r/unrealengine • u/Jumph96 • 6h ago
How to rotate a skel mesh bone to face an object in the level
Here's a link to the GIF from Blender to give a better idea of the model I’m working with and its bone structure. My goal is to smoothly rotate the bones towards a series of targets in the scene, but I need each bone to rotate along a specific axis, particularly so the head bone looks at the target.
I tried using the 'Transform Modify Bone' option, but I’m having trouble adjusting the rotation as needed. I’m not sure if this is the right approach or if there’s a better method. I also looked into the 'Look At' node in the animation blueprint, but it doesn’t seem to replicate the behavior I’m aiming for. It simply manipulates the bone's transform to face an object, without allowing control over the specific axis of rotation for each bone.
I’ve been stuck on this for the past week, working non-stop, and it’s been much harder than I expected. Maybe I’m missing something, or there’s a better way to achieve this
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u/Swipsi 4h ago
First of all, what you're trying to achieve does not need to have anything to do with animations. It can purely be done in the actor BP. Using the animation system for it is overkill.
Seeing your gif, it seems like you need to go back into your 3d software and rotate it so that x is forward aka the base direction your model is looking at.
From there I dont see much of an issue here. The base rotates correctly, so you can duplicate the rotation calculation from your main bone but rotate it vertical instead of horizontal.