Character Factory: creating your character

Enabling the plugin

Once purchased on Fab, Locomotion Framework appears in Unreal Engine’s plugin list. Enable it and restart the engine: on launch, a window opens automatically. This is the Character Factory.

Its welcome message explains that it can automatically create every file your character needs. It also gives access to the documentation, available in several languages — the plugin is translated into the same languages.

Filling in the character

1. 1Character Name: your character’s name. In the video, My Hero.
2. 2The location where the files will be created. Here, a dedicated My Hero folder.
3. 3Your character’s Skeleton, then its Skeletal Mesh.

The series uses the UEFN mannequin and the animations from the Game Animation Sample project, for their quality. But you can use your own animations, or those from another library: that is the whole point of the plugin.

Animation Folder and Input Folder

• Animation Folder: the folder that holds your animations. This field is optional.
• Input Folder: useful if you create several characters. The Character Factory also creates the Input Actions; to reuse the ones you already have, just point to their folder.

Creating the character

Once everything is filled in, click Create Character. The files are created and you can close the window. To keep it from reopening the next time Unreal starts, tick the box provided: you can always find it again under Tools > Locomotion Framework.

The generated files

• An Input folder, with all the Input Actions and the Input Mapping Context that defines the character’s keys.
• The Blueprint Character, fully set up: Input Actions connected and Mapping Context in place, ready to use as is.
• The Animation Blueprint, which simply contains the Locomotion Framework node: all the animation setup happens in the Data Asset.
• The Data Asset, plugged into the Blueprint Character through the Locomotion Component LF, Config tab.

Game Mode and first test

Starting from a blank template, the video creates a Game Mode that uses BP_MyHero as its character. When the game runs, the camera moves but the character does not: the Data Asset still needs to be set up. That is the subject of the next tutorial.