Export Animations from Blender to Unreal Engine 5

Overview

In this tutorial you'll larn how to export a uncomplicated rigged/animated character from Blender to Unreal Engine five.

At a high level, this involves:

  • Preparing your animations in Blender for export

  • Choosing the right export settings and exporting to FBX

  • Importing to UE5 with the correct settings

This tutorial assumes basic Blender knowledge and that you lot already have an animated model.

Preparing Your Blender Model

General Prep

  • Make sure your top level object is NOT called "Armature". If yous leave the proper name as "Armature", yous will get the error message: "Multiple roots are found in the bone bureaucracy. We only back up unmarried root bone."

    • Tip: Double click to rename

  • Set the framerate to 30 FPS (if you had another FPS, the duration of your animations may need adjustment too)

  • Set the unit scale of your scene to 0.01 (Unreal Engine'south default scale is centimeters)

  • Brand sure yous apply transforms to your mesh and armature so that your Calibration is (i, i, one) and Rotation (0, 0, 0). Object > Utilize > All Transforms

Actions

  • Brand sure your mesh has an armature with at least one animation.

  • Animations show upwardly equally "Actions" in Blender and y'all can view your list of actions from the Dope Sail > Action Editor window.

  • Click on the dropdown bill of fare to see your list. If you lot want to rename them, you tin can change the text here.

  • These actions will be exported in the FBX model and volition come up into Unreal as separate animation sequences.

Exporting from Blender

Now nosotros're going to export our mesh and animations from Blender and so that they work in Unreal Engine 5.

This method volition export your mesh also every bit all Deportment.

  • Select the armature and child object(s) that are animated by it.

  • From the menu, click: File > Export > FBX (.fbx)

  • Change the post-obit export settings:

    • Limit to Selected Objects [CHECKED]

    • Object Types: Armature + Mesh

    • Geometry > Smoothing: Face up (fixes the "No smoothing group information was found in this FBX scene." error)

    • Armature > Add together Leaf Bones [UNCHECKED]

    • Bake Animation > NLA Strips [UNCHECKED] (merely needed if you created NLA strips)

  • Choose a filename and consign (if post-obit Unreal naming conventions, prefix your filename with SK_, e.g. "SK_MyCharacter.fbx")

Importing to Unreal Engine 5

  • Open the Content Browser (or expand the Content Drawer)

  • Create and/or navigate to the folder where you lot want to import your assets

  • Click the Import button

  • Find the FBX file y'all but exported and click the Open button

  • Cull the following FBX Import Options:

    • Skeleton: None

    • Skeletal Mesh [CHECKED]

    • Import Mesh [CHECKED] (you tin can exit this unchecked if y'all already take a mesh in your projection and just want to add more animations)

    • Import Animations [CHECKED]

Yous should now see a collection of assets in your content folder: a Skeletal Mesh, a Skeleton, a Physics Asset, and one or more Animation Sequences. This character isn't exactly my best work. 😂