Rigging a character for Unreal Engine with Blender, Rigify and Uefy 2
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- čas přidán 26. 07. 2024
- A tutorial on how to use Uefy 2.0 to rig characters that already have a skeleton for Unreal Engine 4 and UE5 marketplace animations.
www.rakiz.com/uefy
In this video we take a prebuilt mixamo character that already has a skeleton. The original skeleton is missing several bones we need in the engine. Such as the root bone required for root motion.
We will update it's skeleton for use with UE4, so we can use marketplace animation sets. While also adding a rigify animation rig to create new animations. Uefy 2.0 modifies the rig so it does not cause issues in the game engine that would normally be encountered by using rigify.
At the end we have a character that can easily use purchased animation sets as well as our own custom animation made in blender.
IMPORTANT: From Uefy 2.1 onward the 'Preprocess' functionality has been automated away. At 28:28 when you see instruction to click on preprocess just skip ahead to Build Skeleton.
UPDATE: Uefy v2.5 Released! Adds support for Unreal Engine 5
You will still use this tutorial to rig characters for UE5 as the process is the same with a few more options for spine and hand bones.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:48 Three Stage Process Overview
1:32 Scene preparation and setting unit scale
1:45 Import Character FBX
5:14 Import UE4 Mannequin
6:43 Update Names
11:12 Update Rolls
14:20 Pose Character
21:13 Update Rest Pose
23:13 Add Metarig
27:20 Generate Rigify Rig
29:15 Fix Fingers and Missing Weights
33:58 Export Armature
35:10 Import in Unreal Engine 4
=====
Character Mesh from Mixamo/Adobe - mixamo.com
Copyright by Adobe
(License provides Royalty Free use to make commercial games and videos)
bit.ly/mixamoeula
bit.ly/fuseeula
Unreal Engine Marketplace Assets - unrealengine.com/marketplace
Copyright by Epic Games
(License provides Royalty Free use to create commercial streamed videos)
bit.ly/ueasset
#UnrealEngine #blender #rigify
IMPORTANT: In new versions the Preprocess functionality has been automated away. Wherever your see instruction to click on preprocess skip ahead to Build Skeleton.
Updated instructions for importing to UE5 can be found at czcams.com/video/GdObGfhRPGA/video.html
Full Playlist: czcams.com/video/6laZFauJiRA/video.html
so i made a character in blender and rigged it.... but I'm not sure I did a good job... can I just use the manny rig and put my character on it and bypass a lot of this?
i am on the bone rolling part. It looks like my ankle bone is rolled wrong. i got the x pointing to the x axis and the z pointing down on the right foot. it looks like you got the y pointing down and x point behind.... but you don't use the bone roll cause your mesh worked out. when I try it it doesn't really do anything and I tried rotating it manuely but rotating does nothing so.... kinda stuck
so my left ankle bone is:
x is pointing away from the body in line with the grid x axis
y pointing to the ball bone
z is pointing to the heel
no matter what I try I cannot get the ankles x axis to point backward
This is an outstanding tool. Following your tutorials, I was able to successfully import and re-target animations for a basic rig. Works like a charm, thanks Rakiz!
UPDATE: Uefy v2.5 Released! Adds support for Unreal Engine 5 !
You will still use this tutorial to rig characters for UE5 as the process is the same with a few more options for spine and hand bones.
Importing to the engine and retargeting is a little different. You can check tutorials in the channel playlist on how to do that. czcams.com/video/AhpOrqyGf0o/video.html
This is an excellent product. I was stuck for days trying to get some troublesome meshes to work with my game, which relies heavily on ALS. I was bashing my head into a wall for weeks and freelancers didn't want to take the gig because of how niche it was. This saved my ass. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Also, if anyone who got this script addon and is having issues with it, so far I've used it to re-rig 14+ problematic meshes. Keep following the video tutorial. One mesh at a time, rewatching and referencing. Follow all the steps. If, for example, you hit one of the buttons and something isnt working, like an armature isn't parenting-- you probably skipped a step on accident. You have to make sure the right names are listed in the Uefy Script Panel. You can do it! I got the rhythm down to about 15-20 minutes.
UPDATE: Uefy 2.1 Released! The preprocess functionality has been automated away. Wherever your see instruction to click on preprocess skip ahead to Build Skeleton. Also added animation editing features. czcams.com/video/z-NPCh01DwE/video.html
Uefy 2.1 is a free update. Use your existing emailed download link to get the latest file.
Once you have gone through this tutorial. How to add extra bones to the character for armor and items is shown in this video czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html . Where we rig the Lava Knight character from epic's Elemental Demo.
Thank you, my character is working like a dream!
Hey, it helped a lot! Thanks! :) Could you make a tutorial showing some facial animation and extra bones, like hair or some attaches on the character? Once again! Thanks! :)
UPDATE: Uefy v2.6.0 Released. Brings compatibility with Blender 4.0 and above.
After I hit "magic rolls" (or if I manually adjust the rolls on the spine chain), and generate the rigify rig....the Hip and the Chest spline controllers are created on an angle (varies depending on the exact roll values for the spine bones).
I'm not sure if I need to "apply the bone rolls" like a transform? both controls APPEAR to operate correctly, I'm just wondering why I'm seeing this \ will there be unexpected issues down the road?
This is really great, thanks for all the hard work! Quick Question: If rigging a custom skeleton with a different number and position of bones (I have 1 less spine entry, no ik bones and no twist bones, for instance) is there a particular process to go through?
Or, is the solution to simply add the bones and re-weight paint with the new bones added and then map as normal?
If there are too few spine bones you can increase them with subdivide and adjust the weight paint. Alternatively the 'merge weight' feature can be used to remove unwanted bones without damaging the weight paint ( czcams.com/video/WLjUmFJ7rXM/video.html ).
The addon can always create twist and IK bones. Depending on the needs of your project you can update weights or ignore the twists.
UPDATE: Around 33:30 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.
Hi, when i press "build skeleton", i get a message "IK FAILED: A bone required for IK setup was missing". i used "basic pose skeleton", uefy 2.3, Blender 3.1.2
If you have a static mesh with no starting bones. You can weight paint it to the basic posing skeleton. It will act as the initial character skeleton, it is not a metarig. After weight painting you must follow all of the steps from the start of the video.
You are getting this message because you did not setup your metarig correctly.
Hi, in this video, why you did not delete the character rig and start a new rigify from the bigining?
To create a UE5 metarig from the rigify's default Human Metarig.
Enable checkbox on "Keep Metacarpals"
Set Spine to "6 spine 2 neck 1 head UE5"
Do this BEFORE clicking on "Fix Metarig". All other options can be left at default values.
I have done everything as followed but in UE5 my skeleton bones names have strange names (DEF-xxx). I really don't know what i am doing wrong but i have been trying to do an UE5 character for over a week now. I really need some assistance sir !
You can send a reply to the email with your order id and download link.
Attach screenshots and a description of the things you tried and what is different from the tutorial. I can take a look at it.
@@RakizFarooq I started over from scratch. It works 😅🤣
Hi, I wrote you on the other video yesterday, I am now following this tutorial as you said, my character has only 3 fingers and 2 links by fingers, when I Click on Fix Metarig at 24:00m the rig fits all in my skeleton but the 3 tips of the fingers that have only 2 links do not align and there is 2 fingers left behind unaligned. Do I deletye those? or leave them as is? thanks so much. :)
Rigify metarig types must be added or deleted as a whole part. For example the fingers consists of 'limbs.super_finger' type which has 3 bones. So you must remove the entire sample by deleting all 3 finger bones. You can't remove just one or two.
If you require a finger that has only two bones then you should use another type. For example you can add a 'limbs.simple_tentacle' that has 2 bones and use that as a finger. You can check the advanced tutorial to see how to add rigify types to the metarig. ( czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html )
Alternatively a simple solution would be to just leave the 3 bone finger as is and just not weight paint any mesh to the unwanted bones.
Awesome addon, just a question. Got any idea on why does the skeleton offset whenever I import from mixamo?
FBX Imports to Blender can be all over the place. Sometimes it may be because of animation attached to the armature. Other times it is simply how the character was exported. Just try different import options, manually fix any symmetry issues if need be.
Thanks for this. This is definitely something I want to do but looks really hard (lots of steps :) ).
If I have a mesh that has an existing skeleton, is it best to use that or should I rather be using something like Maximo to auto-rig a skeleton and then follow this tutorial from there?
You should use the existing skeleton if it is similar to the UE4 or UE5 mannequins. Otherwise Uefy also provides a Basic Posing Skeleton. You can use Blender's built in tools to auto weight paint and manually fix any issues.
