UPDATE: Around 5:10 in the video I mention clicking on layers to make the deform bones visible. In Blender 4.0 and above the layers panel has been replaced by Bone Collections panel. Use the eye icon on Uefy Body, Uefy Face and Uefy IK collections to turn them on/off. It has the same effect as layers but everything is properly named.
At 5:09 I click on three layers, the last one contains the exported IK chains. Click on that layer to make them visible. You will need to ensure your animations actually contain keys for these bones. By default the IK bones are locked to their respective main bones. If you want to customize their locations. Select the IK bone in Pose mode go to Bone Constraint Properties and set the influence of the constraint to 0.0 then you can move them around and set keys anyway you want to.
Hello, does Blender rigging do corrective blendshapes that are driven by set driven keys like Maya? For example, when you bend an elbow the inside of the elbow will use corrective blendshapes to correctly deform the elbow when it bends?
You can use Blender to create Shapekeys. But if you want to drive the shapekeys in UE5 reacting to an animation. That is done entirely in the game engine. You can create a 'Pose Asset' in the editor then use it with a 'Pose Driver' in an 'Animation Post Process Blueprint' for Control Rig.
UE4 mannequin is fully supported. Only the full fledge mannequins have ready to go metarigs. But you can build you own custom arms only or any other type of rig in free form mode such as czcams.com/video/6laZFauJiRA/video.html around 1 min 50 secs.
The Manny89 and Manny161 skeletons supported by the Uefy are metahuman skeletons minus the facial bones. Metahumans in general are far too complicated for use in my projects and I don't use them.
I buyed your UEfy2.5 to generate a rig for UE5, I followed the tutorial, but when I tryed build Epic Skeleton, the addon don't renamed the vertex groups related to the first rig in the mesh of character. Because of that now I will need to paint the weight on the mesh again using the UE5 rig generated, exist another way to fix this?
This video is for rigging the unreal mannequins only. To rig a custom mesh follow the steps in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html just add the UE5 mannequin instead of the UE4 mannequin shown in the videos.
Currently the addon supports only the older superface rig from rigify. You can build something like czcams.com/video/mJUWJxBzW3Y/video.html with it. That is a bit much though, you can also add additional bones for just the eyes and mouth as in czcams.com/video/BB_bniYzADc/video.html
Hello Rakiz, how are you? Thank you for tool, but a have one little problem. I have my model, I'm trying to do as you suggested. But my button Generted rig is disabled. I make it: Shift + A -> Armature -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton In object mode to get a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. Position the bones into your mesh to match it's pose. Then you need to attach the mesh to this skeleton and weight paint it. Generted rig is disabled. Blender 3.3+UEFY 2.5
If I understand correctly, you are trying to click 'Generate Rig' on the Basic Posing Skeleton object. This is not going to work because that object is not a rigify metarig. Weight paint your character to the Basic Posing Skeleton, that is it's only function. Then follow the instructions in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html The Basic Posing Skeleton will act the initial skeleton and following the instructions in the linked video you will add a new metarig. That metarig will have 'Generate Rig' available on it.
@4:18 - when I click my rig & select BUILD SKELETON - the mesh becomes unbound... and thus there are not skin weights applied to the mesh. Am I doing something wrong?
This video is only for rigging the Unreal Mannequins. If you are rigging a custom character follow the instructions in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html . There are additional steps to ensure the weights from the original skeleton are transferred correctly to the final export rig.
When imported, there's unanimated, unkeyframed IK bones such as the feet that move anyway. I've tried it with other skeletons and this seems to 100% be a uefy or rigify issue. Is there a fix?
Uefy exported IK bones are working correctly. Default behavior for IK bones is to follow the limbs. If you want to customize movement select the IK bone on the correct layer. As shown in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html around 33 mins and 30 sec when I click on the 3rd layer that contain the IK bones. Select the IK bone go to 'Bone Constraint Properties' and set the 'Influence' on the constraint to Zero. Now you can move the IK bone around and keyframe it like any other bone.
Try refresh list button. Otherwise you can send a reply to the email with your download link and order id. Describe what steps you took and what you expect to happen, attach screenshots.
Hi, I'm back I was wondering if you have Discord to post some problems with the addon? 1. Import UE 2. Extract UE Mesh 3. Hide them in the Collection 4. Add UeFy Script/Metarig 5. Add bones from the Rigify Sample and place them 6. Generate Rig 7. Weighted the Mesh (with automatic weight to test) into the generated Rig 8. Refresh List then Build Skeleton after all the process the additional bone that you added is not appearing in the Vertex Group and that way you can't move your mesh along with the Armature because it's not there, I use this previously to my entry and it works but somehow today was not working I've been trying to understand where did I do wrong, make new blend file etc but still having the problem, I started this around 12noon up until now almost 11 works of just figuring it out where I am really wrong I did follow and keep redoing it and still having the same issue, it doesn't recognize the additional bone that I added inside the Rigify Sample box.
Such a great script! I have a question. I animated Quinn but when I export the animation I developed and import it into UE5 it doesn't work correctly when I select the default SK_Mannequin skeleton as the skeleton (on import). The animation is severely deformed as if the bone orientations (twists bones) are not matching that of the default Mannequin. Will yo update this in the future?
