Unreal Engine 5.4 Motion Matching in 13 Minutes | 2024
Motion matching is a powerful tool that eliminates the need for handcrafted state machines. Instead, it dynamically selects the most fitting animation frame from a database, closely matching the character's current pose, past movements, and future trajectory.
This comprehensive tutorial dives into three key features: Motion Matching for seamless animation blending, One-click Retargeting to effortlessly import Mixamo animations, and Animation Blueprints for creating dynamic character control.
= Timestamps =
00:00 - Intro
00:27 - Making a project
00:40 - Enabling Motion Trajectory Plugin
00:50 - Enabling Pose Search
00:55 - Mixamo
01:28 - Mixamo Converter
01:45 - Importing Animations
02:32 - Enabling Root Motion and Force Root Lock
02:54 - Character Blueprints
03:57 - Getting Character Blueprints to respond to Player Input
04:49 - Setting up Motion Matching
07:31 - Animation Blueprint
10:06 - Using Lyra
11:09 - One-Click Retargeting
11:52 - Adding Lyra Animation
12:34 - Disabling Orient Rotation to Movement
13:25 - Outro
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WHO ARE WE?
Reality Forge is an Epic Games Unreal Authorized Training Center providing Unreal Engine training to students and professionals. Through our videos here on this channel and our blog, we run courses and tutorials on Unreal Engine and other GCC tools.
This course was taught by:
Shaun Ansari, Unreal Authorized Instructor partner at Epic Games | Co-Founder & CEO of Reality Forge
#unrealengine #unrealengine5 #unrealengine5tutorial
My jaw actually dropped seeing how easily it, "Just works". Epic continues to impress me more and more with each update to the engine. The tutorial was well executed and straight to the point, considering you set up an entirely new project, I'm seriously impressed you compressed it all down that far, kudos to you and thanks for the info!
Thank you so much for your kind words!
I subscribe to what another dude said, the editing is very good, and the information well packed. This might have easily been a boring 50 minute tutorial, but its so much better now.
Thank you so much for your positive feedback!
Motion matching read the Root Motion from animation, calculate the Locomotion blend tree auto, then use in Animation Blueprint. That's a awesome tec!
I've tried it multiple times following the UE documentation, I got as far as setting the animations in the database, but never got the animations to actually motion match. This video is getting saved in my YT Database. Thnx for this mate, hope to see a complete motion matching tutorial, with turning, crouching etc.
Thank you for your kind words!
I am confused at 5:03. On Motion Matching it says Animation>Motion Matching> Motion Database or Motion Database Config. There is no "Pose Search Scheme" option. Please help.
I just want to say, your editing is impeccable.
Thank you for your feedback!
Amazingly articulated tutorial. very clean and clear. Thanks for this
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks, man. Really enjoying the straight-to-the-point approach.
Glad to hear it!
Such a great tutorial. This is just an amazing leap forward in terms of making character animation more accessible. Thanks. Keep it up!
Glad it was helpful!
if every tutorial was to the point like this my life would be so much more pleasant thanks dude
Thank you for the positive feedback!
amazing video, I've used your video over 5 times in different projects. You're killer.
This is great. Thank you for creating this, video saved for future use.
Glad it was helpful!
this is how video tutorial must be done shortest as possible and to the point
Glad you liked it!
If they don't explain sht then its not lol.
You just got a new subscriber. Very good video mate. Keep up the good work.
Welcome aboard!
Been waiting for this since they announced it. AMAZING.
Yeah 5.4 came with so many features! We'll be exploring all of them in upcoming videos
Excellent tutorials... short and packed with useful info. Thank U :)
Glad it was helpful!
Great tutorial, simple and easy to understand, every step is covered.
Thanks for the positive feedback!
Exactly what I needed. Thank you! 🙏
So glad! Thank you !!
Outstanding effort! Much appreciated 👍
Thank you for your feedback!
I havent done any new project for a few years, but god damn this makes me wanna dig into it again
I was looking at what is new about 5.4 and then this video was suggested. thank for the info and simple tutorial that explained how to set it up +1 man epic did a good job at adding this. it made animation so much simpler the old method kinda sucked and took too much time to set up with state machines and all that
You are an awesome teacher. Thanks for the crash course!
crazy how will change the workflow for animations, good im in learning process and can just shift to the new things
You helped me solve a serious problem I was having, props for the video.
Goodluck on your project(s)!
