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Animation

UE 5.7's animation stack has shifted significantly from the 4.x days. The modern recipe:

  • Skeletal Mesh with IK Rig for retargeting
  • Motion Matching or Anim Blueprint for locomotion
  • Control Rig for procedural deformation
  • Chooser for data-driven asset selection
  • MetaHuman Animator for facial mocap

Pages

Core assets

Asset Purpose
USkeletalMesh Skinned geometry
USkeleton Bone hierarchy + retargeting metadata
UAnimSequence Single clip
UAnimMontage Sectioned multi-track playback
UBlendSpace / UBlendSpace1D Continuous blend across parameters
UAimOffset (BlendSpace subtype) Aim-targeted blend
UControlRig Procedural rig asset
UIKRig Retargeting + runtime IK
UPoseSearchDatabase Motion Matching database
UChooser Data-driven asset chooser
UAnimBlueprint Authored UAnimInstance

Performance

  • Enable Update Rate Optimization to skip distant characters' animation.
  • Use Animation Sharing for crowds — one evaluation, many actors.
  • Compress sequences with ACL (Animation Compression Library) for huge libraries.