Animations shown:

• Reebo Idle
• Reebo Run
• Reebo Spin Attack
• Reebo Arm Stretch & Grab
• Reebo Jump
• Reebo Double Jump
• Reebo Falling
• Reebo Landing
• Reebo Hurt
• Reebo Death/Dying

ISSUES AND FIXES

When importing the new skeleton in UE we started getting some errors in the skeleton bones and all the animations got broken and everything we did for our character seemed lost. After some research and asking for help from Sean (one of our lecturers) we understood where the problem resided. Essentially, every time we imported the old animations into UE we also imported the mesh, ending up having a lot of duplicates. Having the same skeleton duplicated caused the bones to be renamed, ex: left_arm into left_arm16, and so on for every bone. Therefore when importing the new mesh with the new skeleton that skeleton was getting renamed too, breaking all animations and the skeleton itself because unreal couldn’t find the matching bones. The workaround to fix this was to export all animations from unreal and reimport them into Maya, for each animation rename the bones with their original name (without number) and re-bake and export, the animation. Then re-import them into UE and assign the animation to the new skeleton. This solution seemed to work fine for us and allowed us unintentionally to tidy up a bit our messy project files. 

With all-new animations working we decided to bring some of the animations to the next level, like the running with tilt for when Reebo steers left or right. A bit like is done in the latest Mario games by Nintendo. This was a fun experience cause allowed us to learn a lot about Unreal Blend Space and its potential. To break down the process, what we did was duplicate the running animation twice, one for the left and right. Then change the root rotation of the skeleton to tilt the model on each side, ending up with three running animations. Then create a Blend Space in UE and throw all animations in and adjust some values like speed and max angle. What the BS does is quite amazing, by using the values that you assign it creates a seamless blend between all animations and creates a whole new feel to the original one. It also required some work in the third-person character blueprint to make everything work.