I'm very new to rigging in general, but I was wondering if following this workflow that once the rig is in unreal, can we add Unreals control rig script to it? have you tested that?
I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work but I have not tired it at this time.
my mesh wont follow the generated rig I'm stuck at 28:26 It only works with Automatic weights, is that a problem my character follow when I do the automatic weights.
The addon works by transferring existing weight paint from the original character skeleton to the final rig. Either you never had any starting weight paint or you did not setup the json file correctly. If you don't have original weights then you need to add them yourself. You start with automatic weights and make updates as necessary.
Hey, thanks for this amazing tool, I've just finished my first rig, it works in UE and at all but for some reason, I have duplicated the ik_foot_root and ik_hand_root, any ideas what could I've done wrong?
I just built a skeleton with Uefy 2.1.4 and Blender 2.90.1 the hierarchy built by the script is correct for me. You should select your metarig and use 'generate rig' and 'build skeleton' again. That will delete the existing bones and completely rebuild the rig. If that doesn't fix your issue I'd say something might be wrong with your metarig.
Thanks for these videos! Isn't there a simple video that shows how to create an animation on blender with Uefy and export it to unreal engine with the right skeletal mesh UE5 or UE4 mannequin?
Wow! This script is great. I have one question though, can I do this to characters I made? By that I mean characters that I sculpted. They dont have any skeleton to start with so I cant proceed with the tutorial.
Yes .. the addon provides a prebuilt 'Basic Posing Skeleton' that you can position and weight paint to your empty mesh. After that it is the same as following this tutorial.
Could use some help Is there any way of rigging fbx clothes in ue4 or blender to work with ue4 character? most videos I watch the character is all ready rigged in blender I have a character I had exported out of ue4 when i import show the person with the spikes not the skeleton mesh very new to blender need to learn to add clothes to my character in ue4. Thanks for any and all help
Clothing is just another mesh you can add additional bones to the armature or shapekeys to the mesh itself to animate just like any other part of the character's body.
If you are very new to blender I suggest getting familiar with rigging regular characters before you move onto clothing it is just the same process.
If your character is just a static mesh with no bones at all. You can still rig it with this process. Make sure Rigify addon is enabled and just do 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.
This skeleton will already have correct names and rolls. So just continue from 14:21 in this video to pose the character and carry on.
Awesome! Thank you so much! :D
Make sure you have Rigify and FBX support enabled in Edit -> Preferences -> Addons before you import any skeletons from the Uefy Script armature menu.
@@RakizFarooq beautifull! I was cofused about this step, I will try it right now!
After you have performed the steps of Shift + A -> Armature -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton, please advise on best practice when you instruct to attach the static mesh to and weight paint the prebuilt skeleton. Will just parenting the mesh to the prebuilt skeleton and applying Armature Deform with Automatic Weights will suffice???
Automatic weight painting is pretty decent and will get your character moving. But automatic weight paint needs manual adjustment and you will need to use Blender's weight painting tools to improve it. I typically load Paragon assets and look at how the weight paint is handled on different parts of the mesh. It is awesome to have actual AAA quality game characters as reference to update your own weight paint. Blender has some nice tools for the job. You will need to look into that.
I got a problem, on my left hand, i have to vertex who doesn't move with the rest of the hand, like they are not weighted, but the problem is they are correctly weighted, i dont know how to fix it.
In edit mode select the misbehaving vertex and see which bones are affecting it in Vertex Weights panel in the 'Item' tab. Probably it has weights for non-deform bones that was not exported like hand or foot controllers. When that happens it looks ok in Blender but shows as a problem in the editor.
Remove any unwanted weights, you can compare with surrounding vertices that behave correctly to see what went wrong.
Hello! I bought some characters that are already rigged, but aren’t rigged to ue4 skeleton. I want to convert them over. I have no clue what software the models and rigs were originally made in. Would Uefy work for me to rig them to ue4 skeleton or is it situational? Like, if they were made in 3dsmax or maya instead of blender does that mean they don’t qualify for me to use this tutorial and switch their rig?
That is pretty much the scenario I use Uefy 2.0 for most often. The addon doesn't care what software was used to create the characters. You just need to be able to import them into Blender.
The only complications that might occur is that you need a 6 bone spine (4 spine + neck + head) and if your character has a different number of bones you might need to adjust some weight paint.
The other thing is that you have to delete any morph targets or shape keys while rigging the character and copy them back after you are done. This can be done in blender but is a little complicated and might need additional scripts.
Hi Rakiz, just rigged up a character following this tutorial, works brilliantly, so thank you. Just wanted to know if a face rig can be added to an already built rig, or do I need to start from scratch? Please excuse my ineptitude, I am very much a beginner haha!
You can add a face rig and any other bones you want after your character has been built. You would follow the same process as shown in czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html around 2 mins 40 sec mark. But you keep the Mode to "Epic Skeleton" and the sample to add would be "faces.super_face".
You can then follow czcams.com/video/mJUWJxBzW3Y/video.html to position the face bones. Weight paint the face bones without overwriting the weights for rest of your character.
Another thing you can try is to rig the head as a standalone object with just the face rig and no body mesh to create a modular character in the engine.
Rakiz Farooq okay brilliant, thank you very much!
If you have existing animations for your initial skeleton but with the wrong bone roles/initial position does this keep/fix your animations or is this just for the initial skeleton setup and should be done before you make any animations?
This process is not to edit existing animations but rather to create new ones. However if your existing animations were made for Rigify controls then those should still work.
I suppose the last reply should be updated. With the release of Uefy 2.1 you can now import existing animations from Unreal Engine and apply them to your character in Blender. czcams.com/video/z-NPCh01DwE/video.html
Hey! Bought this.. If my character is a different height, should I try to match the UE4 pose/height? Or just match the pose but keep the height?
Height doesn't matter, you should just pose the character. For example in the video ( czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html ) the character is nearly twice the size of the mannequin but everything still works. Same will be true for smaller characters too.
nice jib, i will use this.
Can u show us how to make facial aniamtions to TPS game. So if i want to make a get hit animation and my character make suffering face. How is this work int blender to UE4?
So here's a weird one for you. I can get my character into UE4 fine, but he's 100 times too small. I've tried scaling by 100 when importing in until he is animated. After that he's tiny again until he stops animating. Neither of my two versions, normal or UE Mannequin Rolls show up for retargeting animations. I also redid the whole process skipping the 0.01 unit scale step only to have the same result. Any idea why this may be happening?
This happens if the scale on your mesh or armature is not set correctly. You have to scale the mesh and armature objects independently and also make sure to apply all transforms on both of those objects.
At the start of the project set unit scale to 0.01 and immediately import the ue4 mannequin into the scene. Now when you import your character it's size needs to be correct relative to the mannequin. Use the 'extract mesh' tool to separate the mesh and armature objects. If your imported character is towering above the mannequin or tiny between it's feet then you need to resize the character. Resize and 'apply all transforms' on both mesh and armature objects while they are separated.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you so much! My issue was that I was scaling the mannequin to my character rather than scaling my character to the mannequin.
Hi! Thanks for your awesome tutorial (1 year ago) I have a question I hope you can answer... How do I do to keep the facial bones with mesh weights and then export it to unreal in order to keep the skeleton compatible with the UE4 mannequin???
For simple and easy to manage jaw or eye movement you can add a few extra bones to the face as shown in czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html this is enough in most cases.
For a full fledged face rig you can use 'face.super_face' as shown in czcams.com/video/mJUWJxBzW3Y/video.html
Can I ask, I'm trying to rig faun/satyr like character but the legs end in hoofs and the "foot" part is very steep and angled, this of course messes with the retargeting of the feet. Is it even possible? Or do I have to forgo rigging it correctly and just place the bones as they would be on a normal biped? I would like to have it rigged correctly at the modeled ankles.
Normally I would rig this type of character in Free Form mode with proper animal type limb like in czcams.com/video/z-NPCh01DwE/video.html . This is no longer the Epic Skeleton but it would still output a very usable game bone hierarchy.
You might be able to get away with this with human limbs by trying different bone placements but I have not tried this.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you very much for your answer, I guess I have to choose epic or proper rig, i wanted to retarget some anims. Oh well.
for example when you add additional custom bones and import in unreal do we have to make new skeleton or just select the existing in unreal? I never thought that I'm gonna be using an extra bones.
You can get extra bones in your character by updating it's existing metarig. Then you click on Generate Rig and Build Skeleton.
You can follow this video czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html but keep the mode to 'Epic Skeleton'.
@@RakizFarooq can you edit or tweak the bones of the rig specially on the hand and finger? because I tried this and when I Scale f_index.01_master.R my finger fold in the right direction, do you think this is another workaround or should I just stick with editing the rig bones in the visible layers. do you have discord?
