DDS Motion 1.1.0 / UE 5.8

DDS MOTION DOCS

Overview

Text to motion animation inside Unreal Engine 5.8, powered by Kimodo. Generate, blend and retarget without leaving the editor.

Installation guide

Read it here or download it. Use Widen for a larger view.

DDS Motion Installation Guide, Revision 1.1 Open Download

User guide

Day to day use: prompts, generation settings, blending and retargeting. The 1.1.0 addendum at the end covers phase detection and Export Phases.

DDS Motion User Guide, Revision 1.1 with 1.1.0 addendum Open Download

Installation

YourProject/
  Plugins/
    DDSMotion/
      DDSMotion.uplugin

Walkthrough

Support

Support runs in the private developer Discord, answered by the people who wrote the systems. Lifetime updates are included with your purchase.

Release history

Changelog

Every release, newest first. Owners get all of these free.

  1. v1.1.0October 2026Major

    Locomotion phase detection and Export Phases

    • Make Loop could cut a loop out of a slow down. The plugin now reads each take's start, steady and stop phases and keeps the loop search inside the steady part
    • A new Phase strip under the frame ruler shows what the detector thinks the clip is doing: grey for idle, amber for a start or stop, green for steady motion. Check it by eye before anything acts on it
    • When the export range sits on a start or a stop, Make Loop moves the search to the steady window and says so in the status line. Ctrl+Z puts the old range back
    • Takes with no steady stretch, like a punch or a gesture, are left alone and search their full range as before
    • When the phase pass does not apply, the status line now tells you why instead of silently doing nothing
    • A new Export Phases button beside Export turns one take into three clips: a start, a closed loop and a stop. The loop clip is the best cycle found inside the steady window, so it no longer slows down and picks back up at the wrap
    • Every phase detection threshold is now in Project Settings, with general human locomotion defaults you can retune per project
    • Pressing Make Loop while a loop preview was playing did nothing, and the range summary could show a backwards range such as F78 to F21. Fixed
    • The loop search ignored the range it was given and always scanned the whole take. It now searches only within that range
    • On 60 fps takes the drift check measured half the real root speed and could flatten genuine travel. It now reads the take's own frame rate
    • The User Guide now ends with a 1.1.0 addendum covering all of the above

    Adds a new C++ module, DDSMotionKernel, so say yes when Unreal asks to rebuild modules. It is portable C++ with no engine headers and has its own standalone test build.

    To switch off the steady window bias: Project Settings, Plugins, DDS Motion, Phase Detection, Prefer Steady Window For Loops.

    Detection reads root speed only, so it cannot tell an intended stop from the generator's motion fading out. The strip hides while a loop preview is playing; press Release Loop or Refresh to see it again. Clips whose root never travels show no strip at all, and that is correct.

    Export Phases pieces carry travel even when the recipe is set to In Place, because Motion Matching needs a trajectory. Idle segments are skipped, and anything too short to be an asset is reported. Close Loop On Export is a separate feature and does not split a take.

    The T0 recipe check now reports a changed duration as a retune instead of failing, and lists every mismatch in a set instead of stopping at the first.

  2. v1.0.xOctober 2026Major

    Create Path, a rebuilt Make Loop, and Revision 1.1 guides

    • Create Path steers the root in 2D: drop two markers on the floor, drag them, and the take travels along that line and faces the way it is going. Press Create Path in the AutoPose panel, then Generate
    • Make Loop rebuilt. It finds the natural sub-loop itself, scoring both stance and motion, and moves either end of the export range to the frames that close best
    • Export now closes the loop exactly as the viewport shows it, with no regeneration needed
    • New Release Loop button puts the raw take back, and your pins stay as regeneration anchors
    • A residual warning tells you plainly when the close cannot hide the slide, so you know to generate a more periodic take instead of guessing
    • Clear Preview unloads the viewport to the reference pose, and Refresh brings the take back
    • The legacy timeline tab can be switched off in Project Settings, Plugins, DDS Motion. Nothing is deleted
    • Facing fixed across exports, thumbnails and drag in previews, and the loop close keeps the measured gap when a take is refaced, so your ranges still hold
    • A third shipped patch adds generator heading, which Create Path needs for facing. The install guide covers recovery for all three patches on Windows and Linux
    • Setup now finds the patches folder shipped inside the release, so fresh installs no longer fail at the patch step on machines without the old folder layout
    • User Guide and Installation Guide both at Revision 1.1, with licence notices listing all three shipped patches
    • The guides now match the shipped code: SOMA77 v4 is the default rig, Recipes Package Root is a real setting, generated output defaults to the DDSMotionAnims folder, and the root motion and in place asset actions are documented

