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Unreal Engine
Game Development

This workshop teaches you how to build a complete, production-ready animation pipeline in Unreal Engine 5.4.4—from importing a custom character to controlling combat, weapons, interactions, and physics-driven destruction. You’ll learn how Unreal drives animation through systems, logic, and context, not just by playing clips. After 11 weeks, your character will be fully playable, responsive, and game-ready, giving you hands-on experience in animation-driven gameplay.

NO PRE-REQUISITES NEEDED

11 week access to:

  • Live & Recorded Classes
  • Extra Lectures by Jason Ryan, CineSite Animation Director
  • Additional lectures on Modeling, Lighting, and more.
  • Feature Rigs

​Who you learn from Matters

Why This Animation Course?

Most animation courses stop at importing clips and creating isolated motion. This course goes further: you’ll make animation flow through real gameplay systems, understand how Unreal controls characters, and ensure your characters behave correctly in context. You’ll gain the skills to solve problems, adapt workflows, and think like a production-ready animator.

Master Game-Ready Character Animation

  • You learn the complete game animation pipeline, so you can take a character from import to gameplay-ready without guessing or breaking systems.
  • You understand how Unreal actually controls animation, letting you build state-driven, context-aware characters instead of just playing clips.
  • You gain real production confidence, knowing how to debug, adapt, and integrate animation the way studios and indie teams do.

Week-by-Week Topic

Week 1 – Purpose, Mental Model & Project Setup
  • Unreal as a traffic controller, not an animation player
  • Third-person blueprint workflow (UE 5.4.4)
  • Clean test environments for animation debugging
Week 2 – Importing a Custom Character
  • Correct import settings
  • Why skeletons don’t need to match (yet)
  • Why retargeting is mandatory
Week 3: IK Rig and Retargeting Pipeline
  • Creating IK Rigs
  • Building IK Retargeters
  • Manny → Custom Character pipeline
  • Clean, reusable animation compatibility
Week 4: Retargeting Built-In Animations
  • Testing idle, locomotion, and combat
  • Verifying foot contact and motion quality
  • Exporting character-owned animations
Week 5: External Animations (Mixamo)
  • Choosing clean animation sources
  • Retargeting without manual IK pain
  • Why simple skeletons retarget better
Week 6: Emotes with Animation Montages
  • Why animations alone break gameplay
  • Montage-based control
  • Clean enter/exit logic
  • Gameplay always regains control
Week 7: Weapons & Socketing
  • Weapon sockets and offsets
  • Weapons as components
  • Runtime visibility and control
  • Proper attachment workflows
Week 8: Combo Attack Systems
  • Why single-button attacks fail
  • Combo counters and branching logic
  • Montage notifies for timing
  • Player-controlled attack flow
Week 9: Weapon Pickup Systems
  • Weapons as independent world actors
  • Blueprint Interfaces (no hard casting)
  • Transactional pickup logic
  • Clean equip and restore flow
Week 10: Multiple Weapons and Tags
  • Using gameplay tags
  • Weapon-specific offsets
  • Data-driven handling
  • Supporting multiple weapon types cleanly
Week 11: Destruction and Physics Interaction
  • Geometry collections
  • Fracture logic and physics parameters
  • Emergent gameplay through physics
  • Destruction as storytelling

Workshop Instructor

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