You don't ever want to edit bones in the final output rig unless you really know what you are doing. Only make updates to the "metarig" as shown in the video I linked ( czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html ). With Uefy 2.0 you can always regenerate from the metarig and build skeleton. Update your character incrementally adding new bones.
Hello, I've been following up until "21:13 Update Rest Pose" but when I clicked the button, it says I need to delete Shape Keys before using the operator. It used to have a lot of Shape Keys but I have already deleted them many revisions ago so I don't have anything else to delete. Any idea what else should be checked?
You might have more than one mesh attached to the armature. Make sure you remove shapekeys on all meshes.
UPDATE: Uefy v2.1.2 Released! This is a maintenance update. If you are using Blender 2.90 and get errors on generating the metarig from the popup menu. Upgrading to this version will solve the issue.
Use your existing emailed download link to get the latest file. Send a reply to the email if there is any issue and I'll look into it.
does this work with Character creator 3 skeletons and how would I go about setting it up
I don't have any reallusion product so can't give specifics. But as I understand it they make heavy use of shapekeys. Blender doesn't allow applying modifiers to meshes with shapekeys. There are way to get around this but it is not an easy process and may require more scripts. Other than that as long the character is given a basic skeleton that corresponds to the mannequin like 6 bone spine, 2 bone limbs etc you can rig a character from any source.
Uefy v2.2 has added better support for Character Creator 3 meshes ( czcams.com/video/BB_bniYzADc/video.html ). It is a free update you can get the latest file using you existing emailed download link.
Thanks for the great addon. Can you please advise the work flow of how to also add rigify facial bone?
You can add a faces.super_face rig part to the metarig and arrange it as shown in this video czcams.com/video/mJUWJxBzW3Y/video.html
@@RakizFarooq THANKOU THANKOU!!
Hi, thanks for the tutorial. I'm trying to follow your steps for a custom mesh but having trouble with importing the UE4 mannequin. When I import a mannequin which I've exported from the default 3rd person UE project, the bones are all pointing outward from the mesh.
At around 5:25 when I import the mannequin I also set automatic bone orientation in settings.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you! I've achieved success and am now motion capturing to a swole doge.
i get the following error 'Spine.004': Cannot connect chain - bone position is disjoint. incorrect armature for type 'chain _rigs' please help i followed every step i noticed these bones are not connected like the other spine ones but how do i fix this?
Newer versions of Rigify allow a space between the neck and spine bones. But you have to set an additional option on the metarig. Select Spine.004 in Pose mode and turn off “Connect Chain” in Bone Properties -> Rigify Type -> Options.
See image on Advanced Spine and Neck Joints section at the bottom of www.rakiz.com/blender-2-83-lts-and-uefy-script/
Hi, I’m new to making character rigs. While using Uefy, I’ve tried to follow along with the tutorials, only to fall short. I’m writing this in hopes of someone answering, and maybe that’ll help me better than watching a video.
The character I’m trying to rig is one I made for UE4, in T-pose. The mesh has a double mesh, which is intended to make a stylized outline around the character. After I move the basic human rig in place and made the fingers, I then parent the mesh to the rig with automatic weights. What happens is the mesh underneath working just fine, while the outline mesh doesn’t get weighted. And trying to manually paint the skin weights for the outline mesh has proven almost impossible. Is there a workaround for such a character mesh?
Sounds like you are using automatic weights for only one mesh. You could select your second mesh, shift click the armature and use Ctrl+P to use automatic weight again. Alternatively I believe there are tools in blender to project weights from one mesh to another.
In any case this is probably not going to give you workable results. Automatic weight painting is a good starting point but you will need to make a lot of manual updates to both of your meshes. Depending on how different your second mesh is from your main mesh. It might deform very differently.
Hello, Please Make tutorials on how can I export characters from Daz 3d with morph target to blender than to ue4 with the same morph.
Hey man great video! but I have one question, the basic rig I used does not have the finger bones in the hand, just one main bone. Will this cause any issues later on in the process?
You can delete the fingers in your metarig before just you generate the rig. Keep in mind you have to remove the entire finger. You can not remove just one or two bones.
@@RakizFarooq You suggested in one of the earlier comments to use a basic rig if you're not using a mixamo character, so I'm using the basic rig but it does not have any finger bones and I think I would need them in order to animate them right? Like is it a big deal for the basic rig not to have the finger bones when it comes to this process? or is it as simple as just adding the finger bones in somehow? *my apologies if I am not making much sense*
@@krystopher5799 I think you are confusing the metarig with your character's skeleton. You should just follow a few of these tutorials until you are comfortable with terms and process. I'd suggest using rigify on it's own for a while to understand how it works before continuing.
@@RakizFarooq sigh its cool man, im using the basic metarig and the basic skeleton comes with the uefy plugin I guess and im assuming that will have the finger bones, I figured it out from looking at the other comments, thanks anyway though.
Hi Rakiz -- Had a question; when I click 'Build Skeleton' in Uefy, the armature then doesn't affect the character. ie. Moving any of the bones in pose mode doesn't move the mesh. It works fine before clicking Build Skeleton, but it seems like something breaks when I hit the button...
The 'Build Skeleton' action will move the weight paint from the original character skeleton to the final export rig. In order to do that you must have followed all the steps shown in the video and did proper bone renaming before applying rigify.
If the final built rig is not moving the mesh then it is a bone naming issue.
@@RakizFarooq Yeah I must have missed a step; went back and did the tutorial again and it worked! Thanks for the addon-- this will be very helpful!
Sorry, I know this video is fairly old by this point but I'm having a strange issue. Everything in the tutorial seemed to go fine until the importing. I imported my character with the updated ue4 rolls and selected the ue4_mannequin skeleton. There were no errors during or after the import but the animations are completely jacked. He's folded in half and floating. Any ideas?
Thanks :D
Following the tutorial gives me consistent working results. You've likely used an incorrect skeleton or missed something else.
Did you managed to fix this? Same issue here
Hi! I have a problem with exported armature. Everything works fine except axeses of exported skeleton looks completely different compared to original ue mannequin, so i can't use cool stuff like procedural IK for legs in game, cause armature axes is not correct and not even strait like ue mannequin. Is it suppose to be like that or i made something wrong? Because character skeleton axes back in blender setupped correct
I have used IK setups in my projects with characters rigged as shown in the video many times without any issues. The default way to use the addon is to create character that will be imported to Unreal with a 'new' skeleton. It will have bone axis based on the Blender standard. Which is what I want as Blender is my main digital content creation application.
If you want to characters with bone axis the same as the Original UE Mannequin you use the second export as shown in 34:25 using the 'UE Mannequin Rolls' operator. You can also review the video on rigging the mannequin in czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html where I talk more about the differences between the two exported files with Blender based bone axis and with Unreal Original Mannequin based bone axis.
@@RakizFarooq thanks for the answer
Hi, thanks for the great work brother. One question: i imported a model from character creator 4 and whe i try to extract mesh it errors "...skipped because it has shape keys" how can i fix this?
The extract tool can not work on any mesh with shapekeys because of restrictions imposed by Blender itself. You need to delete the shapekeys on the mesh. The tutorial for CC3 is at czcams.com/video/BB_bniYzADc/video.html
There is a way to delete the shapekeys, rig the mesh and copy them back later. But only for portions of the mesh whose pose is not changed during the rigging process. So you can use this to recover shapekeys for the face or even for the whole character if you don't change the pose. You can review the tutorial rigging the Daz3d character where I use this method czcams.com/video/WLjUmFJ7rXM/video.html
If you are new to rigging it would be easier to just the delete the shapekeys and leave it at that. You can create any new ones after the rig is built and they will work just fine.
@@RakizFarooq very helpful. Thanks a lot for your time and effort🌹🌹🌹
Can this be used to generate a epic skeleton armature for the default mannequin (for a blank character mesh) I've been trying to do this for a few days but it never turns out quite right
For static mesh characters (no bones at all) go in to Object mode Shift + A -> Armature -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton. This will build you a skeleton you can move/rotate then bind / weight paint your mesh to. The rest is as shown in the video.
To rig the ue4 mannequin itself you can review czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html
@@RakizFarooq I'll give that a try, much appreciated 👍
This tutorial looks like it will work well for mixamo characters, but what about characters that have no existing bone hierarchy? Is there a good tutorial for skinning a brand new character to the mannequin skeleton?
This tutorial is not just for mixamo it will work for all characters that have a primary chain of bones similar to the mannequin. If you have a static mesh with no bones at all you can add an initial skeleton yourself. In Object mode do Shift + A -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton to add a prebuilt skeleton to the scene. Position/Rotate it into your mesh and bind it with automatic weights and manual weight painting. After that just follow this tutorial from the start.