The default workflow involves creating a brand new skeleton when importing your mannequin into UE5. This makes a setup that is 100% compatible with Blender to Unreal pipeline. The new skeleton has joint rolls compatible with Blender and works directly for both character and animation data. If you want to use the original SK_Mannequin or SK_Mannequin_Simple with UE/Maya joint rolls then it is can also be done but is a little complicated. You can import the mesh directly to the original skeleton from Blender using the unreal engine joint rolls export as done in the second exported file shown at 5:50 onward. But the animation data can only be exported to a Blender compatible skeleton. So you will still need to import your character with a new skeleton. Get the mesh and animation data into unreal. Then use unreal's retargeting to move the animation data to the original SK_Mannequin. In the end you'll get both your mesh and animation working with the original SK_Mannequin. But if Blender is your main tool. I'd suggest just using a new skeleton and working with that. That is also my default workflow with Uefy, so I can directly export both mesh and animation to ue from blender.
@@RakizFarooq Ahh, I was thinking about retargeting the animations before I commented, but I wasn't 100% sure if there was another way to go about this because in the Uefy script in the "Export Panel" there's a "Move Twist" option where I can select "UE5 Manny (Experimental)". I assumed this option would allow me to export the animations which will (with this option selected) have the same bone orientations/rolls as the default SK_Mannequin and in result said animations would work with the default skeleton and BP in UE5. So just to clarify, you're saying to use the animations I develop in Blender via the Uefy script (using (Quinn) I must first import Quinn and her animations into UE5 from Blender then retarget the animations to the original SK_Mannequin skeleton. Correct?
Yes .. you are correct. There are two separate tasks here. The "Move Twist" and "Add TwistCor for UE5 Manny161" let you rig and export a mesh to Unreal Engine 5 such that it can be imported directly to the original SK_Mannequin and all existing BP and animations just work. However for new animations they need to be exported first to a new skeleton in unreal then retargeted to the original SK_Mannequin. This is because UE uses Autodesk/Maya based rolls on armature bones while Blender does it's own thing.
@@RakizFarooq Hmmm. May you clarify what "Move Twist" and and "Add TwistCor for UE5 Manny161" do? I did notice both of them. On import into Blender I enabled "Add TwistCor for UE5 Manny161" before generating the rig because it seemed like the right thing to do. Does this just add the twist bones into the rig?
In SK_Mannequin the twist bones root positions are not aligned with the start of the bones like Blender expects them to be. "Move Twist" forces blender to position twists like UE5. "Add TwistCor.." adds additional corrective bones on the arm and legs joints. This is only for metahuman style characters which use the full 161 bones of the SK_Mannequin. Unless you have a specific need for such high number of bones you should stick with the 89 bone version. You can still animate in blender with Manny89 and retarget those animations to the full SK_Mannequin in engine. Manny89 without the additional corrective bones is the more reliable option.
I'll probably make one at some point. But you can also follow the process shown in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html the rigging workflow has not changed on the blender side. The only difference is that before clicking on 'Fix Metarig' you need to enable the 'Keep Metacarpals' checkbox and set Spine option to '6 spine 2 neck 1 head UE5' However once the rig is complete importing it to UE5 is very different. You can do that by following czcams.com/video/GdObGfhRPGA/video.html
@@RakizFarooq so my character has UE4 bone structure but I want to make it match UE5 Manny pose for retargeting purposes or do you think I should keep UE4 rest pose and then retarget it to use animations made for UE5 Manny skeleton, I don't know how to approach this issue.
When you click on 'Pose Character' while following the workflow it will match correctly to whatever mannequin you had imported and set in Uefy Script Panel. You can match a UE4 character to a UE5 pose and vice versa.
In my case I find it easier to stick to the UE4 mannequin at this time in most cases. I have purchased a lot of animation packs from the marketplace and all of them are on UE4 mannequin skeleton and pose. UE5 is still new at the time of this writing and there is not a lot of content optimized for the new mannequins just now.
You can follow the custom character rigging video to add any additional bones for weapons, armor or accessories as part of the rig. czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html
Blender 4.0 brought many changes to the api. Use your download link to get Uefy 2.6 that is minimum version for Blender 4. If you are working on a project from Blender 3.6 or older you will need to know how to set the new bone layer names. If not then you are better off starting with a new metarig in Blender 4 with Uefy 2.6 or above. It will provide all the correct bone layer names and support them in the export rig.
I'm thinking your root isn't set up. Go to your Skeleton in Unreal and check the hierachy. The top root should be root, then pelvis and spine_01, spine_02, spine_03
Hi ! When i do ctrl + p and Armature Deform, and after build the skeleton, my mesh seem to do not be weighted to the armature, i correctly select the mesh first and the rig after to set parent. Do you have an idea ?
This video is for quickly rigging the unreal mannequins. If you are rigging a custom character follow the process in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html to correctly transfer weight from the original armature to the final rig.
@@RakizFarooq I have no original armature, it's an character i made, i try to rig him to be compatible in Unreal 5, and ALSv4. And i got big trouble because of bone number between UE5 and ALSv4.
As I said this video is for rigging UE5 mannequins only. You can review czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html on how to rig a custom mesh. If you have a static mesh with no bones you need to add an initial armature and weight paint it. In object mode you can use Shift + A -> Armatures -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton to get a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. Move/rotate it into you mesh and use Ctrl + P -> With Automatic Weights to get a starting weight paint then use blender's built in weight tools to fix/improve it. Then follow the linked tutorial from the start to rig the character. You don't have to use UE5 bone structure if you don't need it. You can just stick with the UE4 structure as shown in linked tutorial if that is what you require.
@@RakizFarooq Thanks you to take time to answer me, i really appreciate it ! Your answer is pretty good, i strictly follow it and already did that, but when i clic to make the rig, and build the skeleton it's seem the weights are not linked to the character :/
If you started with a mesh with no bones you need to add an initial skeleton and weight paint yourself. Did you do that as suggested using the Basic Posing Skeleton?
