Day 29 is all about bringing characters to life through animation. The focus lies in retargeting animations, which allows you to apply motion data—such as Mixamo animations or motion capture—to different characters, even if their skeletons don’t match.

You’ll begin by examining how Unreal Engine handles skeleton hierarchies and bones. Understanding naming conventions and bone structures is crucial for successful retargeting. You’ll use Unreal’s IK Retargeter and IK Rig tools to map animations from one skeleton (e.g., UE4 Mannequin or Mixamo rig) to another—like your custom Metahuman or any other humanoid character.

The session walks you through the entire retargeting workflow: importing animations, setting up source and target IK Rigs, defining Retarget Chains, and finally, transferring the animation between characters. Once retargeted, the animation can be used in gameplay, cinematics, or even fine-tuned in the Sequencer.

You’ll experiment with various animation types—walking, idle, jumping, or acting performances—and explore how to clean up any mismatches or oddities that occur during transfer. You’ll also see how to use the Retarget Pose and Root Motion settings to control character movement more accurately.

By the end of Day 29, your characters—whether Metahuman or custom rigged—will be animated and moving convincingly in your scene. You’ll understand how to reuse animation assets across different skeletons, opening up a huge library of possibilities from free and paid animation sources. This flexibility is essential for both indie developers and larger teams who need scalable workflows in character animation.