@@RakizFarooq can you add custom bones to the basic posing skeleton?
what do i do with the extra parts on the mixamo character IE Top Head Thumb 4 ect.
If they do not have any weight paint, you can safely ignore them. When you import your character you can also select "Ignore Leaf Bones" in Armature options to not bring in these extra bones in the first place. Beware to only select this option for characters that have extra bones at the end otherwise you'll lose actual deform bones.
Hi Sir, Thank you for the amazing tutorial and amazing add on which helped me rig multiple characters. I have a question can I add tail and wings bones to a mannequin rig and still run mannequin animations on it? Thank you
Yes you can. Review the rigify metarig for bird, cat etc to see how to setup a tail. Remember you need to follow additional rules for attachment, naming and single root in Uefy. But what you are asking for is supported.
@@RakizFarooq Thanks
Where's the Mannequin FBX? I can't seem to find it anywhere and when I use mine it just imports wrong
You can get the mannequin by starting a third person template project in unreal. Find SK_Mannequin in the editor's content folders. Right click on it Asset Actions -> Export.
Make sure to use the same options in blender when importing the mannequin as shown in the video.
10:03 what about extra bones? my miximo character has a bone called HeadTop_End and the mannequin doesn't what happens when you have a rig with an extra bone?
nvm you answered this in some one else comment.
You can add extra bones as shown in ( czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html ). I should also point out that sometimes character armatures may contain 'leaf bones' that don't actually do anything and are not needed in Blender though other software makes use of them for cosmetic/display purposes.
HeadTop_End is most likely an example of a leaf bone that has no weight attached to it. If you can confirm this then just ignore it or delete the bone entirely.
thank you
Hi. I have a question. Is it possible to just throw a clothed and human body, boneless and non-animated character into an unreal engine and integrate the bones and movements of a third person character into it? Can you suggest a source that explains this?
The character must have an armature (skeleton) for it work with unreal. In this video czcams.com/video/MRhDDbU0zdE/video.html I show how to add an armature to a static mesh but you will still need to add/fix weight painting yourself.
Alternatively you can use something like mixamo to automatically add an armature to a character and then export it to uneal. But the results are often not very good, you still end up manually fixing things.
There are also products like reallusion cc3 and daz3d to generate characters you can use without too much editing.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you so much
One thing that is annoying me currently is how many models I have using a ue4 sk mesh that haven't been updated to use the new 5 spine version. Am I right in thinking that this tool(2.5) would let me export to blender, rip out the current skel and slap in the new Manny/Quinn sk in the manner shown in this video? on any mesh I have using ue4 skel?
No .. even though it is something you could do with Uefy. That is not what the tool is for and you will need to add weight paint for the missing bones in the original skeleton.
More importantly why would you want to convert UE4 characters to a UE5 skeleton anyway? It offers no benefit. The animation retargeting system in Unreal Engine 5 lets you use any kind of skeleton with relative ease.
@@RakizFarooq I know the anims can be retargetted easily enough through the ikrt tools (and honestly, with much better results than 4.27) but I have other plugins that essentially don't work as well without the 5 spine sk version.
They deal with warping, and other new functions of the anim BP they claim only work/work better with Manny.
I don't understand it at all, so you might be right, I'm only regurgitating what I've been told so I couldn't tell you either way.
Thanks for the speedy reply, though.
You may be correct about using other plugins. I tend to write my own code so this is not an issue for me.
If you want to convert a UE4 skeleton to a UE5 skeleton you will need to provide weight paint for all the new bones in the spine/hands/twists etc using built in skinning tools of Blender.
hi. i've an old rig from 1999 a game i used to play when i was a kid. i can even expor the animations from this game. the skeleton is similar in hierarchy to ue4 skel.
but it doesnt have ik controlers and have no finger bones... Do you think its possible to transfer the 1999 rig animations into ue4 anims using blender? I heared i could use the constrains, but the old rig and the ue4 skel have different bone orientations. would that still work?
You can do that if you are experienced with Blender animation workflow. But mostly Uefy is designed for character rigging and creating new animations rather than converting old ones.
If you want just want to retarget old existing animations. You are better off doing this directly in UE5.
@@RakizFarooq yes the thing is if i do this directly in ue5, it will take some performance specially if you do this for all the characters on screen... my plan was to do the retarget in blender then bake the animation on the ue4 mannequin. Its find ill find a way how to do this in blender. thank you for the advice Rakiz.
You can do the same in UE5, retarget and create baked animations in the editor. These final baked anims can then be used directly without any real time retargeting. You also get added benefit by advanced key compression algorithms built into the editor. The better solution for this is the UE5 editor.
I know this is a year old but I wanted to ask I followed all the way up to the retarget animation and for some reason I have no skeletons in my Select Skeleton list. Any idea what I did wrong?
Around 36:00 I click on 'Apply to asset' button. If you don't the skeleton won't show in the retargeting tab. You also want to make sure humanoid rig is enabled on both your character's skeleton and the default ue4 mannequin.
Thanks for the reply. I figured out what I was missing. When in the Skeleton Select part of retargeting I needed to uncheck the Show only compatible Skeletons option. For some reason it sees it as not compatible but it works fine.
I'm creating a goblin character that is still a biped, but is much smaller than the mannequin - how do I use this process to rig a smaller character, just move the bones to match like you do at 40:10? For clarity, the neck bone of my goblin character is at about the hips bone of the mannequin
The size of the character relative to the mannequin does not matter. It just needs a similar basic bone structure like 6 bone spine etc. You follow the same process as shown in the video. Around 23:20 in this video I bring in the metarig and scale it roughly to the match the shoulders. You can do the same for your smaller character.
Is it possible to convert my rigify character and just export with your add on after i build skeleton? because everytime i try my characters wrists pinch together.
The addon makes changes to the metarig to make it work with Mannequin before rigify 'Generate Rig' button is pressed. Already existing rigify rigs will not have those initial changes. So it necessary to go through the whole process as shown in the video.
Additionally make sure you set retargeting option on the skeleton as shown at 35:30
@@RakizFarooq Im trying to do just that but rigify has a lot of bones so which ones do we rename? im guessing the DEF bones?
As I said previous the addon works with metarigs only. If your character already has a rigify rig attached to it. Export it with only deform bones to fbx and reimport it back to blender. This gets rid of rigify controls, now you can treat it like any other mesh and follow czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html with a new metarig.
I'm considering buying this. In the update did you automate the bone renaming so I'm able to just convert a Rigify character to a UE4 (not just mixamo)?
This tutorial is not just for mixamo. But the addon is not designed to automatically convert existing rigify characters. You will need to remove the rigify rig so the armature is a simple skeleton. Then follow the process shown in this video to create your own mapping.
@@RakizFarooq Im trying to convert the Character i rigged myself with rigify to unreal. I removed all non deforming bones from my Rigify rig. Now, when i map the Rigify deformation bones to the Unreal skeleton, what do i do abut the extra bones in the rigify rig? For example the extra neck bones, extra arm&leg bones (rigify has 2 bones for these, unreal skeleton only has one)and the extra pelvis bones . They dont have a counterpart in the Unreal skeleton.
Is this possible with your tool or do i have to do the weight painting process again with the built in basic posing skeleton?
@@guby6460 Uefy v2.3 has a new tool exactly for this purpose. It can remove unwanted bones without damaging the weight data. Please review czcams.com/video/WLjUmFJ7rXM/video.html to see how to use the new tool.
Uefy v2.3 also has another tool that can delete all non-deform bones and remove the rig. It was made to unrig Daz characters but may be useful for Rigify characters too.
@@RakizFarooq Thats awesome, thank you for your answer. I got it working now!
Hi, when I use the "pose metarig" button with all the boxes checked in the "meterig operator", the meta middle fingers in both hands just float in the air and didn't connect to my "character" rig. I've re-weight painted and checked my middle fingers bones none of that work. (is a basic human model too. Nothing fancy.) Any suggestion on how I can fix this?
Make sure you are using 'Human (metarig)' from the menu. That you click on 'Fix Metarig' only one time and then click on 'Pose Metarig'. This sequence works for me. If it doesn't work for you then I would double check that you got all the names correct on your character's skeleton. No typos or case issues especially concerning the hand and finger bones.
@@RakizFarooq Thanks for the reply, I've checked all the things you suggested and they all look fine to me. I've posted this more detaily here blender.stackexchange.com/questions/224492/final-armature-didnt-include-my-characters-middle-fingers-rigify-uefy
Thankyou for your help in advance :D
You can reply to the email with your order id and attach the blend file. I can take a look at it.
Everything worked great except for one anim pack I got that deforms the hands when I retarget and some vertices get pointy. Any ideas folks?