Hi everyone, I just purchased this addon thinking I would be able to rig a custom character using rigify and export it to UE5 with mannequin skeleton. I watched a couple of videos but the closest one was the one where he uses a Mixamo character, which is not what I want. I'm very frustrated since this is the third plugin I purchase and nothing seems to work consistently. Has anyone done it succesfully from the start? And if so, I would really appreaciate any guidance.
You can absolutely rig a custom character to the UE5 mannequin skeleton using Uefy addon. But let me ask you this .. How much time did you spend learning what an armature is? how to add bones? what is a constraint? what is skinning? how to weight paint? How many times did you attempt to rig and export simple objects like boxes with lids etc without any addon to learn what the exporting pipeline is? If the answer to all of the above is nothing than I'd say you will continue to be frustrated and waste your money, because no addon is a replacement for actual time spent learning, knowledge and experience. If you have questions on how to use the addon and what to do then be specific. Tell us what you are trying to do and what steps you took in detail. I can't get it to work is not a question.
Hi @@RakizFarooq and thanks for your quick response. I have been using Blender and Unity for about 10 years now. Im not a rigger, however Im very familiar with the process using both simple bone armatures and rigify, skinning, weight painting and making games in Unity. Im new to Unreal, and I did not mean to be rude or anything, my frustration comes from several errors and crashes that I have been getting with UE5 when importing skeletal meshes. My question is: I have a character, custom made, I dont have it rigged or skinned yet, is only the mesh at the moment. I want to know what is the best approach to use the addon to add the skeleton, skin it using rigify so I can add my own animations but still retain the compatibility with UE5 mannequins so I can use UE marketplace animations as well as my own. I also learned how to retarget animations in UE, which is far better and more elegant than Unity Mechanim. Thanks for your time, looking forward to hearing from you.
In order to use Uefy your static mesh needs to be already skinned to a skeleton. The addon doesn't weight paint for you. The best course of action is to do Shift + A -> Armatures -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Uefy Manny89 Proxy (A-Pose) to bring a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. Weight paint your character to this skeleton. Do not weight paint it directly to Rigify, it will complicate matters to no end. You can also weight paint it to any of the other reference skeletons in the list if you want to. Once you have finished skinning your character. Start with the tutorial at czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html to rig custom characters. That tutorial rigs a mixamo character to a ue4 skeleton. But the process if the same for you. The reference skeleton you skinned in the previous step will act as the character's original skeleton and it's weight paint will be transferred to the final rigify rig for export to UE5. The only things you will do differently is in "Metarig Operators" you will check the "Keep Metacarpals" checkbox and change the spine to be "6 spine 2 neck 1 head (UE5)" before you click on the 'Fix Metarig' button. The rest of the tutorial is as shown in the video and it will give you a rigify rig that is exportable to Unreal Engine with a UE5 mannequin 89 bone skeleton hierarchy. To be clear at this point when you import your character into the engine. You will select a "New Skeleton" or a skeleton that was built in blender previously imported. You can not select the original mannequin skeleton that comes with the engine. If your goal is to import characters directly to the original mannequin skeleton. Uefy has support for that too, it requires a couple of extra steps but it is not a recommended process.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you for the quick response, another question is that I'm not using mixamo from the video, I use Quinn simple bone to map into my character and also just transfer the weight from Quinn to my character, now after following the tutorial where I'm done generating Rigify then armature deform my character to it, nothing happens because I use the vertex groups from Quinn and they have different name, should I use experiment with Skinning renaming tool?
edit: after scan armature the "custom" appear from the dropdown then I apply armature after doing that I then parent my character back again to the rig by armature deform options then hit Build Skeleton after the process is done the character now moves together with the "Armature". Thank you again for the support. is there a method or a video you posted on the uefy script 89metarig can add an extra bones for hair or extra pouch for physics simulation?
The linked tutorial czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html shows the process to rig any character. It is not about mixamo, just pick ue5 options when building the skeleton. Similarly the ideas in czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html can be adapted to add extra bones to any metarig.
When exporting an animation and importing it into Unreal Engine and choosing the default UE4 skeleton. The Animations is all messed up. If I create a new skeleton on import its fine. Do you know how I can fix it? Bones: "center_of_mass" and "interaction" are also added for some reason to the UE4 skeleton
With a new skeleton you are using Blender centric joint rolls. With the original mannequin skeleton you need UE/Maya based joint rolls. You can check details on czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html to export UE original skeleton compatible joint rolls.
It means the mesh is no longer attached to the armature. Most likely you are clicking on Extract Mesh a second time when the mesh has already been successfully extracted.
I don't understand this tutorial, at the end you can import a custom mesh that will be compatible with the basic sk_mannequin? and create custom animations that will automatically be compatible with sk_mannequin? And what is the roll thing you do at the end? what is its purpose? its not clear At the end you say that you have a new character? but what is the purpose of doing that if its not compatible with ue5 character?
Unreal engine and Blender have different default orientations on the bones. So even if you have the exact same bone hierarchy. The skeletons will not be compatible. This is due to differences in how rigging and animation is handled in UE5 and Blender. To get around this problem Uefy offers two different export options. The export with "UE Rolls" is a drop in replacement for the original sk_mannequin skeleton. There is no difference, all existing Blueprints and animation should just work with out any retargeting. The downside of this approach is that the character becomes incompatible with Blender due to the different orientation of the bones. You can not create new animations with it or export them to unreal. This is where the other export with Blender rolls comes in. If you follow that path you can rig a character, create new animations and directly export both to Unreal using a new skeleton (not original sk_mannequin). You will need to setup retargeting and create your own blueprints. But if Blender is your main tool then this is the recommended path as both characters and animations work on direct import. Once you have your Blender Rolls based character and animations in Unreal. You can also use UE5 to retarget your custom animations to the original UE5 mannequin. In this way your custom animations will also work with any UE Rolls character imported to the original mannequin.
