3D Game Character Animations in Unreal Engine 5: Creation and Implementation

Abstract

Unreal Engine 5 was released in 2022, and with its new features Lumen and Nanite making high rendering quality more obtainable with lower hardware requirements, it will likely become a very popular game engine in the near future. Animations are a crucial part of most games, and the new engine version introduced many new animation features with a focus on real-time animation. So far there is little literature sources of the subject, and while Unreal Engine’s documentation offers a good manual of how to use different features, it can be challenging for a new user to comprehend when and why to use them, and how they differ. The objective of this thesis was to answer these questions and define a workflow for animating a 3D game character. The different animation features and their usage were first explored through Unreal Engine’s documentation and community tutorials. Next, the features were tested by animating a game character for a game project and different methods were compared. The study managed to answer the questions of when and why to use each feature, and a suggested workflow was created in a form of a chart. Functional game character animations were created and implemented to a game as the productive result of the thesis.