    The plugin and engine target are unchanged at 1.0.0 for UE 5.8. This release is new features plus a full documentation pass. Make Loop and range changes undo with Ctrl+Z.

    Upgrading from the August release: replace the plugin folder and rebuild modules when the project asks, then re-run the Motion Studio setup so the third patch applies. Confirm kimodo_gen --help lists --root_margin and --first_heading_angle.

    Generate requires the recipe to be saved under /Game, so duplicate the bundled examples there before regenerating them.

  3. rev10August 2026Update

    Self-diagnosing service startup

    • The generation service now checks your Python environment, GPU and models before it starts
    • Startup problems are written to a log file and shown in the Connection and Licensing panel
    • Stale AMD ROCm settings left by an older driver are detected and corrected automatically
    • Launching Unreal now starts the generation service for you, with no manual terminal step
    • Installation and user guides rewritten with step-by-step recovery for common setup failures
  4. rev9aAugust 2026Fix

    Smoother recipe editor

    • Removed the stalls that happened while dragging keys or leaving a recipe open
    • Stopped the viewport from flooding your project log with diagnostic messages
    • Group paste now drops a copied block of keys at the playhead and keeps their spacing
  5. rev9August 2026Update

    Multi-sample candidates and installation fixes

    • A new Candidates menu lets you review every generated sample, not just the first one
    • Setup checks for Git, CMake and the Visual Studio C++ tools before downloading large packages
    • Startup validates your downloaded Llama model and rejects incomplete or unapproved versions
    • Fixed a packaging gap that could ship the plugin without its preview character
  6. rev8August 2026Update

    Reliable install and animation import

    • The guided installer now applies the required upstream patches for you and verifies the result
    • Import errors name the exact file and path that failed instead of failing silently
    • The Import Python Executable setting is validated and filled in by auto-detect
    • Guides now explain the full recipe-to-animation pipeline, and GPU versus CPU-only installs
  7. rev6August 2026Update

    Offline models and AMD guidance

    • Model files download straight into the folders the tool reads, with no confusing staging step
    • Your offline model cache is passed to the generator, so generation works with no internet
    • Added AMD graphics card verification steps and guidance on which Radeon cards qualify
    • Clarified the difference between the low-memory setting and running entirely on the CPU
  8. rev5August 2026Fix

    The setup runtime now ships with the plugin

    • The guided setup script promised in the listing is now actually included in the download
    • Added a lightweight runtime containing the local service, import helper and setup script
    • Installation guide corrected: the upstream setup file is not the DDS Motion installer
  9. v1.0.0August 2026Major

    First public release

    • Type a prompt, generate an animation, and import it straight into Unreal Engine 5.8
    • Recipe editor with dockable viewport, details, timeline and connection panels
    • Generation controls for seed, samples, steps, guidance weight and output folder
    • AutoPose lets you pose joints by hand and have those edits steer the generated motion
    • IK and FK posing on arms and legs, using the native Unreal transform gizmo
    • Root motion support, with Root Motion, In Place and As Generated export modes
    • Restart Service recovers a stuck generator without restarting the editor
    • Low-memory mode drops peak graphics memory from around 16 GB to about 2 GB
    • Ships with its own character, materials, preview props, example content and full guides
    • Commercial use allowed, and the animations you generate are royalty free