A few Questions about Rigging and Animations

[DennyR]

Hi folks,

Iam currently working on a few characters I try to implement in my UDK project but before I will get into rigging and animating I need to have a few things clarified first.
Iam pretty new to rigging and animsets in UDK.
So here are my questions:

Using Maya to rig and animate, will I be able to reuse a boneskelleton that already has been animated and applied to a mesh? And if its possible, are there any tutorials on how to do it?

My second question is about animsets. Lets say I will recreate the Bonestructure that UDK uses for the BaseHuman Animset. Will I be able to update or add a few animations to the existing ones in the set?
For example I'd like to keep the Idle, Standing and Jumpinganimations but I really want to overwrite the walking and crouching ones, aswell as adding some coveranimatons. Is this possible? Or do I have to create a whole new animset from scratch?

Ok last but not least, my maincharacter is wearing a coat. Do I have to animate the coat, or is it possible to have parts of the coat moving with physics/ragdoll?


Ok a few questions, I hope somebody can help me. Thanks in advance.

[Denny]

1. Yes. Bones are considered as tracks in Unreal, so if a bone of a specific name exists animation will be played on it, no matter how it's oriented or placed. You can reuse the same skeleton however many times you want with different meshes, as long as you don't change it too much the animation should look similar if not identical.

2. If you want to add more animations it's better to make a new AnimSet. A skeletalmesh can have an array of animsets applied to it, this works by overriding and appending animations by name. So if AnimSet(0) has the sequence Jump and AnimSet(1) does as well, the animation from AnimSet(1) will be used and overrides the animation in AnimSet(0). If a new animation existed in AnimSet(1), it will simply be appended to the animation list. In your case you would make a new AnimSet having let's say Walk, Jump and Cover. Walk and Jump would override the existing ones, while Cover being unique and simply added.

3. You can make a new PhAt for your character, having the parts of the coat as always physed. Another way would be to make it cloth.

If you need the male skeleton for Maya you can get it through my rig in my signature. Note though that the skeleton has the same rules as all other content in UDK by EULA, that you can't redistribute it with your game if you plan to release it. :)

Hope that helps.

p.s. Did you get my PM I sent a while back?

[DennyR]

Thanks for your help. Thats simply what I wanted to hear ;)
Sounds like I will be able to finish stuff just in time ;)

and to your PM, sorry didnt recognize this, but I will send you an anwser ;)