The 89 bone mannequin is called SKM_Manny_Simple in Unreal Engine 5. It's in Content/Characters/Mannequins/Meshes folder. We export it from the engine as shown at 1:35
Hi. I followed all the instructions to the point I have to press the "Build Skeleton" button (czcams.com/video/AhpOrqyGf0o/video.html). Character Operator, Metarig operator and Generated Rig operator sections are missing (I installed the latest version of the plugin). What could I be doing wrong?
If you were using Uefy Script (Lite Edition), go to the Scripting section and make sure to unlink and delete that script. Then restart blender to be sure it is out of memory. (It would be better to start with a fresh blend file) If that doesn't fix your issue then you installed the addon incorrectly. You check the first few minutes of czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html where I install the addon. You need to enable Rigify and FBX addons too. Blender 3.1 is the minimum required version of Blender.
There isn't any specific video for vehicles but the gist of it is that you can use a combination of mostly super_copy and simple_tentacle bones to create your own metarig in Free Form mode. You can review czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html on how to attach rigify parts together. You are limited to parts listed in uefy product page FAQ section. For more complicated machines with lots gears and such, you are better off creating your own custom rig and not relying on rigify.
I would rig person in Epic Skeleton mode and the wheelchair in Free Form mode as separate objects. But you should be able to keep it all as one object if that is what you require.
@@amigoface "Anything from characters, cars, cats, doors to dragons can be rigged with Uefy 2.0" I have several other add-ons but I bought this one and don't see the point of using several different ones if this one will do what I want it to.
If you are referring to Uefy Script Panel properties, pressing the refresh button updates the dropdown options. You still have to select one of those options manually. The dropdown options are restricted to 'Armature' type objects. If it says 'No results found' then you don't have any armatures in the scene.
You can download it using the same link emailed to you when you purchased the addon. If the link is not working just send a reply to the email to let me know. I'll sort it out.
@@RakizFarooq ah ok, I'll ask the IT about it. But now my blender is 3.1, and I tried to install the uefy 2.0 but nothing happens. So it really means I have to get the latest version of the plugin?
Uefy v2.5 is a free upgrade for everyone who made a purchase. You can install the addon as shown in czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html Older versions of Uefy 2 should also work fine in Blender 3.1
In Blender go to Edit -> Preference -> Addons then click on Install and select the uefy addon file you downloaded. You can review start of czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html to see the process.
The foot controllers are aligned with the foot bone by default. You can customize the rigify controller orientation and shape if you want, but this is working correctly.
INSTALL: In Blender 3.1 and above you can install the addon by going to Edit -> Preferences -> Add-ons -> Install and picking the Uefy v2.5 downloaded zip file you purchased. Also enable Rigify and FBX addons when installing Uefy. This tutorial is only for rigging the Unreal Mannequins. To rig Custom Characters check czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html Product Page: www.rakiz.com/uefy
I've never used metahumans, they are a bit too heavy for my projects. However with UE Rolls the Uefy export is the same as the unreal engine 5 Manny skeleton so you should be able to use it with Metahumans. Only the bones in the body matching those existing in Manny are provided. No face bones are included in the export.
This tutorial is for rigging the Unreal Engine Mannequins only. To rig Custom Characters check czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html
I can't thank you enough! I've been watching your videos for years now. Absolutely the best work flows for Unreal rigging pipeline.
The workflow seems to have improved substantially from what I remember from it. Thank you for this amazing tool 👍
Thanks for the UE5 update. Still one of the best rigging tools for Blender to UE workflow.
Wow amazing and straight to the point tutorial, very cool
Rakiz you are the best. I have been waiting for this
Thank you my guy for developing such a robust tool 🔥👍🏾
you are the best. thank you for making easy for us
You are a genious! Thank you!
Uefy is simply amazing!
UPDATE: Around 5:10 in the video I mention clicking on layers to make the deform bones visible. In Blender 4.0 and above the layers panel has been replaced by Bone Collections panel. Use the eye icon on Uefy Body, Uefy Face and Uefy IK collections to turn them on/off. It has the same effect as layers but everything is properly named.
I have a metarig model that I acquired. Can this rig it correctly?
Also, will this work with morph targets?
If im using rokoko retargeting on the bones do I need to set up the rig as well?
The ik_hand_gun bone after export has no keys in the animation. How to fix it? I need to record the position of the weapon.
At 5:09 I click on three layers, the last one contains the exported IK chains. Click on that layer to make them visible. You will need to ensure your animations actually contain keys for these bones.
By default the IK bones are locked to their respective main bones. If you want to customize their locations. Select the IK bone in Pose mode go to Bone Constraint Properties and set the influence of the constraint to 0.0 then you can move them around and set keys anyway you want to.
Hello, does Blender rigging do corrective blendshapes that are driven by set driven keys like Maya? For example, when you bend an elbow the inside of the elbow will use corrective blendshapes to correctly deform the elbow when it bends?
Yes.. In blender it's called Shapekeys.
If you are using Uefy you must create your blendshapes/shapekeys only after finishing the rigging process.
@@RakizFarooq Do the Uefy Shapekeys work in UE5 Control rig as well? If you are using the Control Rig as the animator, not Blender as the animator?
You can use Blender to create Shapekeys. But if you want to drive the shapekeys in UE5 reacting to an animation. That is done entirely in the game engine.
You can create a 'Pose Asset' in the editor then use it with a 'Pose Driver' in an 'Animation Post Process Blueprint' for Control Rig.
