Setting it up

Notifies and the modifier

Getting footstep notifies into your animations.

The Footstep notify marks the frame where a foot lands. It carries no sound of its own, only which foot it was, so all the audio decisions stay in the database.

Adding one by hand

Open the animation.
Right click a notify track at the frame the foot lands, then Add Notify > Footstep.
Set Foot Bone Name.

Put it on the frame where the foot goes flat and stops moving, not where the toe first touches. That is where the weight lands and where a listener expects the sound.

Notify settings

Field	What it does
Foot Bone Name	Bone or socket to trace from. The only required field.
Foot Tag	Which foot this is. Optional.
State Override	Forces a state instead of the one the component resolves. Leave empty normally.
Volume Multiplier	Extra volume on top of the database.
Pitch Multiplier	Extra pitch on top of the database.
Fire In Animation Editor	Off by default. There is no floor in a preview, so it would do nothing.

INFO: A socket at the sole of the foot gives better surface detection than the bone, because the foot bone usually sits up in the ankle.

Doing a whole folder at once

The Footstep Notify Generator samples an animation, works out where the feet land, and places the notifies for you.

Select every locomotion animation in the Content Browser.
Right click, then Animation > Animation Modifiers > Add Modifier > Footstep Notify Generator.
Fill in the Feet list with your bone names.
Right click again, then Apply Modifier.

Revert removes exactly what it added and leaves hand placed notifies alone, so it is safe to try.

How it finds the plants

Worth knowing, because it is what the settings below are tuning.

It takes the lowest point each foot ever reaches in the animation as that foot's ground level. Every stretch where the foot sits within Ground Threshold of that level counts as a contact, and the notify goes on the slowest moment of that stretch, where the weight lands.

The same settings work for in place and root motion animations.

Settings that matter

Setting	Default	When to change it
Detection Method	Ground Contact, Lowest Speed	Leave it unless the results are wrong.
Sample Rate	60	Raise it if quick steps are missed.
Ground Threshold	4	Raise it if steps are missed, lower it if one step becomes two.
Notify Time Offset	0	A small negative value if footsteps feel late.
Clear Target Track Before Generating	off	Turn on to wipe a bad earlier pass. It removes hand placed notifies too.

If it finds nothing

Check the Output Log first. A bone name that does not exist on the skeleton is reported by name.

If the bones are right, raise Ground Threshold. Animations with vertical drift need more room than the default 4 units.