Master Character Animation with UE5 & Maya with This Gnomon Workshop

Taylor Whitsett's 14-lesson Gnomon Workshop course covers building game-ready character-animation systems across Maya and Unreal Engine.

Game animation doesn't end at the stage of creating movement. The Gnomon Workshop's Introduction to Technical Animation for Games using Unreal Engine is a 14-lesson, 5-hour-15-minute course that connects character assets prepared in Maya with input, state, and physics systems in Unreal Engine. The instructor is Taylor Whitsett, a technical animator and character-rigging specialist.

Connecting Animation to Game States

The course begins with preparing assets for runtime and the basics of Unreal Blueprints. It then covers the Enhanced Input System, Animation Blueprints, state machines, and Blend Spaces, configuring the character's movements to change according to player input and game state. Unlike simply playing back clips, the course examines a real-time control structure that combines movement, aiming, and transitions.

Where Combat Movement Meets Physics

The lessons also include root motion, additive animation for aiming, melee combos, and Animation Notifies. The latter part covers animation retargeting with IK Rig, Physics Assets, rigid bodies and Chaos Cloth, as well as sockets for weapons and props. In production, the way the same movement is reused may vary when the character's proportions or equipment change; this course presents the adjustment points concretely through retargeting and sockets.

Quality Comes from Iteration and Review

After covering debugging, cleanup, polishing, and additive processing for firing and reloading animations, the final lesson focuses on the finishing touches that enhance the feel of a game. Visual animation quality and responsiveness in-game are not the same problem, so the course brings the validation and revision loop between Maya work and Unreal implementation together into a single workflow.

Source: 80 Level · The Gnomon Workshop