Table of contents

Introduction

Shape keys/Morph targets are used to deform object vertices into different shapes. In game development they are commonly used to animate character facial expressions or how they talk. In this tutorial I will show you how to make shape keys in Blender, animate them and then import them in Unreal Engine 4 as morph target animations.

If you're feeling good with the blender there's a short tutorial version here.

Also, there's a video if you have difficulties to understand some parts.

Prerequisites

Blender 2.8 or newer installed.

I am using Unreal Engine 4.23, but older versions also should work.

Basic knowledge of how to use Blender and UE4.

Creation of shape key animations in Blender

Project setup

As usual, we need to start with empty Blender project.

I usually do that by once pressing A key, then pressing X and then accepting deletion by hitting Enter or by a mouse click.

key, then pressing and then accepting deletion by hitting or by a mouse click. Or you can do it your way.

After we have a clean empty project, we must change the scene Unit Scale to 0.01.