appreciate your insight
I'm using UE 4.27.1
Hi Gustaff
The answer is in 3 parts.
1) Blender cannot export Bones or rigs of any form in the Alembic file format. Blend shapes are the only things like that which do export nicely from Blender to Unreal Engine using Alembic. So use alembic for blend shapes or for fluid or cloth simulations and possibly things like geometry nodes simulations although I have tested the new geometry nodes in Alembic yet (I will soon ). Alembic in blender basically stores the vertex data into frames so you can think of it like a baked cache of mesh data like a fluid simulation bake.
2) Unreal engine can import Alembic skeletal animations so maybe at some point in the future we will be able to do this with Blender but not in the current 3.0 version
3) If you want to export skeletal or bone character animation then your best bet when exporting from Blender to Unreal engine is to use the GLTF or FBX file format or unreals blender exporter plugin. However I personally think the best method currently is a bit more complex because you have to download omniverse and then download their custom blender build which has all the latest .USD export features. You can export entire scenes to UE in one click though and it is a very nice workflow. Though I am sure that branch will be merged into blender soon and maybe it already has. So maybe try and download Blender 3.0 and export to USD and see how it works. If you notice any bugs then definitely check out Omniverse as Nvidia has the latest USD exporting features there first.
Hope that helps mate :D let me know if you have any problems, if I can help you out I will for sure ;)
@@DirkTeucher Thank you for the response. Much appreciated.
Can you tell me if the .usd format works on character animations or do you think we should stick to .fbx?
I just wanna cover all my bases.
@@MSGSDestiny fbx or gltf is the best from blender for skeletal animations. But usd is probably going to be the best in the future and is the best for most static files. Usd also sends over your material shader and textures. Try them both out.
Blenders usd expoter only handles simple node setups for now. It sends over the principled shader and a bunch of other texture nodes perfectly. Its better than gltf.
@@DirkTeucher Hi, i am trying to export an amimation driven by bones, but the facial expression is driven by drivers, exporting as FBX wont work, since i lose the facial animation, but will exporting as alembic work. i really need help
Can alembic files be instanced, running many at the same time, just on different frames or is this impossible due to the regenerating nature of the model? Thanks either way.
I do not know sorry. Might be worth asking on the forums or on the unreal discord server.
I have similar questions, were you able to find an answer?
@@dr.earbeastuniversity5275 Not able to be instanced. I chose 2D plane lods instead.
Do you have any idea how long Ive been bashing my head on the table with alembic files into unreal? My only frustration is that I didnt find your video in my search until now... thanks so much!
haha i know that feeling . That's exactly why I did this video ... took me hours to figure out the right settings . Glad it helped ya.
Nice job but, how i can export fog or cloud blender to ue4/ue5 ?
Thank you. I am fairly sure there is no easy way unreal engine can import a volume from blender and just work.
Unreal engine has built in volumetric fog tools which work really nicely with god rays.
Or you can also export an image sequence from blender and import it as a flipbook: search for "embergen to unreal engine" you can see tutorials for how that works.
Otherwise I would use the built in unreal engine volumetric clouds or the "ninja fluid" simulation plugin on the unreal engine marketplace which is pretty amazing.
@@DirkTeucher Ok ty
Hi, i am trying to export an amimation driven by bones, but the facial expression is driven by drivers, exporting as FBX wont work, since i lose the facial animation, but will exporting as alembic work. i really need help. thanks for the anticipated response
Hiya, Yes Alembic should work with your setup. But you should also be able to bake blendshapes to FBX also along with skeletal animation. What software are you using?
@@DirkTeucher oh wow, that was a quick response, thanks. I am using blender
@@DirkTeucher that's the problem, i don't know how to bake blendshapes
@@adedavid7026 To bake blendshapes in Blender. In the viewport select your object mesh and go to Object -> Animation -> Bake Action . Then export as .fbx with bake animation enabled and make sure apply modifiers is not ticked.
I should add that when you export skeletal mesh + blend shapes using alembic the skeleton rig does not transfer over but all the skeletal animation should be baked into the mesh as I recall.
I made car transform animation with geometry node. But on import stage unreal gives an error message :( It said see in LOG, but in LOG said see in log -_-
Do you know how to solve problem?
Did you add a realize instances node in blender at the end of the geometry nodes output? If you show a video of what you are doing and showing the exact steps you are taking I would be happy to take a look at it.
@@DirkTeucher I repeated this tutorial
th-cam.com/video/Vt6EMymiTJM/w-d-xo.html
@@DirkTeucher after that video I baked animation and export abc
@@DirkTeucher Is realize instance node need for apply modificator ? I had tried it, but after that animation can;t play :(
@@tim_parker Yeah I am pretty sure the realize instances is required. If you can figure out a way to play the animation with that node included then blender should export the animation to unreal nicely. There is a plugin called "Altermesh " that you can try. It does export geometry nodes setups to unreal engine and you can even modify the nodes in unreal engine too. It is pretty incredible but last time I checked about 3 months ago it did not export textures or shaders. So you would have to manually set that up again in Unreal engine. You might want to try that.
u have discord im having problems importing my model with textures just imports with world grid material
I have not been able to get allembic to work with uv textures. Allembic does work with any shader in unreal. And fortunately my curtains are a solid color so this works for me. It also works great with the translucent shader for fluid simulations.
@@DirkTeucher any news on making alembic work with UV from blender to Unreal? I just tried B3.3 in Unreal 5.1 and still doesn't seem to work.