Does the newest version work with Unreal 4 still and also does this support the default unreal POV fps arms rig?
UE4 mannequin is fully supported. Only the full fledge mannequins have ready to go metarigs. But you can build you own custom arms only or any other type of rig in free form mode such as czcams.com/video/6laZFauJiRA/video.html around 1 min 50 secs.
do implement meta human compatibility s well in future. If it's already compatible then let us know
The Manny89 and Manny161 skeletons supported by the Uefy are metahuman skeletons minus the facial bones. Metahumans in general are far too complicated for use in my projects and I don't use them.
I buyed your UEfy2.5 to generate a rig for UE5, I followed the tutorial, but when I tryed build Epic Skeleton, the addon don't renamed the vertex groups related to the first rig in the mesh of character. Because of that now I will need to paint the weight on the mesh again using the UE5 rig generated, exist another way to fix this?
This video is for rigging the unreal mannequins only. To rig a custom mesh follow the steps in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html just add the UE5 mannequin instead of the UE4 mannequin shown in the videos.
PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING A DISCORD... your add-on is amazing but yt comments are limited with no images or video.
Does this work with characters you want to have face animations on?
Currently the addon supports only the older superface rig from rigify. You can build something like czcams.com/video/mJUWJxBzW3Y/video.html with it.
That is a bit much though, you can also add additional bones for just the eyes and mouth as in czcams.com/video/BB_bniYzADc/video.html
After I build the skeleton, all of the armature bones are still visible but for you they are not. Why is that?
In armature data properties, scroll up to the Bone Collections panel and turn off Uefy Body, Uefy Face and Uefy IK to stop showing the deform bones.
Hello Rakiz, how are you?
Thank you for tool, but a have one little problem.
I have my model, I'm trying to do as you suggested. But my button Generted rig is disabled.
I make it:
Shift + A -> Armature -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton
In object mode to get a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. Position the bones into your mesh to match it's pose. Then you need to attach the mesh to this skeleton and weight paint it.
Generted rig is disabled.
Blender 3.3+UEFY 2.5
If I understand correctly, you are trying to click 'Generate Rig' on the Basic Posing Skeleton object. This is not going to work because that object is not a rigify metarig.
Weight paint your character to the Basic Posing Skeleton, that is it's only function. Then follow the instructions in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html
The Basic Posing Skeleton will act the initial skeleton and following the instructions in the linked video you will add a new metarig. That metarig will have 'Generate Rig' available on it.
@4:18 - when I click my rig & select BUILD SKELETON - the mesh becomes unbound... and thus there are not skin weights applied to the mesh. Am I doing something wrong?
This video is only for rigging the Unreal Mannequins. If you are rigging a custom character follow the instructions in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html . There are additional steps to ensure the weights from the original skeleton are transferred correctly to the final export rig.
When imported, there's unanimated, unkeyframed IK bones such as the feet that move anyway. I've tried it with other skeletons and this seems to 100% be a uefy or rigify issue. Is there a fix?
Uefy exported IK bones are working correctly. Default behavior for IK bones is to follow the limbs. If you want to customize movement select the IK bone on the correct layer. As shown in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html around 33 mins and 30 sec when I click on the 3rd layer that contain the IK bones.
Select the IK bone go to 'Bone Constraint Properties' and set the 'Influence' on the constraint to Zero. Now you can move the IK bone around and keyframe it like any other bone.
hey, i just start to using it but i'm having sine problem with pra properties tab. it shows nothing
Try refresh list button.
Otherwise you can send a reply to the email with your download link and order id. Describe what steps you took and what you expect to happen, attach screenshots.
Hi, I'm back I was wondering if you have Discord to post some problems with the addon?
1. Import UE
2. Extract UE Mesh
3. Hide them in the Collection
4. Add UeFy Script/Metarig
5. Add bones from the Rigify Sample and place them
6. Generate Rig
7. Weighted the Mesh (with automatic weight to test) into the generated Rig
8. Refresh List then Build Skeleton
after all the process the additional bone that you added is not appearing in the Vertex Group and that way you can't move your mesh along with the Armature because it's not there, I use this previously to my entry and it works but somehow today was not working I've been trying to understand where did I do wrong, make new blend file etc but still having the problem, I started this around 12noon up until now almost 11 works of just figuring it out where I am really wrong I did follow and keep redoing it and still having the same issue, it doesn't recognize the additional bone that I added inside the Rigify Sample box.
You can only add additional bones of supported sample types. Uefy supported sample types are listed in the product FAQ page.
Such a great script! I have a question. I animated Quinn but when I export the animation I developed and import it into UE5 it doesn't work correctly when I select the default SK_Mannequin skeleton as the skeleton (on import). The animation is severely deformed as if the bone orientations (twists bones) are not matching that of the default Mannequin.
Will yo update this in the future?
The default workflow involves creating a brand new skeleton when importing your mannequin into UE5. This makes a setup that is 100% compatible with Blender to Unreal pipeline. The new skeleton has joint rolls compatible with Blender and works directly for both character and animation data.
If you want to use the original SK_Mannequin or SK_Mannequin_Simple with UE/Maya joint rolls then it is can also be done but is a little complicated. You can import the mesh directly to the original skeleton from Blender using the unreal engine joint rolls export as done in the second exported file shown at 5:50 onward.
But the animation data can only be exported to a Blender compatible skeleton. So you will still need to import your character with a new skeleton. Get the mesh and animation data into unreal. Then use unreal's retargeting to move the animation data to the original SK_Mannequin.