That's a weight paint issue, likely those verts have weights they shouldn't or missing some influence. It is possible for the same verts to look ok in blender but still have unwanted influence. You need to identify the individual verts and fix weights in blender.
@@RakizFarooq You are right! Apparently some vertices got weights from the ik_hand_gun bones and got deformed in some animations so removing those weights fixed my problem!
Hello! Does this mean that my custom character should already have custom armature and weight paint? In all tutorials your characters are already have armature as a starting point, but where that armature came from?
If you have only a static mesh you will need to add your own initial basic skeleton and weight paint. An example can be seen in czcams.com/video/MRhDDbU0zdE/video.html for the old version. For Uefy 2 you don't need to create the whole skeleton yourself. Go to object mode Shift + A -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton. This will give you a prebuilt skeleton you can position in your mesh and weight paint.
Alternatively you can use meshes from character generator programs or marketplaces which already have a basic skeleton.
@@RakizFarooq But It should have been nice to have a tutorial like this, and explain to people. Because most of us, we create the characters, and we just need a way to import them in UE4. I feel really confused with all these videos, that all start with existing armatures!
@@thanoszag6563 If you are creating your own characters you can weight paint them to the Basic Posing Skeleton as suggested above. If you are not a 3d artist or just short on time you can also use prebuilt characters from sources like marketplaces or programs like Fuse, Mixamo, Makehuman, CC3 etc etc. Uefy works in all of these cases and more.
@@RakizFarooqThank you for your response. I had to follow a couple of new and old videos to understand how it works. I think I am on the right path. I have another question, if I would like to use existing animations from epic in UE4, should I export the armature as UE4 or as Blender?
@@thanoszag6563 I had a pre-made character that I imported into mixamo.com which auto rigged it for me. After I downloaded it I was able to bring it right back into Blender. With my now fully rigged and weight painted character I was able to follow along step for step :)
Good luck!
Can you do a tutorial for root bone animations??
When I hit 'update rest pose' at 21:25 I have an error: Modifier is disabled, skipping apply, and 3 directory location with .py files with error:
in execute self.detach_mesh
in detach_mesh bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply
in__call__ret=_op_call
'update rest pose' is working for me. You can reply to the email with your download link and attach your blend file. I can take a look at it.
@@RakizFarooq well, I continued the tutorial and manage to get it working inside unreal so its fine x)
Thank you anyway !
Hello Rakiz!
I'm thinking of purchasing this, it really does look incredibly useful. Quite the complex pipeline. Great job, well done!
However, I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.
I'd like to base the skeleton off of the "new" UE5 versions, because I'm thinking if this is where Epic is going, then probably best to stick with that.
But in that case you can only like half-follow the steps shown here, is that correct?
For example: Say I have a custom character with no skeleton. Following what I read in the comments here, I would add a basic pose skeleton, skin my mesh to it.
But then when you A-pose the mesh + basic pose skeleton automatically (to match UE4 pose super closely), the pose is UE4 Mannequin, which is not the same pose as UE5 Quinn / Manny. Would I basically have to manually add a UE5 Quinn and eyeball the bone positions?
Or when the MetaRig is added. I read in the comments that you can include Metacarpal bones and extra spine bone. Great, but then again you press a button to pose the MetaRig, which is not a UE5 pose. So I take it you'd have to manually match the MetaRig to the previously posed skeleton?
But the previously posed skeleton doesn't have the Metacarpal bones or extra spine bones. Etc.
I guess I'm currently slightly confused how this workflow would work to get a really precise result for good retargeting inside UE5. Seems to me like one would have to kind of eyeball bone positions to a certain extend.
Thank you!
For rigging UE5 custom characters we only really do two things different. We would import the Unreal Engine 5 mannequin instead of the UE4 manny. The new version of the addon will correctly pose both the character and metarig according the new UE5 mannequin pose.
Secondly before clicking on "Fix Metarig" we have the option to specify how many bones to add to the spine/neck plus to keep the metacarpals in the hands or not.
The rest of the process follows exactly as shown in this tutorial.
However import to Unreal Engine 5 and retargeting requires some additional work by setting up a couple of Rig related UE5 objects inside the editor. You can check that pipeline by following the links in the description of czcams.com/video/AhpOrqyGf0o/video.html
@@RakizFarooq Sooo, bought the addon, great stuff!
And understood, thank you! That's awesome. So it poses to whatever you specify in Properties: UE Mannequin, that's so smart. I thought the pose was like hard-coded or something (basically always UE4 Mannequin).
Question, though: When you create the final rig based on the MetaRig, the new bones (e.g. spine) don't seem to be weighted. Basically rendering all that elaborate weight painting at an earlier stage (When adding the Basic Pose skeleton) somewhat useless. I mean yes, the weight painting in that stage needs to be done properly to get the character into UE5 Quinn pose; But then you basically have to do it again on the Epic skeleton towards the end of the pipeline, is that correct?
No.. If you follow the procedure as shown in the tutorial the original weights of the initial character are transferred to the final rigged character ready for export.
@@RakizFarooq thanks again for the reply! Oh, I have to go through it again then.
How can the weights be properly transferred though, if the bones don’t even exist on the initial character? Like the basic pose skeleton doesn’t have metacarpals or the extra spine bones that the UE5 manny has. However, the metaRig does. Are the weights just averaged divided up between the additional bones? On that note, when I pose the metaRig (like ->fix metaRig -> pose metarig), the metacarpals are left behind. That’s expected? Basic pose skeleton only has 1 hand bone, so I guess that would make sense. Thanks Rakiz, will try again.
The addon only transfers weights for bones that exist in the initial skeleton. The Basic Posing Skeleton is only an example. If you need more bones like metacarpals or twists you can add them and weight paint them before starting rigging. You can also do Shift + A -> Armatures -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> UE5 Manny 89 Proxy (A-pose) and use that as your initial skeleton instead of the Basic Posing one. It has all the default metacarpals and twists that you will need to weight paint.
You can also add additional bones not in the Mannequin skeletons. There are rules for doing that as described in czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html and also shown in the advanced tutorial at czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html
I imported this 3d model with the exact same settings, but all the armature bones are pointing straight up. Anyone know why? thanks
The software and options used to make the model may not work well with Blender's version of fbx importer. Select different import options like "Automatic Bone Orientation" with/without "Force Connect Children" to get the optimal import.
What you want is to have all the bones point towards each other. Sometimes the best you get is a partial result where few bones must be fixed manually.
It seems a fresh download from mixamo of the same character imports differently to the older version of the file. I guess they changed something. In any case import the character as suggested in the above comment and manually fix any bones that need it as shown in czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html around 7min 45s onward.
Will this work with Daz characters? The Daz skeleton is similar to the Epic skeleton but has more bones in its arms and also has face bones.
I don't have any reallusion products but here are some points that might help.
In this character's original skeleton there are no twist bones in the arms. But the final rig created with this process has twist bones as they exist in the Epic Skeleton. I can modify the weight paint to make those extra bones functional.
Similiarly the Epic Skeleton has only 1 neck bone but the character in this video ( czcams.com/video/2xVF9QFu-Bw/video.html ) had 2 neck bones. So I deleted one and adjusted the weight paint so it matches the correct final rig.
In the same way you can adjust for Daz characters or really any character from anywhere.
The face rig might also be rigged with the supported rigify samples. But it depends on how complex it is. For very advanced face rigs it would be better to delete the original and repaint for face rig provided by rigify.
Lastly Daz characters may have shapekeys on them. Blender doesn't allow applying modifiers to meshes with shapekeys. You will need to delete them and re-add them after rigging the character. This can be done but it is not a straightforward process.
In short you can rig Daz characters with Uefy. But simply clicking buttons won't cut it, some customization is required for advanced characters. You need to be familiar with rigging and know what you are doing. But it can be done.
@@RakizFarooq There is a way to import Daz character and convert it to Rigify controller. So if i do that could i export it to Unreal with Epic skeleton? I'm just not very familiar with Rigify is there a specific bone hierarchy too?
Uefy is designed to be used with characters that do not have a control rig. Your character must have either a simple skeleton or no skeleton at all. You will need to export your Daz character without rigify and keep in mind the points I listed in my reply above.
At 5:03, I select the Metarig and the Mesh in the correct order, then contrl-P and select Armature deform, but my mesh isnt moving when I rotate a bone in pose mode???
At no point do I attach the 'Metarig' to the 'Mesh' in this video. At 5:03 I re-attach the character's original armature back to the mesh after fixing transforms.
@@RakizFarooq oh so If I were attaching a new metarig to a mesh that never had a skeleton, is it a different step?
