Captain's Table Project - Animation

Animation

    In my Captain's Table 3D environment, I really wanted to have some sort of animation - and in particular, I really wanted to animate something in relation to the weather system because the weather system is one of the main aspects that I wanted to build for my scene in order to give it that ''deadly pirate base located near the stormy sea'' type of vibe. In order to do that, I had to learn how to animate in 3Ds Max, then how to export and import properly in Unreal Engine. 

    My goal was to create something like that..

M1421 AN ORIGINAL WROUGHT IRON VICTORIAN PUB SIGN HANGING BRACKET in Reclaimed Shop and Pub Fittings (antiquesboutique.com)

    I decided to animate using 3Ds Max. I had animated in past, in one of my previous years at university, however it was a long time ago so I didn't quite remember the process. Basically, I animated using Key frames and the way you do that is selecting the Key after you've finished modelling and then moving, rotating or scaling your mesh in order to create movement. You do that multiple times, while making sure that you set your frames in the bottom in order set at what intervals of time you would like your mesh to move. 

    Below, I'm going to insert some screenshots from my own development process.

Result

    However.. I encountered an issue. Basically, both my asset and my animation looked completely fine in 3Ds Max, but when I went onto export them and import them in Unreal Engine, my animation just broke.. and instead of having my hanging sing move slightly in the air because of the wind, I had it fly across my map and fall off of it.. not cool.

Not. Cool.

    Unfortunately, reexporting and reimporting didn't fit my issue. I did some research on that and attempted toggling some of the settings both in Max and in Unreal Engine, but that was of no use either. So what I ended up doing was asking my course mate who does Tech Art and is amazing at it for some help and in no time she figured it was actually the pivot points that were causing the issue - so the resolution to my broken animation was going back to 3Ds Max and attaching all parts of the object together, then centering the pivot point and making sure to export the animation as it is.  

    This resolved the problem.