In the end you'll get both your mesh and animation working with the original SK_Mannequin. But if Blender is your main tool. I'd suggest just using a new skeleton and working with that. That is also my default workflow with Uefy, so I can directly export both mesh and animation to ue from blender.
@@RakizFarooq Ahh, I was thinking about retargeting the animations before I commented, but I wasn't 100% sure if there was another way to go about this because in the Uefy script in the "Export Panel" there's a "Move Twist" option where I can select "UE5 Manny (Experimental)". I assumed this option would allow me to export the animations which will (with this option selected) have the same bone orientations/rolls as the default SK_Mannequin and in result said animations would work with the default skeleton and BP in UE5.
So just to clarify, you're saying to use the animations I develop in Blender via the Uefy script (using (Quinn) I must first import Quinn and her animations into UE5 from Blender then retarget the animations to the original SK_Mannequin skeleton. Correct?
Yes .. you are correct.
There are two separate tasks here. The "Move Twist" and "Add TwistCor for UE5 Manny161" let you rig and export a mesh to Unreal Engine 5 such that it can be imported directly to the original SK_Mannequin and all existing BP and animations just work.
However for new animations they need to be exported first to a new skeleton in unreal then retargeted to the original SK_Mannequin.
This is because UE uses Autodesk/Maya based rolls on armature bones while Blender does it's own thing.
@@RakizFarooq Hmmm. May you clarify what "Move Twist" and and "Add TwistCor for UE5 Manny161" do? I did notice both of them.
On import into Blender I enabled "Add TwistCor for UE5 Manny161" before generating the rig because it seemed like the right thing to do. Does this just add the twist bones into the rig?
In SK_Mannequin the twist bones root positions are not aligned with the start of the bones like Blender expects them to be. "Move Twist" forces blender to position twists like UE5.
"Add TwistCor.." adds additional corrective bones on the arm and legs joints. This is only for metahuman style characters which use the full 161 bones of the SK_Mannequin.
Unless you have a specific need for such high number of bones you should stick with the 89 bone version. You can still animate in blender with Manny89 and retarget those animations to the full SK_Mannequin in engine. Manny89 without the additional corrective bones is the more reliable option.
Any possibility for you to make a tutorial on how to rig custom characters with 2.5 update?
I'll probably make one at some point. But you can also follow the process shown in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html the rigging workflow has not changed on the blender side.
The only difference is that before clicking on 'Fix Metarig' you need to enable the 'Keep Metacarpals' checkbox and set Spine option to '6 spine 2 neck 1 head UE5'
However once the rig is complete importing it to UE5 is very different. You can do that by following czcams.com/video/GdObGfhRPGA/video.html
@@RakizFarooq so my character has UE4 bone structure but I want to make it match UE5 Manny pose for retargeting purposes or do you think I should keep UE4 rest pose and then retarget it to use animations made for UE5 Manny skeleton, I don't know how to approach this issue.
When you click on 'Pose Character' while following the workflow it will match correctly to whatever mannequin you had imported and set in Uefy Script Panel.
You can match a UE4 character to a UE5 pose and vice versa.
In my case I find it easier to stick to the UE4 mannequin at this time in most cases. I have purchased a lot of animation packs from the marketplace and all of them are on UE4 mannequin skeleton and pose.
UE5 is still new at the time of this writing and there is not a lot of content optimized for the new mannequins just now.
@@RakizFarooq then that's what I'll do as I also have tons of anims from the marketplace so thank you so much.
what about if i want to animate it with weapons?? i cant scale them up
You can follow the custom character rigging video to add any additional bones for weapons, armor or accessories as part of the rig. czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html
Got a ton of errors trying to do this in 4.0, all of the errors pointed to a lack of bone layers. Everything was fine in 3.6 however.
Blender 4.0 brought many changes to the api. Use your download link to get Uefy 2.6 that is minimum version for Blender 4.
If you are working on a project from Blender 3.6 or older you will need to know how to set the new bone layer names. If not then you are better off starting with a new metarig in Blender 4 with Uefy 2.6 or above.
It will provide all the correct bone layer names and support them in the export rig.
i am getting this error when importing to unreal "Multiple roots are found in the bone hierarchy. We only support single root bone."
I'm thinking your root isn't set up. Go to your Skeleton in Unreal and check the hierachy. The top root should be root, then pelvis and spine_01, spine_02, spine_03
Hi ! When i do ctrl + p and Armature Deform, and after build the skeleton, my mesh seem to do not be weighted to the armature, i correctly select the mesh first and the rig after to set parent. Do you have an idea ?
This video is for quickly rigging the unreal mannequins. If you are rigging a custom character follow the process in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html to correctly transfer weight from the original armature to the final rig.
@@RakizFarooq I have no original armature, it's an character i made, i try to rig him to be compatible in Unreal 5, and ALSv4. And i got big trouble because of bone number between UE5 and ALSv4.
As I said this video is for rigging UE5 mannequins only. You can review czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html on how to rig a custom mesh. If you have a static mesh with no bones you need to add an initial armature and weight paint it. In object mode you can use Shift + A -> Armatures -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton to get a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. Move/rotate it into you mesh and use Ctrl + P -> With Automatic Weights to get a starting weight paint then use blender's built in weight tools to fix/improve it. Then follow the linked tutorial from the start to rig the character.
You don't have to use UE5 bone structure if you don't need it. You can just stick with the UE4 structure as shown in linked tutorial if that is what you require.
@@RakizFarooq Thanks you to take time to answer me, i really appreciate it ! Your answer is pretty good, i strictly follow it and already did that, but when i clic to make the rig, and build the skeleton it's seem the weights are not linked to the character :/
If you started with a mesh with no bones you need to add an initial skeleton and weight paint yourself. Did you do that as suggested using the Basic Posing Skeleton?