You want to add an initial skeleton to your mesh and weight paint it before you start using the addon. In Object Mode you can do Shift + A -> Armature -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton to add a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. Move/Rotate those bones inside your mesh in Edit Mode. You can attach the armature to your mesh with Ctrl + P (Automatic Weights). Then use blender's weight painting tools to improve the weight painting.
Once that is done you have a character that can be rigged by following this tutorial.
The spine always disappears when I build the Epic skeleton :( Everything else works: legs, arms, fingers but I end up losing the weights in the head which turns out to be because those bones aren't even in the deform layer once I convert the Rigify rig into the Epic Skeleton. Got any idea why this is happening? I noticed the names in the metarig/rigify skeleton don't match with the UE4 Mannequin or the rigs you provide (my character was rigged with this since it's not from mixamo), is this an issue?
We only update the names in the character's preexisting skeleton not the metarig. If you have extra bones that don't exist in the mannequin you can add them to the metarig as shown in czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html
If you have a break between your spine and neck bones please turn off connect chain option as shown in advanced spine and neck joints section on www.rakiz.com/blender-2-83-lts-and-uefy-script/
@@RakizFarooq Thank you for the quick response, it's good to know the names on the metarig don't matter.
The character doesn't have any extra bones, for now I was just trying to stick to the tutorial and used an Uefy reference skeleton to get everything started. There are no breaks in the spine and connect chain is already turned off.
This problem persists, I think I'm going to send you an email with the character if it's not a big bother, I've been stuck here for many days now.
You can send a reply to the email with your download link and attach the blend file. I can take a look at it when I have time.
@@RakizFarooq Turns out I was using an older version of Blender that is not compatible anymore, thanks for the help!
Hi I'm having a problem with the Pose Character Part. I'm getting following Traceback:
pose.py, line 357, in execute bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode ='POSE')
ops-py, line 132, in_call_ret = _op_call(self.idname_py(),None,kw)
TypeError: Converting py args to operator porperties: enum "POSE" not found in ('OBJECT','EDIT','SCULPT','VERTEX_PAINT','WEIGHT_PAINT','TEXTURE_PAINT')
Can you help me with this?
I've use a free Character i found online and added the Basic Posing Skeleton. I also generated automatic Weights to begin with.
I got it to fix. I made a mistake the first time i tried it and reversed it with CRTL + Z. The Pose Character Function doesn't seem to work if you already did it and reversed it like this.The problem is reproducable. I reopened my previous save and did it right the first time and it worked like a charm. My problem is solved :)
Make sure the only active selected object is the character's armature when you click on Pose Character. If it is a mesh or other object it will fail.
So, just to understand, this cannot be used to rigify a quadruped animal and put it into UE because UE has no quadruped mannequins?
On the contrary you can absolutely rig a quadruped or fantasy creature or even machines and vehicles with rigify and take them to UE. The addon will create a game engine optimized bone hierarchy with single root for such creatures.
You would use 'Free Form' mode as shown in czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html to create a metarig of your own design. You can see a cat and dragon in UE in the intro video as well czcams.com/video/6laZFauJiRA/video.html
The difference with this video in 'Epic Skeleton' mode is that we must meet requirements in pose and bone hierarchy to match the UE mannequin.
hey I have an issue with the hands : when i rotate the hand 180° the forearm doesn't rotate with it (the bone rotate but not the arm) and it's not a weight issue, can you help me?
If the bone is rotating but the mesh is not then it is a weight issue.
Additionally in Rigify rotating the hand will auto-rotate the lower twist bone in the lower arm. Not the lower arm bone itself.
@@RakizFarooq i meant the lower twist bone, but can I show you what i'm talking about on discord? if you have a server or just in pm
You can send a reply to the email with your download link and order id. Attach your blend file if it is not too big or attach images. I can take a look.
what is the difference between the Extract Mesh and the Clear Parent?
Extract mesh is an automated convenience function and can recover all attached meshes with a single click. You can do the same thing by manually removing parents but it is less work to use the function.
Pose character dose not change my chracters pose at all. I don't get any errors so why isn't this working? Will this be an issue down the line?
This can happen if the wrong object or multiple objects are selected. Make sure everything is deselected in all modes (Object, Edit, Pose).
Click on 'Refresh List' in Uefy Script Panel and set correct values for Character and UE Mannequin objects.
Then in Object mode select only the armature of the character before you click on 'Pose Character'.
@@RakizFarooq Thank that's working now but when I generate rig, the script only creates a copy of the metarig. I have no idea why.
I don't know what you're talking about. You can send a reply to the email with your download link and attach screenshots.
the Preprocess does not show up 4 me at about 28 minutes into the video its should show up under the extract tool area any idea what I'm doing wrong ??
Also when I get to the part where I'm editing fingers and then click to Generate rig it gives out an error
saying RIGIFY ERROR: Bone 'f_index.03.L': Input to rig type must be a chain of 2 or more bones.
Incorrect armature for type 'chain_rigs'
I have tried to investigate the issue but not sure how to go about fixing it
Since Uefy 2.1 the 'Preprocess' functionality has been automated away. When it says to click on Preprocess just skip ahead to Build Skeleton.
Some rigify samples like fingers require a fixed number of bones. In case of fingers it is 3 bones. While you can choose to not have any finger but if you add one it must have 3 bones. This is a requirement from Rigify addon.
You can still get around this requirement. Once your character is ready for export. You can select the layer with the Uefy built export chain and turn of the 'deform' flag for any finger bones you don't want. This will prevent them from being exported. However you must still build the rig with 3 bone fingers because it is required by rigify.
@@RakizFarooq Sorry about all the questions but was just wondering whats a good way to go back and edit the weight paint to the bones if for example some are a bit off and I need to go back and edit them do I have to do the entire process again cause I'm doing a project for college and I find this plugin extremely helpful but still a bit unsure bout a few things
You don't need to redo the character to update weight paints. In fact it is pretty easy. Just select the correct layer in the rigged character and update weight paints for the Uefy built export chain. You can check czcams.com/video/MRhDDbU0zdE/video.html around 39 min 20 sec mark on how to select the correct layer. Then you can update the weight paint for only those bones. Be careful to avoid putting any weight on the IK bones or any of the rigify control or mechanism bones.
Do you have a procedure for DAZ characters. How do I handle the extra bones like the hip pelvis, the 4 link spine (lower/upper abdomen and lower/upper chest), and the lower/upper neck?
You can follow this video czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html to add any custom bones you need.
I don't use DAZ but your character will need a basic bone hierarchy like 6 bone spine and 4 bone limbs to match the UE mannequin. See video link posted above.
@@RakizFarooq I don't need to add bones. The daz rig has extra bones a hip and a pelvis 4 spine bones and 2 neck bones. When I send a normal fbx to ue4 I retarget the hip to pelvis lower abdomen to spine 1 upper abdomen to spine 2 upper chest to spine 3 the lower neck to neck. Using your retarget script I don't know how to handle the hip AND pelvis problem. If I retarget the hip to pelvis I have two bones targeted to pelvis. Is it OK to just remove the pelvis from the retarget list?
The addon is not a "retarget script".
Additionally compatibility with the UE mannequin requires a 6 bone spine ( 4 torso, 1 neck, 1 head). These are all parented one to the other. Any extra bone must be on top of them and not in the chain itself. For example a second neck bone can be added to the first neck bone as long as the head is attached directly to the first neck bone too. The second neck bone can not be in the middle of the chain.
Similarly you can add additional hip or chest bones or anything else you like. As you can see in the other video. czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html
how do i add armour, hair and belts etc?
Follow this video czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html to add supported sample types to the metarig. Just keep the mode to 'Epic Skeleton' for unreal engine mannequin based characters.
Hey, man
I am stuck on update pose of character part, it's just sending me an error while I press Update 'Rest Pose' button. Idk why
You likely missed a step in the process. Be sure the mesh is actually attached to an armature and not a standalone object before running update rest pose.
This function is working fine for me.
@@RakizFarooq I realized that problem in 2.9 version of blender, in 2.83 this works good. Thanks!
I use Blender 2.90.1 regularly. It is working for me, you probably have an older version of the addon.
@@RakizFarooq I think you're right
@@RakizFarooq I'm have v2.0.0 installed in Blender 2.90.1 but I have the same problem. Aren't these versions compatible?
Hey, I followed all of the steps, but for some reason Unreal gives me "Multiple root bone error". Any ideas what I can do?
Either you did not follow the correct steps in order or you are adding additional bones beyond the Epic Skeleton hierarchy. For the second case you should check the rules in czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html or the advanced guide czcams.com/video/z-NPCh01DwE/video.html to make sure all the bones in your metarig are parented to an existing bone and everything ends with the root bone.
If you are not adding extra bones then it is hard to say what you might have missed.
