Importing and editing skeletons

In this section, we will add our Mannequin character to our project. Then, to be able to retarget animation from one character to another, the source and target characters both have to have skeletons. We will be looking at both of these skeletons in the following sections.

Adding the Mannequin character

To start, we want to use the skeleton of the Mannequin character that comes shipped with Unreal. To add it to your project, all you need to do is go to Content Browser, click on the +ADD button, and choose Add Feature or Content Pack…:

Figure 3.6: Adding a content pack

Once you’ve clicked on Add Feature or Content Pack…, you’ll see a pop-up window where you can choose Third Person from the Blueprint feature tab:

Figure 3.7: Add Content to the Project

The reason we choose Third Person is that it has a full character, including a mannequin, in the project, which we can repurpose...