@@Rforge Yeah, I got it almost perfect with a single dance card animation from Ubisoft I was experimenting with. I haven't really made any alterations too the settings yet.
For those who are following this tutorial Please move the Casting to Begin Play in Animation BP and promote it to a variable. In Event tick, just set Trajectory from your Character ref. Casting on Event tick is very expensive and no need to check on every frame as well. Hope this helps But good tutorial and easy to understand.
💯 casting on tick is very heavy I was not able to get it to work with begin initializing animation, if you see trajectory from character ref does it work for you ?
@@Rforge I tried it and it worked, only issue with @sagarhinsu's response is that the casted reference might be requested before the variable is actually set, causing errors in the compiler, so to fix this I used an isvalid node
LOVE it. I need, absolutely need, a tutorial on jump, ie anything that is not just movement. Crouch or jump and I will be forever grateful.
You can toggle different databases(declare each state with an enum and blend poses by int) while using an animation montage for jumping
@@thescoobyshuffle9244 I've also tried this approach and it kinda works, but isn't it against the whole idea behind motion matching? The documentation states that "Contained within the Pose Search plugin, you can use the Motion Matching Animation Blueprint node as a dynamic alternative to State Machines, or Blendspaces". This means that either the documentation is wrong or we're doing it wrong.
excellent tutorial! really well done :) thanks for that very useful info
Glad you enjoyed it!
so awesome would love to see how to record the characters movement during gameplay so you can use it in sequencer for short films! would be SO helpful!
wow!!! awesome video thank you!
Glad you liked it!
You fixed my problem with root bone! Thanks!
Glad I could we could help !!!
What a tutorial ❤ amazing, thankss🎉
Glad you liked it!
This is very interesting! Thanks!
This short tutorial makes me curious as to how memory intensive this particular set of processes is when being used in game and if it could be scaled up to work with large numbers of similar entities for larger scale projects in similar style to the Total War series or games like Age of Empires. Less a question and more just a food for thought comment. Either way, really excited to see how far this sort of stuff can go!
Sir, you've earned yourself an EASY subscription. This was a fantastic video, and I hope to keep seeing more in the future! If you could consider doing a video including the jumps and turns, as well as maybe going from walk to run to sprint, that would be amazing.
The jumps and turns were a little janky, turns can be added in via curved trajectory animations but im waiting for the epic games sample project to see those animations, What has me interested is what is different about these 500 new animations and if there are pipeline changes for thing's like the jump and turns in the way they (the animations) are produced
Great Tutorial my Friend, but i want a Complete Motion Matching Locomotion System like EPIC announcement, do you know if is possible to Make a Project including Jump, Crouching, Swimming, Fall High distance Jump, Mantling, Jump Obstacles, something like This, because i saw the EPIC Parkour video and i feel total happiness, and now i want to much learn how to made that thing too. We can have receive a Advanced Tutorial as Soon is Possible? Thank very much, you deserve all my respect, Great Job Friend. From your Brazilian Subscribed Member. 🙏🙌
Likewise ! Waiting for the sample project with the 500 animations !
Good tutorial thanks for this info. I have one question about the jumping and turning how we can add it on the data animation
Great video format here
Glad you enjoy it!
awesome! Thnx
thanks bro
Considering setting this up using Motorica AI animations, generating some interesting results and easy to reiterate.
NICE MAN
Thanks!
excellent tutorial
Glad you think so!
Thanks for this nice tuto. I was thinking MotionMatching will be an helpful tool to blend animation in sequencer 😭 I was expecting 5.4 will be a nice step ahead for cinematic, but animation artists seems to still be far from epic preoccupation
Epic! Pun intended ;) You just have a new subscriber.
Welcome aboard!
Hello sir! Let's say i have two different set of animations, one for "In Combat" and one for "At Ease" each one have a propper Idle - Walk - Run animation. How can i ask for the Motion Trajectory to select which set of animations it need to be used? Thank you!
Fantastic Tutorial! Also how did you get console command helper? Best wishes
Tilda key !
This doesn't work for me at all. I'm using Pistol Pro anims. I'll test it out with the same Mixamo anims you're using. Could you tell us ALL the movement settings you're using in your example? Do you use "Use Pawn Control Rotation" on the spring arm? Do you use "Use Controller Desired Rotation" on the movement comp? Do you use any of the Use Controller Rotation Pitch, Yaw, Roll options under the Pawn category in your character's class settings? EDIT: I got it to work by getting the trajectory variable from the trajectory component THROUGH the character as opposed to setting the trajectory component and binding directly.
