Importing Blender animations into UE4

Last Fall, I worked out how to create simple animations in Blender and import them into UE4, using separate files for the mesh and the animations. I intended to make a tutorial video about it, in part so that I would remember the steps. Alas, I postponed that video for long enough that I forgot all the tricks, and so this morning, I had to sort it all out again. I'm going to jot my notes here on the blog in case I forget again between now and creating the video.

The steps assume you already have a properly rigged mesh with an animation action created and selected in the dope sheet. Make sure you rename the armature from "Armature" to something else, otherwise the scale of the animations will be wonky, as described in TooManyDemons' answer here.

To export the mesh, from the FBX exporter, choose to export the Armature and the Mesh, but in the Animation tab, make sure nothing is selected. Export that to a file named something like model.fbx.

To export the animation is a bit trickier. I found good advice here. Make sure the desired animation is the only action shown in the NLA Editor, and push it down onto the stack. From the FBX exporter, select only Armature, and in the animation tab, select everything except All Actions. Deselect all the options under Amature as well. Export this to something like model_boogie.fbx.

This allows you to import the model and its animations independently within UE4, although they can still be in the same .blend file.

Other notes that I will likely forget:

• When adding new actions in Blender, tap the 'F' button to save the animation even if it has no users.
• To delete an action, hold Shift while tapping the 'X'. This marks it with a zero in the popup but doesn't actually remove it unless the file is reopened.

Now I just have to remember next Fall that I wrote this note on my blog...