@@RakizFarooq I've tried 4 times now but I will try again and let you know 🙂 I'm 100% sure I'm not adding extra bones.
You can send a reply to the email with your order id and download link, attach the blend file and I can take a look at it.
I just purchased the script and I'm very impressed with it so far, but I'm having some issues. I've followed the tutorial to the best of my ability, but when I get to the pose character part, I receive the following error:
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "G:\My Drive\Blender\scenes\uefy_test.blend\uefy.py", line 1121, in execute
KeyError: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "ORG-shoulder.L" not found'
location: :-1
While trying to troubleshoot I noticed I'd accidentally named one of the bones incorrectly during the update names part; is that the reason for the error? Either way, this brings me to another issue: How do I apply the changes I make to the naming script after already having applied it once? Updating the script and clicking apply does nothing, and I can't find a way to reset it.
Okay, I managed to update the names and no longer get the error message. However, the pose of the character doesn't actually change despite the operation claiming to be successful. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
There is no 'uefy.py' in the new Uefy 2 addon. It seems you were using the old version of uefy script (lite edition) then switch to the pro edition addon within the same blend file. But the blend file is still auto-loading the old uefy script which overwrites new functionality.
You should remove the old script from the scripting panel or just start with a new Blend file and follow the new process without running the old script.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you! That's exactly what I did. I'll give it a try with a fresh blend file.
Is it possible to Rig a character without a skeleton using this tool to the UE4 mannequin rig?
Yes .. a static mesh can be rigged with this process. You can add your own basic initial skeleton and weight paint. In object mode Shift + A -> Armature -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton to get a prebuilt initial skeleton into the scene. Once you position it in your mesh and weight paint it, the rest is just the same as shown in this video.
@@RakizFarooq Ok thank you
Sorry, I'm a Begginer. I Bought a Character in UE marketplace and I didn't find FBX file. How do I Import uasset file to blender? Do I need to convert to FBX?
To get FBX file, find your character's mesh in unreal editor's content folders. Right Click -> Asset Actions -> Export
@@RakizFarooq I did this! So then when I try to import fbx file in blender, nothing appears. Maybe it's because I didn't bought the eufy yet?
@@RakizFarooq
now it worked, thanks
I need rig and pose on Scratch model. What about imported model with bone? what manequine?
If you have only a mesh without any bones then you need to add an initial skeleton. In Object mode do Shift + A -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton to add a prebuilt skeleton to the scene. Rotate/Position this skeleton into your mesh and use automatic weights or skin it manually. After that you can follow this tutorial from the start.
You can follow this playlist to see how to rig the mannequin and others czcams.com/play/PL5EVTuZGY1UYjcB1z-pvLXkTk0E0B2FRA.html
Thanks for the tutorial! A question though; what is the reason of adjusting the original armature first instead of deleting it completely and just adjusting the position of the metaright to an empty mesh?
Doing some initial work on the original armature allows us to pose the mesh to the Epic A-pose. It allows us to snap the metarig limbs and fingers near perfectly without manual work. It also makes it easier to transfer the original weight paint to the finished rig.
If you have only a static mesh, weight paint it to the 'Basic Posing Skeleton' from Uefy and follow the rest of the process as shown from the start of this video.
@@RakizFarooq Sorry forgot to post a reply. Thanks man :)
@@RakizFarooq Any idea how to solve the following: When I import the UE4 Mannequin I cant find its "root" in the Script Panel where it says "UE Mannequin" 5:48 in your video. I renamed the character and refreshed the list.
'root' is just the name of the UE4 mannequin armature object. If your UE Mannequin is not called root then either you have a naming collision, where another object is already called root. Or you are using a non-standard UE Mannequin. You should export the mannequin yourself from the unreal third person sample project.
Amazing tutorial so far. I even bought rig 2.0. The one problem I have is that I'm currently stuck at 18: 16. When I try to post character which is a custom model of mine the bones get bent back like hes flying from an explosion. I tried experimenting for an hour and couldn't figure out how to fix it.
Do you have a discord or something where I can send you the picture?
If this happens when you click on 'Pose Character' that means there was a rotation on your original armature or mesh. For example I mention this around 3:48
@@RakizFarooq
I adjusted the pose and everything else and it Turned into a Pretzel. I'm using 2.0 and at the start I skipped to 18 minutes like you said. As you can see it took me a while to get back to you because I've been trying everything in the book to get this to not Twist up and it isn't working. It might be easier if you can see what it is I'm doing but you don't really have a discord or anything where I can just send you images
@@combinepotatogaming7154 you can reply to the email with the download link and attach the file. I can take a look at it. Although I have just tried this with Blender LTS and Blender 2.90.1 and it works for me in both versions.
@@RakizFarooq All right sir I will do that and also I found your Twitter and sent you the image there as well
You did not use "Automatic Bone Orientation" when importing the mannequin. You need to always use this option with the UE mannequin. It might also be needed for your characters original armature if it's bone are not pointing towards each other.
Hello. How can I create a control rig in UE 5? I follow the whole process, but at the end when I try to replace the ue5 dummy with my dummy (the one you have ericka_ue) I update the bones, because the size of the character is different, the middle of the character is twisted.
After you have rigged your custom character as shown here with either UE4 or UE5 bones. You can follow along czcams.com/video/GdObGfhRPGA/video.html and subsequent tutorials to create the Control rig, IKRig and IKRetargeter objects.
Just check the video descriptions for following tutorials.
@@RakizFarooq Thank you for your quick response. I need the control rig to create a pose only, I don't plan to use retargeting. Why ue5 for poses, because in ue5 you need to binding the hair alembic to the skeleton so that you can set the pose.
@@RakizFarooq I almost succeeded, but for some reason, when I connect the control rig from the manikin to the character, his middle body is twisted. Now I'm going to try the method you recommended.
Hi when i try to build skeleton it says "IK FAILED: A bone required for IK setup was missing." The Body below the Pelvis is not moving. What are the IK bones that are required? Is this basically saying there's a missing vertex group for that ik bone?
It means the addon can not find a foot_l or foot_r bone. This could be for many reason. You should check that the bones actually exist, with correct name and in correct position in leg chain hierarchy.
@@RakizFarooq thanks. In which one do they have to exist? In the metarig?
Yes in the metarig there needs to be a foot bone. It should be named foot.L in the metarig. However manually adding a bone is not the answer. Uefy is designed work with the rigify limbs.leg sample type. This sample has all the details needed to complete a fully functioning rigify leg rig.
You should use Shift + A -> Armatures -> Human (Meta-rig) and follow procedure shown in this video to fix the metarig, it is prebuilt with limbs.leg and limbs.arm samples. Or if you are an advanced user you can directly add a rigify limbs.leg sample type. But you can not put together a bunch of bones and call it a leg.
Thanks. The metarig has these bones. Could there be another reason? @@RakizFarooq
If you created a json file for renaming bones of your original character make sure the entries for the feet are set correctly to "foot_l" and "foot_r". Also make sure there are not any other misnamed bones. These are case sensitive names, all of them must be correct. Review all the bone names of your character original unrigged skeleton after running the json file. They should match the hierarchy in the Unreal Mannequin.
Other that I can't think of anything else. The addon is working correctly for me running on the default rigify human meta-rig.
Hello, do you have a tutorial on how to rig a character that doesn't have bones at all? All your videos seems to use already rigged characters
In object mode use Shift + A -> Armature -> Uefy Script -> Reference Skeleton -> Basic Posing Skeleton to bring a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. You can Rotate/Position it into your mesh and weight paint it.
This will act as your character's skeleton afterwards it is just following this tutorial from the start.
I didn't publish a video on weight painting but you can review how to do automatic weight paint around 26 min into czcams.com/video/MRhDDbU0zdE/video.html
However automatic weight painting is not enough and you need to use Blender's built in weight tools to update the weight paint until it is satisfactory.
However you don't need to build the skeleton yourself like in that video just use the prebuilt one as suggested in previous comment.
part of mesh didnt join bone on knee and it stays at the spot
That would be a weight paint issue. Either you did not name one of the bones correctly in the json file or there is a separate bone controlling the knee. If so you'll need to add an extra bone to the metarig as shown in czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html
@@RakizFarooq May I ask which vertex group should be painted and which shouldn't - eg. should ik_foot_l / ik_hand_l be painted?
Hi again :)
I have managed and exported my model with UE4 skeleton in Unreal.
I need this model to pose/animate it in a specific position. Can I do it in Blender and export it in UE4? and the skeleton still be able to retarget other animations?
Which way do you recommend?