Could you please make a crouch followup? Do we need another state in our animation blueprint? Also could you please explain why we didn't use the turn animations? Thanks for an awesome video!
Hey mark ! Yeah just waiting as I've said to the others for the official project to see what changes are being made on the detection side Right now we just have the trajectory how does it know if I'm crouched or vaulting -Shaun
subscribed. do you know how to record this into a sequence?
How did you manage all these informations? Is it "only" training?
What about blendspaces in the asset list? How does that work exactly? Also how can we add crouch functionality using this?
awesome video
Glad you enjoyed it
What about animations for climbing etc. can you still add usual state machines on top of motion matching?
Yeah you can, i tried that in a test for jump etc it worked fine, you can have you MM state and your jump loop state, that said waiting for the epic sample project to see how they do it! -Shaun
thx u
If we have an existing project with blendtrees do we delete all those animbps? Also how do we use motion matching if we have some animations that should only be played when climbing a wall or wallrunning
I would wait for the sample project to see what epic is doing with the animation / mocap differently for things like vaults etc -Shaun
i have a question , whats the difference between Motion Matching Locomotion and using Blend Space locomotion , i dont see the benefit from Motion Matching ? tnx in advice
great
how can i make with lyra animations, but for 8 way direction not 4?
Hey I have a question : can we use the lyra animations for commercial projects ? great video dude
i have the exact same question. have you found an answer?
@@bumblestudio not yet but i'll tell u if I do
@@Test-xt3ys thanks! 😄
u can
@@user-yt1rq2tk1n source : trust me bro or we actually can ?
can you make a video showing how to add a jump animation?
Bro this feature is insane. Why Epic gotta keep coming out with awesome features I want to make me update T.T
Our thoughts exactly haha
Hey there! Does anyone have any information on motion matching but on a quadrupedal animal? A lot of the information online I have found so far is for human characters, but we would like to do some real time animation on an animal instead. Any help is appreciated!
my 1 question, is it reliant on anim root motion being enabled to work? I prefer driving movement programmatically for my projects edit: and excellent video!
Root motion is a requirement for this, tried it without root motion and it was not performing well
@@Rforge Thank you for trying that out. Turned on notifications for your videos!
@@Rforge Just tried this myself. I may have asked a dumb question. Need RM on the anims yes, but the character is still controlled programmatically, animBP is ignoring RM save for montages... I say dumb question because this is of course how it would be done in Fortnite. Just FYI for anyone else reading this. Like Todd Howard once said... It just works!
how did you overcome the jump problem with the motionmatching from lyra unarmed animations?
Didn't use them for this, used state machine to do jumps the old way till the sample comes out
this makes everything so much easier, but can we mix motion mathing with animation made by ourselves ? i mean if i want to make a fighting game, if i do that, can i mix with battle animations ?
Yes ! It takes anything that is a animation sequence / montage etc
Haven't tried with LYRA or mixamo animations yet, but the default animations didn't work correctly for me. When I start walking it's still using the idle animation until I start running, running works but when I stop my character walks in place.
Correct same for me, which is why I used mixamo / lyra is needs a larger range of possibilities the default animations don't seem to give the system that Which is why I'm super interested in the sample that's coming out soon to see how the anims are different -Shaun
How does it know which animation to play and when? How does it know that the animation it plays when the character is still is an idle animation?
It uses the trajectory to decide in idle it will play an animation with no trajectory
force root locks flips my models upsidown, help lol
hello i have a probleme , when i convert the animations in the mixamo converter , it still give me an error , but ive followed your steps in your last video who talking about that , can you help me pls ?
What is the error you are getting ? -Shaun
@@Rforge something like : "there are missing bones"
Hi, in the motion matching i dont have pose search, i have all the plugins installet
me too
@@edu_src Did you find how to fix it?
Are you using 5.3 or 5.4
@@Rforge 5.3 becouse Its the only one that i can install
How to use this motion matching in the existing human motion resources in the mall
hmm, my BP_ThirdPersonCharacter does not have any blueprint code inside Event graph
Can you try restarting unreal with a third person template ? -Shaun
when i retarget the lyra anims they are all upside down??
