New UDK Hotkey Pref

A lot fo the old hotkeys go away in the june build of UDK unless you set
Prefs>Flight Controls>Use WASD Only when Right Mouce Button

The reason I say this is especially if you are following a tutorial you'll get frustrated when a step involves a hotkey and you can't find the menu for that step either. 

Character Animation Import Steps

It may seem easy to import a character with animation but there's bugs potential with that, odd binding, joints shifted, etc.
The best way I've found to do it is:

Character Anim Import
1) Import Original un-animated Rig, cleaned up as you would clean a rig w/anim after baking
2) Create animSet
3) Double click on that to open AnimSet Editor
4) Set Skeletal Mesh to Cleaned Rig
5) File>Import FBX Animation
6) select the rigged character with animation fbx

If you don't have blendShapes you can delete all the models on the rig in the animation file and just export the baked down bind rig. So you have a character rigged, reference that into your animation scene. Animate it, save it. Run your bake script (select -hi of bind rig, bake all, delete everything that's not a joint in the bind rig or an animCurve) export that as fbx. That's what you import into the animSet, and you can import them all at once if they are in the same folder, like fbx/charName/anim/ select all an import through the animSet editor.

*Video Tutorial on this to come* 

Freelance and Vacation

Just an update, I finished fx for a commercial then went on vacation for a week. So I'm back on the case!

Skin Clusters and exporting

Something I'm working on, whats the optimal way to rig if the number of skin clusters is a consideration? Skin Clusters take up time on export and I imagine on import altho its hard to say for sure since Unreal Doesn't say as much as it imports as Maya does while exporting.

The skinCluster binds only a single geometry at a time. Thus, to bind multiple geometries, multiple skinCluster commands must be issued. - maya Docs

So other than normal clean rigging practices, keeping object count low will help. So I guess the question is, when and how much do you merge objects together? b/c one might separate objects for shading group reasons. (more on that later)

Quick Tip #Obj to #Shaders

In Unreal engine as far as speed and optimization goes:
1000 objects with 1 shader is equal to 1 object w/ 1000 shaders
you have to cut down on one and/or the other to reduce draw counts.

Simple Optimization Testing

Play From Here in Viewport,
Then turn on the following stats ( ` button to bring up the command prompt):

stat fps (this will bring up the MS per frame)
stat unit (frame times for different parts of the engine)
stat d3d11rhi (this will give more interesting rendering info)

Take a screenshot of all to get an idea of the cost.
(Not that I'm already at this point in my demo game but I'm being taught this at work)

Animation Naming Convention

(char)_(action)_(direction)_(descriptor/weapon)

example:

Pollock_run_fwd_pstl = Pollock running forward with a pistol

Pollock_idle_na_rfl = Pollock standing at idle no direction with a rifle

The weapon slot should be considered an extra description

cloud_float_fwd_lite

It doesn't have to be a weapon, its whatever the anim is contingent on for that character/object. If all the runs are with this gun, then it has to be part of the name. If all these actions are after character is hurt... that's the descriptor.