Animations

So far, all body parts that have been loaded are animated. All animations are stored in the Body-Merged-Full/Animations directory, which contains folders for each body part. These folders include various animation-related files. For example, in the Body folder, you will find the Skeleton for the bones mesh, the Animation Blueprint, and the Level Sequence.

We have only rigged and animated the merged meshes that are displayed in the viewport.

How We Animated

1. Importing Merged Meshes:
   We imported the merged meshes from Blender. Once imported, we right-clicked on the desired mesh and selected Convert to Skeletal Mesh.
   Note: If you don't see this option, enable the plugin by going to Plugins -> Skeletal Mesh Editing Tools.

2. Creating the Skeletal Mesh:
   This conversion generated the skeletal mesh, which can then be rigged by placing bones and adjusting the weights of the mesh's vertices.
   For more information on rigging, please refer to this video.

3. Creating the Animation:
   To animate the model, we created a sequencer by right-clicking inside the content browser.
   It is important to load the skeleton (not the skeletal mesh) into the sequencer.

4. Baking and Playing the Animation:
   Once we were satisfied with the animation, we baked it into an animation asset.

5. Creating Animation Blueprint: To access animations in C++, we created a C++ class for each animation and then generated an animation blueprint from these classes. The animations are located inside the Animations folder.

Important: Each C++ animation class must inherit from the BaseAnimation class, allowing us to manipulate the animations during the simulation.

Naming Conventions Used

• SK_ prefix for skeletons.
• CamelCase for baked animation sequences.
• SEQ_ prefix for sequencers.
• BPA_ prefix for animation blueprints.