Blend Masks and Blend Profiles
A Skeleton is a hierarchy that is used to define Bones (sometimes called joints) in a Skeletal Mesh. In some ways, these Bones mimic a real biological skeleton due to their position and control over how characters deform.
In Unreal Engine, Skeletons are used to store and associate animation data, the overall skeletal hierarchy, and Animation Sequences. Skeleton Assets can also be shared through a variety of methods, enabling for additional animations and data to be shared between different Skeletons.
This document provides an overview of how to create and use Skeletons.
The primary way to create a Skeleton is to import a skinned character FBX, which then converts to a Skeletal Mesh in Unreal Engine. When importing a Skeletal Mesh, in the FBX Import Options window, leaving the Skeleton field empty will automatically create a Skeleton Asset based on the skinned character being imported.
After importing your character, the Skeleton Asset will be created along with other Skeletal Mesh Assets.
<aside> 💡 You can also create a copy of a Skeleton from any Skeletal Mesh by right-clicking on it in the Content Browser and selecting Skeleton > Create Skeleton. This creates a new Skeleton associated with an existing mesh. If that mesh had another Skeleton associated with it, it will re-link to the new Skeleton and any animations will then link to the new Skeleton.
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Double-click the Skeleton Asset to open the Skeleton Editor.
Bones and other items displayed in the Skeleton Tree can appear different depending on several factors.