Thank you
Not sure what you are asking. If you are asking about a different rest pose like a t-pose for the character then yes. You can simply skip clicking on 'Pose Character' during the rigging process and keep whatever pose you want. The downside is that during retargeting in unreal you will need to approximate your character's rest pose in the unreal retarget manager. This doesn't get as good a result as simply exporting an accurate rest pose like we do in this video.
@@RakizFarooq No, I would like to create a specific pose, and export it, maybe as animation.
You can create a new animation as shown in czcams.com/play/PL5EVTuZGY1Ua6BTnIvK1he6VwYELEsoz1.html
If you want this new animation can be a single frame.
@@RakizFarooq But could this skeleton retarget existed animation? Will it be compatible with the UE4 skeleton?
You can review czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html where I talk about blender based joint rolls VS original UE Mannequin joint roll characters.
Only for Blender based joint roll characters you can directly export new animation from blender and retarget existing marketplace animations inside unreal.
I don't use the other workflow in my work and I don't recommend it.
So, I've followed along up through making new bones names, but when I go to apply the new Operator, I get this massive error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\mdluffy\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.90\scripts\addons\uefy\pose.py", line 236, in execute
map = json.loads(str)
File "E:\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.90\2.90\python\lib\json\__init__.py", line 348, in loads
return _default_decoder.decode(s)
File "E:\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.90\2.90\python\lib\json\decoder.py", line 337, in decode
obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
File "E:\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.90\2.90\python\lib\json\decoder.py", line 353, in raw_decode
obj, end = self.scan_once(s, idx)
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Invalid control character at: line 33 column 29 (char 492)
location: :-1
As someone very new to blender, I'm at a loss as to what I should do.
As mentioned in the video the json file gets fed to python which is very particular about indentation and string identifiers like quotes. This error means you broke the spacing, deleted a comma or otherwise did not keep to the format of the data.
@@RakizFarooq Oh! So I made the classic 'missed a semi-colon' error! Thanks! Good to know.
Also, I'm quite impressed by this addon and your rapid-response time.
@@RakizFarooq It shouldn't matter if I have excess unrelated bones, correct? That's what I understood from what you said in the video. Further, it doesn't need to have the same hierarchy structure as the mannequin, right?
Nevermind, I found it. I accidentally deleted a single ". Thanks for your help!
Excess bones beyond the hierarchy of the ue4 mannequin can be ignored. But if you are operating in 'Epic Skeleton' mode for compatibility with ue4 mannequin then it does need to have the same basic hierarchy as the mannequin,
The mannequin hierarchy doesn't matter If you are making something like a creature or such then you'd follow this video czcams.com/video/o2CR9Zxbq0c/video.html with 'Free Form' mode. You can build anything there as long as the metarig samples are in the supported list as shown in FAQ on the product page.
Bought this recently. It seems everything is working fine but when I import the fbx file to ue4 I got this error.
Found name clash, node 'head' was renamed to 'head1'
Maybe because it was renamed to 'head1', I can't select my skeleton for retarget anim assets. I don't know what I did wrong. Pls help.
From 36:00 onward I click on the 'Apply to asset' button. If you don't, your skeleton won't be visible for retargeting.
If you are getting bone name related errors it is likely you missed a step. Following the process shown in the video gives me results that always work.
@@RakizFarooq I definitely did click the apply to asset button and I believe I did all the steps, but I'll double check. Btw I'm trying to retarget the default mannequin animations, not the store bought animations. This can't be the problem, right?
@@RakizFarooq I think it kinda works now. I had to uncheck the show only compatible skeletons for 37:01 tho. Hope it will not be a problem.
That means something has gone wrong. You should make sure humanoid rig is set on both the original mannequin skeleton and your imported skeleton. Before making custom characters you should try czcams.com/video/8Ad4v7x41RA/video.html and make sure everything works as expected.
@@RakizFarooq OMG this is the solution!!!! I set humanoid rig for mannequin skeleton and now I don't need to uncheck 'show only comaptible skeletons' anymore. Still, I don't know why ue4 renamed 'head' to 'head1.' It seems name clash error is very rare cos theres only about two similar results on google search. But I guess its not a big deal as it is working fine now.
Hi is there any way to convert an animation (mixamo) to UE4?
Thank you!
Import the mixamo animation directly to Unreal Editor. Use the retargeting features of the engine to retarget it to the ue4 mannequin.
@@RakizFarooq thank you for your answer. What if it is not maximo, but an animation that it was made based on a custom rig?
It is the same thing. During retargeting in the engine, you will specify which bones in your custom rig correspond with the ue4 mannequin skeleton. The same you'd do for mixamo or anything else.
i clicked build skeleton and got a boat load of errors..
What are we talking about? A row boat, a yacht, a sailboat or the Titanic? I am unaware of this functionality. I click on build skeleton and get working rig, there is no boat.
Hi, I have used the same method for 2 different characters. The first was fin, the second it seems that it changes the name of the head bone from Head to Head1, do you know how to fix it?
Blender's default behavior is to add a suffix like 1...2 etc at the end of the name if a bone by that name already exists. You should review the skeleton to make sure you didn't miss some step. You can also just rename the bone to whatever you want if you see no other issues. The addon always works the same way so this is most likely a missed step somewhere.
@@RakizFarooq How can I rename the bone? In Unreal there is no option?
You set bone names in Blender before exporting. Also if your end result has misspelled names something was missed and you should check that first.
@@RakizFarooqIn which stage exactly do I set names? All the bones have already names. Could you please be more specific.
The addon will create an export bone named 'head' and a control bone (blender only) named 'head_01'. If you are not getting this result then I don't know what you did differently.
hello, firstly thank you for this addon and tutorial they are a life saver, but i got a problem when posing the character it poses very different then the metarig, couldn't figure the problem out, also used your refrans skeleton
The character tries to match pose with the unreal mannequin not the metarig. It is working for me so likely you missed something. Try one of the following:
You have to make sure there are no rotations on either the mesh or your character's original skeleton.
Also make sure there is no linked animation and scale etc. has been set as shown in the video.
Lastly make sure the bones in your character's limbs point to each other. Otherwise you'll need to manually move them as shown in czcams.com/video/v8UfX62SlI0/video.html around 7 min 45 sec onward.
@@RakizFarooq thank you ı wıll try this today :)
and yes i wrote metarig insted of UE mannequin :D
@@RakizFarooq hello I have tried it again now it works well thank you for that :D, however now ii have another problem with your addon i have made total 5 character the first 3 are all good in unreal, however after blender update a problem appeared when i export the character to unreal it gives error on small meshes saying that the bone to small to create physic assets and other meshes comes to small although I did every step the same. any idea what it is?
thanks in advanced
You have to set the unit scale in blender as shown in the videos before doing anything else. You also need to apply transforms on the mesh and armature as well as part of the rigging process. If you don't various issues will pop up later even if the first import looks correct.
Additionally you can also manually create physics assets for bones in the unreal editor.
where does the root come from?
When you import the unreal mannequin into Blender it will come in as SK_Mannequin -> root -> SK_Mannequin_LOD0 ... so on.
Here SK_Mannequin is the name of an empty object (ignore it). Root is the name of the mannequin's armature object and SK_Mannequin_LOD0 etc are the names of the individual mesh objects.
I brought Uefy (1.3) way back when I guess it was, not sure if it was Gumroad or where what my process to up grade because it looks like I can use it to make character conform with the Quang Phan UIE4 skeletons. his HumanBase asset pack is $17 and is a great strat with (IMHO) very nice Female base animationsand it would be nice and easy if I could get other characters using the skeleton. His skeleton has a face rig and the female breast bone don't know if that'd be a issue
The addon can not be used the way you describe. You can import a character and replace it's skeleton with a rigify based rig that will also work in unreal as a new import. What you are suggesting is the opposite.
You can get the latest version from the email you received on purchase. Use your existing download link in the email. If it is not working you can send a reply and i'll sort it out.
The workflow has also changed in 2.x new tutorial playlist is at: czcams.com/play/PL5EVTuZGY1UYjcB1z-pvLXkTk0E0B2FRA.html
@@RakizFarooq Thank you so much Sir, you are in deed a GEM to be sure
Hi, I just updated the latest version of Uefy 2.3.
When I build the (Epic) skeleton, it seems that it is broken.
The root continues only till the clevises and the rest of the bones are not connected.
That has as result the rig not working.
Any idea? Thak you
I receive an error msg that IK is failed because a bone was missing.
Uefy v2.3 works perfectly fine for me. You can check 33:30 when I click on the layer after build skeleton to hide all rigify controls and see only the export skeleton.
@@RakizFarooq I have sent you an email with a screenshot.
Could you please have a look,
@@RakizFarooq, suppose this tool was created for customers and not for your personal use.
You can send a reply to the email with your download link and order id with attached blend file and I can take a look.