Procedural animation for humans in Unreal Engine 5

Create a dynamic and flexible animation system which can be adapted to any style of character movement

Created by: Lincoln Margison
Game Developer

What Will I Learn?

• The fundamentals of procedural animation
• How to create a fully procedural walk and run cycle
• How to analyse and incrementally improve your animations
• How to create custom functionality within control rig
• How to control every element of your animation through logic and variables
• How to use IK for realistic foot placement
• How to predict player footsteps based on the environment
• How to seamlessly blend between different angles of movement
• How to create a dynamic cycle-time that adapts to different speeds
• How to create a natural and smooth human animation system
• How to create a system which can be modified for various styles of character movement

Requirements

• No experience with animations or control rig necessary. Familiarity with Unreal Engine will help but all steps are demonstrated and explained.
• An understanding of vectors/rotations would help follow the core concepts that are demonstrated
• This is an advanced topic and may be difficult to follow if you are not familiar with Blueprints

Target audience

• Game developers wanting to create a robust system to save 100s of hours hand-animating walk cycles
• Animators who want to prototype and visualise different animation styles rapidly
• Unreal Engine developers who want their characters to interact with the environment