Hi everyone, I just purchased this addon thinking I would be able to rig a custom character using rigify and export it to UE5 with mannequin skeleton. I watched a couple of videos but the closest one was the one where he uses a Mixamo character, which is not what I want. I'm very frustrated since this is the third plugin I purchase and nothing seems to work consistently. Has anyone done it succesfully from the start? And if so, I would really appreaciate any guidance.
You can absolutely rig a custom character to the UE5 mannequin skeleton using Uefy addon.
But let me ask you this .. How much time did you spend learning what an armature is? how to add bones? what is a constraint? what is skinning? how to weight paint? How many times did you attempt to rig and export simple objects like boxes with lids etc without any addon to learn what the exporting pipeline is?
If the answer to all of the above is nothing than I'd say you will continue to be frustrated and waste your money, because no addon is a replacement for actual time spent learning, knowledge and experience.
If you have questions on how to use the addon and what to do then be specific.
Tell us what you are trying to do and what steps you took in detail. I can't get it to work is not a question.
Hi @@RakizFarooq and thanks for your quick response. I have been using Blender and Unity for about 10 years now.
Im not a rigger, however Im very familiar with the process using both simple bone armatures and rigify, skinning, weight painting and making games in Unity. Im new to Unreal, and I did not mean to be rude or anything, my frustration comes from several errors and crashes that I have been getting with UE5 when importing skeletal meshes.
My question is:
I have a character, custom made, I dont have it rigged or skinned yet, is only the mesh at the moment.
I want to know what is the best approach to use the addon to add the skeleton, skin it using rigify so I can add my own animations but still retain the compatibility with UE5 mannequins so I can use UE marketplace animations as well as my own.
I also learned how to retarget animations in UE, which is far better and more elegant than Unity Mechanim.
Thanks for your time, looking forward to hearing from you.
In order to use Uefy your static mesh needs to be already skinned to a skeleton. The addon doesn't weight paint for you. The best course of action is to do Shift + A -> Armatures -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Uefy Manny89 Proxy (A-Pose) to bring a prebuilt skeleton into the scene.
Weight paint your character to this skeleton. Do not weight paint it directly to Rigify, it will complicate matters to no end. You can also weight paint it to any of the other reference skeletons in the list if you want to.
Once you have finished skinning your character. Start with the tutorial at czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html to rig custom characters. That tutorial rigs a mixamo character to a ue4 skeleton. But the process if the same for you. The reference skeleton you skinned in the previous step will act as the character's original skeleton and it's weight paint will be transferred to the final rigify rig for export to UE5.
The only things you will do differently is in "Metarig Operators" you will check the "Keep Metacarpals" checkbox and change the spine to be "6 spine 2 neck 1 head (UE5)" before you click on the 'Fix Metarig' button.
The rest of the tutorial is as shown in the video and it will give you a rigify rig that is exportable to Unreal Engine with a UE5 mannequin 89 bone skeleton hierarchy.
To be clear at this point when you import your character into the engine. You will select a "New Skeleton" or a skeleton that was built in blender previously imported. You can not select the original mannequin skeleton that comes with the engine. If your goal is to import characters directly to the original mannequin skeleton. Uefy has support for that too, it requires a couple of extra steps but it is not a recommended process.
@@RakizFarooq thanks for the explanation, I will try that and let you know how it went.
is it possible to adjust the bone rig to fit the character with different scale?
Yes .. you can adjust the metarig to fit custom characters of any size as shown in czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html
@@RakizFarooq Thank you for the quick response, another question is that I'm not using mixamo from the video, I use Quinn simple bone to map into my character and also just transfer the weight from Quinn to my character, now after following the tutorial where I'm done generating Rigify then armature deform my character to it, nothing happens because I use the vertex groups from Quinn and they have different name, should I use experiment with Skinning renaming tool?
edit: after scan armature the "custom" appear from the dropdown then I apply armature after doing that I then parent my character back again to the rig by armature deform options then hit Build Skeleton after the process is done the character now moves together with the "Armature". Thank you again for the support.
is there a method or a video you posted on the uefy script 89metarig can add an extra bones for hair or extra pouch for physics simulation?
The linked tutorial czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html shows the process to rig any character. It is not about mixamo, just pick ue5 options when building the skeleton.
Similarly the ideas in czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html can be adapted to add extra bones to any metarig.
When exporting an animation and importing it into Unreal Engine and choosing the default UE4 skeleton. The Animations is all messed up. If I create a new skeleton on import its fine. Do you know how I can fix it? Bones: "center_of_mass" and "interaction" are also added for some reason to the UE4 skeleton
With a new skeleton you are using Blender centric joint rolls. With the original mannequin skeleton you need UE/Maya based joint rolls. You can check details on czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html to export UE original skeleton compatible joint rolls.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you!
When I click Extract Mesh, I get the error "selected mesh must be the child of an armature". This is the simple UE5 Manny I exported from Ue5.
It means the mesh is no longer attached to the armature. Most likely you are clicking on Extract Mesh a second time when the mesh has already been successfully extracted.
I don't understand this tutorial, at the end you can import a custom mesh that will be compatible with the basic sk_mannequin? and create custom animations that will automatically be compatible with sk_mannequin?
And what is the roll thing you do at the end? what is its purpose? its not clear
At the end you say that you have a new character? but what is the purpose of doing that if its not compatible with ue5 character?
This tutorial is for rigging the Mannequin character only. To rig a custom mesh you can check czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html
Unreal engine and Blender have different default orientations on the bones. So even if you have the exact same bone hierarchy. The skeletons will not be compatible. This is due to differences in how rigging and animation is handled in UE5 and Blender.
