Epic Games Releases Free Game Animation Sample Project

Boost Your Character Animation Workflows

Great news for game developers! Epic Games has released a free resource called the Game Animation Sample Project. This project is packed with goodies to supercharge your character animation workflows.

Here's what you get:

• Over 500 AAA-quality animations: Breathe life into your characters with a massive library of top-notch animations.
• Fully functional character and animation Blueprint: Get a head start on character creation with a ready-made blueprint.
• Motion Matching toolset integration: Dive into Epic's new Motion Matching system and learn how to use it effectively.

Benefits for Everyone:

Whether you're a seasoned AAA developer or an indie game creator, this sample project has something for you:

• AAA studios: Use the project as a sandbox for pre-production, explore UE4 gameplay animation features, and get to grips with Motion Matching best practices.
• Indie developers: Get instant access to plug-and-play locomotion systems and hundreds of animations compatible with UE4 Mannequins. These animations are perfect for bringing your humanoid characters to life. Plus, you can freely use the animations with or without their Blueprints, and even retarget them to your custom characters.

Deep Dive into Motion Matching:

The Game Animation Sample Project showcases the power of Motion Matching, a revolutionary system for animating game characters. Here's how it works:

• Motion Matching constantly analyzes your character's pose, past movements, and future trajectory.
• Based on this data, it selects the most fitting animation frame from a vast database.
• The system can scale the animation dataset size for optimal fidelity and use Pose Warping to fill in any animation gaps.

This goes beyond just locomotion! Motion Matching is also fantastic for creating natural-looking jumps, falls, and complex movements like parkour. It even uses 3D trajectory prediction to generate smooth transitions with anticipation and follow-throughs, resulting in hyper-realistic animations.

The project also includes a library of poses captured with high-end motion capture technology. Combined with the locomotion and traversal datasets, this makes the sample project a powerful tool for animating any character, including Meta Humans.

Ready to get started?

Download the Epic Games Game Animation Sample Project today and take your character animation workflows to the next level!