Unreal Engine - Free 3rd Person Character Animations

3rd Person Animations for Unreal Engine

Below is a wide selection of free 3rd person animations that can be used either for animation or for a game in Unreal Engine. These are compatible either with the the UE4 or UE5 Mannequin. (To export from UE4 to the UE5 mannequin – please see this Youtube tutorial by clicking here. This does use a Metahuman as the example target character for exporting animations, but the same process can be used for UE4 or UE5 mannequin).

Actor Core Sample Animations

Click Here For Actor Core Animations

Mo-Cap Basics

Click here for Mo-Cap Basics

Neuron Mocap Animations

Click here for the Neuron Marketplace

A source of over 900 high quality animations you can download for free. Please note if you download the FBX directly from the store you will need to retarget them to the Unreal Mannequin skeleton – if you use these animations with the Unreal Engine default skeleton.

To avoid retargeting – Download the MBX (instead of the FBX) animation(s) you require, install the Neuron Software (Axis Studio lite free version), install the Neuron Unreal Engine Plugin and then you can import the MBX files into the Neuron Software and then export them directly into Unreal Engine with no retargeting required.

Mocap – Online T.C. Sword Animation Pack

Click here for a free Sword mo-cap animation pack

Mo-cap Online provide great mo-cap animations and they have also provided some sample packs for free. The link above is for their Sword Mo-Cap Animations. To download, add to the cart and then check out. This is free and you will not be charged.

Mixamo

Click here to go to Mixamo

It doesn’t fell like this post would be complete without mentioning Mixamo. Whilst you will need to do a manual retarget to get Mixamo animations to work with the UE mannequin, this is also a fairly straight forward process and for a short tutorial please see the tutorial here.

Actor Core

Click here for Actor Core

Whilst the animations on Mixamo are of a good quality and will hold up for the test of time, the models are getting a little dated now. However, a fairly new site from Real illusion, called Actors Core, is providing motion captured animation and characters. Some of these animations are free and all are of good quality.

Lyra Starter Game

Click Here For Lyra Game Download

1. The Lyra starter game was built as an example 3rd person shoot-em up by Epic Games and it has over 300 separate animations!
2. Download the game from the Epic store.
3. Open Game and navigate to > Content > Characters > Heroes > Mannequin > Animations.
  1. Here there are two folders: 1 Actions and 2 Locomotion.
  2. These folders contain a load of well animated motions you can use in animations or games.
  3. NOTE: Animations with Additive or ADS in there name, are primarily for video game animations.

1. 1. NOTE: There are some animations that work in the preview window, but not in the level or sequencer. (This is due to the post processing or data layers applied to the animations).
  2. For example the MM_Fire_Rifle does not play in sequencer.
  3. One way to fix this is: Right click on the animation > export > and then rename with a new or altered name.
  4. Then import the same animation back into Unreal and it will work.