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 animations would also be used in other 3D applications and games platforms such as Blender or Unity – although some retargeting may be required. These are compatible either with the the UE4 or UE5 Mannequin. (The retargeting process for transferring animations from one skeleton mesh to another has become far easier from Unreal Engine 5.4. See a Youtube tutorial here.).

On a side note and as a reflection of how quickly things can change. Since this post was originally written – several of these content packs have moved to the new fab store (Epic games marketplace no longer operates). The retargeting process has had a big update and is much easier in Unreal Engine 5 and many more animations have been added to Actors Core. Updates have been made accordingly to this post.

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Actor Core Sample Animations

Click Here For Actor Core Animations

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Mo-Cap Basics

Click here for Mo-Cap Basics

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Animation Start Pack

Click here for an Epic Games Animation Start Pack

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Reallusion, called Actors Core, is providing motion captured animation and characters. Some of these animations are free and all are of good quality.

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Lyra Starter Game

Click Here For Lyra Game Download

1. 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 Fab 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. 1. NOTE: There are some animations that work in the preview window, but not in the level or sequencer.
      2. This is due to the post processing or data layers applied to the animations.
      3. To get these to work in sequencer – open the animation and remove / turn off any post processing files/options that are in the animation settings.

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Slay Animation Sample

Slay Animation Sample

A fantastic Unreal Engine sample animation from Mold3D studio that can be downloaded from the Epic Games Marketplace.

Please note that the animations are not all that easily accessed in this project and ideally having some knowledge of Unreal engine is advisable. If searching for animations in this project – it would be easier to create a custom filter ‘Animation’ then select all animations and copy to a new folder called ‘Animations.’ Then within this folder locate any animations that may be of use.

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RamsterZ Free Anims Volume 1

Click Here These Free Animations on the Fab Store

A great selection of different animations from hand melee to silly gestures.