In this chapter we examine key processes for handling animated characters:
- Installing ActorX and exporting skeletal animation
- Importing SkeletalMesh content into UDK
- Morph targets and .FBX importing
- Setting up sockets
- Attachments to SkeletalMeshes without using sockets
- Setting up a custom AnimTree
- Defining animations in your AnimTree
- Configuring your character to use your AnimTree
- How to use a single bone control chain to correct an offset crouch animation
- Setting up a physics asset using PhAT
- Adding limits to physics asset joint rotations
- Adding a physics-driven tail to a key framed SkeletalMesh
- Enabling the head to face in a given direction for tracking purposes
- Setting a LookAt target for head rotation in code
- Setting morph weights in code
- Calling up SkeletalMesh animations using Matinee
- Associating sounds with character moves in Matinee
- Sounds for non-Matinee controlled animation
When you consider game character animation, it's normal to ask how to import external animation content into the Game Editor, and how to make it work during gameplay. This is going to be our starting point. It's assumed if you are dealing with this chapter that you already know how to animate a character. The questions that follow implementation of a character tend to revolve around issues of internal control. For example, one might ask: how to access and offset bones directly in UDK, how to let UDK control the animation procedurally, how a weapon's aim direction can be accessed on the fly, or how to switch between animations according to events dynamically occurring in the scene.
The path to enlightenment in UDK can be a rocky one, and it is helpful to think of it like gaining levels of experience.
Be sure to distinguish the difference between simply replacing the mesh or adjusting the behavior of an existing character class, and creating a new custom character from scratch. For the examples that we will be dealing with, given this is not a rigging or an animating tutorial, we will be using a character based on the rig UT3_Female.MAX that Epic Games provides online through their documentation for 3ds Max users: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKCustomCharacters.html.