Have you used the mixamo converter on them first ? -Shaun
I don’t understand where the correspondence is set like “this animation should be played when the character’s speed and direction is such and such” (for the Motion Matching). All guides seem to use already configured animations and skip this critical stage
This is happening at two points A(The player / us) when we move it is using the feet to build trajectory B(The animations) once again using the feet to build trajectory we have used feet (foot_r / foot_l) in the schema (you can add more as per the documentation) Now all it has to do is match the trajectory with the database Hope this made sense. -RF Shaun
Going from spending a month setting up my animations manually in Godot to seeing this... wow.
Force root locks flips my model upsidown, help
Does this require root motion to work?
Yes needs root motion for this to work -Shaun
👍
For me with Motorica AI generated animaitons is works better, if i turn off the loop. Intresting, because the loop in the sequence viewer the animation not perfectly looping, but the unreal is fix the issue, so if u use motorica ai, turn off the loop.
Thanks for this will make a note too!
Is there any significant downside here? It seems too good to be true haha
Pretty much workflows and integration. There might also be a slight overhead for the processing but I'm hoping we can run that async to not clog up the main thread. I wanna run some stress tests when the sample comes out.
Doesn’t motion matching use more memory? And when adding more animations I guess it’s more difficult to debug which animation to choose. Since you will need to finetune the weights for the animation to start playing.
@@Shiffo You may be right. It shouldn’t be substantial though in cooked builds. Maybe a few more megabytes for the data that’s generated by the system. That’s worth it if you can go from 150mb worth of animations to something like 50 or less and get near identical quality.
I wonder how well it will work in multiplayer, considering it's using root motion for movement. Either way, I'm really excited to try it out, but if someone has tested that, please let me know how it went :)
@@DevGods just had a look at the showcase. +350 animations in a dense animation set takes about 25mb of memory, while a
why are you not using the animations provided by EPIC?
Hey ! The sample project with the 500 animations isn't out yet so still waiting on that and I wanted to show mixamo to ue Incase somebody is using it for rigging -RF Shaun
@@Rforge oh ok I see - thx for the reply
motion matching in UE 5.3 dont work well, i tried the same thing on UE 5.4 and its work well, but i have to wait the UE 5.4 production version
Yep! We believe that the preview was just Epic Games giving us a glimpse into what Unreal Engine 5.4 is capable of, especially for fullscale projects.
whats up with the jumping ? .
You actually don’t have to use an external tool to retarget animations you can now do it in Unreal with its auto retarget feature
Absolutely The external tool is only to fix the skeleton (mixamo is missing a root bone) which makes root motion challenging
@@Rforge I actually don’t have an issue with that so I never had to put the skeleton in a external tool
i don`t have "pose search schema". Who can help me?
What version of unreal engine are you using ? -Shaun
wow..
Btw how about implementing crouch animation also? How to do it?
How come are you able to explain all this so fast in a manner that a total noob like me can understand?
haha thank you!, and im sure you are not a noob at all, everybody has their own progression, enjoy it !
I am dam sure ur from India me too thanks for this great tutorials
No he is from Canada! This is an Unreal Authorized Learning Channel
@@Nandakishore-km8lp yes but he is Indian that's is main thing maybe lived in Canada.
@@crazyguy7585 He is not Indian
why is there still so much foot sliding?
Tweaking the computation / prediction settings helps this but i also notice a bit of slide on the feet
AI will have animation mastered before the end of year rendering all this moot.
Facts! AI is progressing at wild speeds. The issue is how do you copyright anything it makes? -Shaun
What makes you say that? I mean I'd love it if that ended up being true.
so what does it do? cool debug lines?
Animation blending based on trajectory
This was a great tutorial except you really shouldn't teach people to put expensive casts in update calls.
You don't understand how casts work and you're just repeating things you've heard. There's nothing "expensive" about this. Both the player and the anim BP are loaded into memory when the game is played. Casts are totally fine in this instance and won't affect performance at all. It's the same as casting on begin play and saving a reference to the player too.
Says a non-engineer...
What would be the right way to do it then?
You really should stop saying things that you've heard from unexperienced people, casting 10,000 times a frame wouldn't take more than ~ 0.08 ms which is not a lot ... is it a bad practice to keep casting each frame? yes its is it expensive and slow "as people think its?" no its not is it okay to do it for prototyping purposes? yes its
So If this is about the animation blueprint I tried it with initialize animation and it didn't work for me Hence the cast in update call
Good stuff but not really an informative tutorial. Kinda just watch and have no clue what you're doing from you not explaining