Advanced Animation in Unreal Engine: Customize Your 3D Character’s Movement by Lucas Ridley

If you can already click around Unreal Engine but your characters still move like robots, this class fixes that. You’ll take real movement — shot on your iPhone or grabbed from a library — and put it on a 3D character, then edit it until it actually feels alive.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Record your own motion capture performance with iPhone and Move One app
• Create your first playable character animation in Unreal Engine
• Apply any mocap file to your 3D character and retarget it correctly
• Adjust mocap with layer edits and data-level tweaks for cleaner motion
• Customize timing, poses, and loops to fit your character’s personality
• Render out a cinematic movie file to share in your portfolio or reel

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic understanding of Unreal Engine and how to navigate the viewport and Content Browser
• Tools: Three-button mouse, iPhone with Move One app installed for recording
• Hardware: PC capable of running Unreal Engine with dedicated GPU, Tripod for stable mocap recording

📝 Description

This isn’t about keyframing walk cycles from scratch. It’s about working smarter with motion capture inside Unreal Engine. Lucas walks you through the full loop: record, apply, clean up, customize, render.

You start with the practical stuff. How to set up your phone on a tripod, capture a performance with Move One, and bring that data in. No App Store access? No problem — he also shows where to grab solid pre-made animations online so you can follow along anyway.

Then comes the part most tutorials skip. Your raw mocap will look rough. Lucas shows you how to fix it with a layer-based approach first for big, fast changes, then go deeper into the data when you need precise control. You’ll adjust limbs, clean pops, tweak timing, and push personality so it doesn’t look like stock mocap pasted on a model.

Finally, you light it simple and render a cinematic straight from Unreal. Short, punchy lessons, all focused on one outcome: a character that moves like a real performer, not a mannequin.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Intermediate Unreal Engine users who want to add character animation and mocap editing to their skillset
• Animators, filmmakers, and game devs who want believable 3D performances without a full mocap studio

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Lucas Ridley is a professional 3D animator and filmmaker who got into 3D so he could make films with realistic characters without locations, permits, or crews. That desk setup turned into real credits — including Avengers: Infinity War, Disney’s Aladdin, The Last of Us Part 2, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

He’s now one of Skillshare’s most popular animation teachers, known for breaking down Unreal Engine workflows into clear, usable steps for indie filmmakers and game developers.

🏁 Final Result

• A fully animated 3D character driven by motion capture, customized with layer and data edits, and rendered as a shareable cinematic movie file for your reel or portfolio.