A Morph Target is a snapshot of vertex locations for a specific mesh that have been deformed in some way. For instance, you can take a character model, reshape their face to create a facial expression, and then save that edited version as a Morph Target. In Unreal, you can blend the Morph Target to cause the character's face to make that expression. Morph Targets can be imported into Unreal via FBX, and will be encapsulated within an Animation Sequence.
This makes it very easy to import complex Morph Target animations into Unreal, since you can have any number of Morph Targets driving a single animation. For instance, you could use Morph Targets in your animation package to animate a character speaking some dialog. This animation may use any number of Morph Targets to capture the full motion of the face. However, when imported, the result will appear to be just a single Animation Sequence. You still have access to the animation data for each Morph Target via Curves.
Morph Target support in the FBX import pipeline provides an easy method for getting morph targets for skeletal meshes from 3D applications into Unreal for use in games. The pipeline allows for any number of morph targets for any number of Skeletal Meshes to be imported within a single file.
This page is a technical overview of using the FBX content pipeline to import morph targets into Unreal.
The Unreal Engine FBX import pipeline uses FBX 2020.2. Using a different version during export may result in incompatibilities.
This page includes information on both Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max, please choose your preferred content creation tool below and the information relevant only to the chosen tool will be displayed:
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Autodesk 3ds Max
Naming
When importing morph targets into Unreal using the FBX format, the individual morph targets will be named according to the names of the blend shapes or morphs in the 3D application.
Setting Up Morph Targets
Exporting Morph Targets
Importing Morph Targets
The FBX morph target import pipeline allows for importing both a SkeletalMesh and morph target all at once. If you import and add morph targets to an existing Skeleton with morph targets already applied, the existing ones will be overridden.
Skeletal Mesh with Morph Targets
Click the Import button in the Content Browser. Navigate to and select the FBX file you want to import in the file browser that opens. Note: you may want to select
Choose the appropriate settings in the Import dialog. Make sure that Import Morph Targets is enabled. Note: The name of the imported mesh will follow the default Naming Rules. See the FBX Import Dialog section for complete details of all of the settings.
Click the OK button to import the mesh and LODs. The resulting mesh, morph target (MorphTargetSet), material(s), and texture(s) will be displayed in the Content Browser if the process was successful. You can see the MorphTargetSet that was created to hold the morph target was named after the root bone of the skeleton by default.
By viewing the imported mesh in Persona and using the Morph Target Previewer tab, you can adjust the strength of the imported morph target and see that it is working as expected.
The effect of Morph Targets is often subtle, but the control it offers the animator and the believability it adds to a character cannot be overstated.