To get around this problem Uefy offers two different export options.
The export with "UE Rolls" is a drop in replacement for the original sk_mannequin skeleton. There is no difference, all existing Blueprints and animation should just work with out any retargeting.
The downside of this approach is that the character becomes incompatible with Blender due to the different orientation of the bones. You can not create new animations with it or export them to unreal.
This is where the other export with Blender rolls comes in. If you follow that path you can rig a character, create new animations and directly export both to Unreal using a new skeleton (not original sk_mannequin). You will need to setup retargeting and create your own blueprints. But if Blender is your main tool then this is the recommended path as both characters and animations work on direct import.
Once you have your Blender Rolls based character and animations in Unreal. You can also use UE5 to retarget your custom animations to the original UE5 mannequin. In this way your custom animations will also work with any UE Rolls character imported to the original mannequin.
Um excuse me where can I find manny 89 bone mannequin?
The 89 bone mannequin is called SKM_Manny_Simple in Unreal Engine 5. It's in Content/Characters/Mannequins/Meshes folder. We export it from the engine as shown at 1:35
Hi. I followed all the instructions to the point I have to press the "Build Skeleton" button (czcams.com/video/AhpOrqyGf0o/video.html). Character Operator, Metarig operator and Generated Rig operator sections are missing (I installed the latest version of the plugin). What could I be doing wrong?
If you were using Uefy Script (Lite Edition), go to the Scripting section and make sure to unlink and delete that script. Then restart blender to be sure it is out of memory. (It would be better to start with a fresh blend file)
If that doesn't fix your issue then you installed the addon incorrectly. You check the first few minutes of czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html where I install the addon. You need to enable Rigify and FBX addons too. Blender 3.1 is the minimum required version of Blender.
@@RakizFarooq Thanks a lot. Unlinking and deleting the script worked!
Do you have a tutorial for rigging vehicles with uefy?
There isn't any specific video for vehicles but the gist of it is that you can use a combination of mostly super_copy and simple_tentacle bones to create your own metarig in Free Form mode.
You can review czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html on how to attach rigify parts together. You are limited to parts listed in uefy product page FAQ section. For more complicated machines with lots gears and such, you are better off creating your own custom rig and not relying on rigify.
I would rig person in Epic Skeleton mode and the wheelchair in Free Form mode as separate objects. But you should be able to keep it all as one object if that is what you require.
@@RakizFarooq Ok thanks. I'll try that.
There is specific addons for car rigging In blender
@@amigoface "Anything from characters, cars, cats, doors to dragons can be rigged with Uefy 2.0" I have several other add-ons but I bought this one and don't see the point of using several different ones if this one will do what I want it to.
the properties tba is empty and refreshing it does nothing
If you are referring to Uefy Script Panel properties, pressing the refresh button updates the dropdown options. You still have to select one of those options manually.
The dropdown options are restricted to 'Armature' type objects. If it says 'No results found' then you don't have any armatures in the scene.
I have uefy 2.0, how do I get the latest version?
You can download it using the same link emailed to you when you purchased the addon. If the link is not working just send a reply to the email to let me know. I'll sort it out.
@@RakizFarooq ah ok, I'll ask the IT about it. But now my blender is 3.1, and I tried to install the uefy 2.0 but nothing happens. So it really means I have to get the latest version of the plugin?
Uefy v2.5 is a free upgrade for everyone who made a purchase.
You can install the addon as shown in czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html
Older versions of Uefy 2 should also work fine in Blender 3.1
Hi. I have a problem.. I want to install uefy in blender, but its does not appear in the addons list. Can you help me? Thank you!
In Blender go to Edit -> Preference -> Addons then click on Install and select the uefy addon file you downloaded.
You can review start of czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html to see the process.
@@RakizFarooq I did it, but does not work :c. I have blender 3.0.0 and 2.83.20.
Uefy 2.5 requires Blender 3.1 due to recent upgrades in Rigify.
@@RakizFarooq Still dont work. Im use the lite versión. This is the problem?
This video is only for Uefy 2.5 or above.
For lite edition you can check czcams.com/video/RAS4uZJcJ_o/video.html
✨👌😎😮😵😮😎👍✨
i do not have the extract mesh tool option
DId you install the Uefy v2.5 addon in blender with Edit -> Preferences -> addons -> install ?
@@RakizFarooq yes sorry Now I am missing setup scene button. It is fully updated. Is there a workaround?
@@RakizFarooq yes I did. Everything is there except the "Setup scene."
This video is for Uefy v2.5 (Pro Edition) or above only.
@@RakizFarooq Of I just realized I have 2.3 my apologies
why are ankles a bit bended 4:55 ...
The foot controllers are aligned with the foot bone by default. You can customize the rigify controller orientation and shape if you want, but this is working correctly.
INSTALL: In Blender 3.1 and above you can install the addon by going to Edit -> Preferences -> Add-ons -> Install and picking the Uefy v2.5 downloaded zip file you purchased. Also enable Rigify and FBX addons when installing Uefy.
This tutorial is only for rigging the Unreal Mannequins. To rig Custom Characters check czcams.com/video/mg75kSkKkug/video.html
Product Page: www.rakiz.com/uefy
will this work with metahuman
I've never used metahumans, they are a bit too heavy for my projects. However with UE Rolls the Uefy export is the same as the unreal engine 5 Manny skeleton so you should be able to use it with Metahumans.
Only the bones in the body matching those existing in Manny are provided. No face bones are included in the export.
@@RakizFarooq ok thanks alot