Play a Custom Animation

The quickest way to animate an assembled MetaHuman character is to apply a ready-made animation to the MetaHuman mesh. 

You can either play an animation sequence or an AnimBP onto the Body skeletal mesh component to animate your MetaHuman. MetaHumans are driven by the Body skeletal mesh component. Animation applied on the Body will be propagated onto the body parts like the Face or Torso.

If you play an animation on the Face in addition to the one playing on the Body, the expression curves will overwrite the ones coming from the Body. The Face copies the bone transforms from the Body in its post-processing AnimBP using a Copy Pose From Mesh node.

Most of the other body parts use leader-follower set up by the construction script of the actor blueprint. If you want to further animate a body part or do any skeletal post processing, use post-processing AnimBPs the same way as the Face using a Copy Pose From Mesh node. Please be aware that there is a performance hit compared to leader-follower.

Import Custom Animation

If you want to import a custom animation, follow the steps below:

1. Import an FBX animation of your choice to use with your MetaHuman.

   1. Create a new folder called MyAnimations inside your MetaHumans folder.

   2. Right-click inside the Content Browser and select the Import function, or drag and drop the animation file into the newly-created folder.

   3. On the FBX Import Options popup, select the metahuman_base_skel from the Skeleton dropdown menu, then click Import All.

      

2. Select a MetaHuman from your scene, click on the Body component, then drag the animation into the Anim to Play field.

3. To preview and edit the animation itself, double-click on the animation file to open a new editor window.

   

   1. Click on Character > Bones > All Hierarchy to see the skeleton moving with the animation.

   2. You can add preview meshes to the animation. Add Array Elements by clicking the + next to the Skeletal Meshes field and selecting a mesh for the top Skeletal Mesh element.

      

Simple UAF Animation Test

Once you’ve assembled a MetaHuman character using the experimental UAF Support plugin, you can test animation with the following steps.

1. Drag and drop the assembled actor blueprint into your level.

2. Select the BP Component of the MH.  For MHs using UAF, there is a new property in the Details panel called “Driving Anim Graph”. Here you can select the UAF anim graph / animation to run on your MetaHuman.

   

3. Right-click in the Content Browser and select Animation > Animation Framework > UAF Animation Graph, then double-click it to open the editor.

   

4. Create a new Sequence Player node.

   

5. Select an animation from its dropdown menu.

   Select “Enable Loop” if needed.

6. Connect the Sequence node to the Animation Output node.

   

7. Now, back in the BP Component Details tab, select the newly created UAF anim graph as Driving Anim Graph.

Next Up

Animate Using Sequencer

Overview of importing a MetaHuman in Sequencer and resources to help you learn more about animating MetaHumans with Control Rig.