How to export & import Skeletal Mesh between Blender and Unreal
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- čas přidán 11. 09. 2024
- Are you frustrated trying to export a Skeletal Mesh from Unreal Engine to Blender and try to bring it back? Did you get that error:
FAILED TO MERGE BONES
This could happen if significant hierarchical change has been made
- i.e inserting bon bteween nodes
Would you like to regenerate Skeleton from this Mesh ?
**WARNING: THIS WILL RECOMPRESS ALL ANIMATION DATA
AND POTENTIALLY INVALIDATE***
Here is my journey to make that work!
![[Blender to Unreal Engine 5] Correct FBX Export Settings for Characters](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YbWfoyf4MqI/mqdefault.jpg)
You saved my psyche... I've spent multiple hours trying to understand why did blender add another armature bones...
There are no words to describe how greatful I am, thank you so much! 🐺
It's same for me :) Thank you Chrix
WHY THEY JUST DON"T DO IT BY DEFAULT STUPID BLENDER
Actual Correct Steps from here 8:30
holly you! thanks you so much lol
xdd
Now i understand why the last 342 tries to import my own skins to Unreal was not working haha. Thanks you much!
Literally telling us what was causing it is 95% of the problem. Thank you and showing the extra issues was very helpful. Now I don't feel stuck :)
the big file size is because you used mirror modifier on the whole mesh to the whole model was duplicated. so you exported double the number of polygons.
Yes I saw that at the end 😀
I'm CRAZY by this "Failed to merge bone" thing and let me kiss you in the face, Thank you for making this!!!!!!!
Thank you so much. The selecting of the root and not the first hierarchy was the solution. I always get problems when editing my mesh and editing it blender, it was because I was selecting the root made by blender.
I'm glad that helped you!
This was driving me mad, thank you for making this!
I like how you showed yourself finding the solution to problems instead of cutting them out. Good stuff.
thanks, I'm glad you find it useful
@Teemo1WildHunt But if people make the same mistakes or run into the same problems he's already solved it for them.
Thank you sir, the merge bones thing was driving me up a wall
Your process of solving the problem teached me more than any fancy edited tutorial video ^^
I'm actually blown away at how good this solution is, fixed it perfectly
Zooming in on the error that much gave me ptsd. I'm going to have nightmares now. Thanks, I hate it.
I was thinking of making merch with it haha
Thank you alot mate, this trick of selecting & exporting really saved me from tons of headache, cheers. Had same problem when importing in Unreal with the Game Rig Tools Addon of Blender.
I felt your pain through this entire video and I live in that space! :D Very helpful. I needed to behead my character so I could use an already rigged head in its place. This should accomplish that!
Thank you so much! I've been struggling with this for weeks.
ok, it's work, but did you notice that when you want to use animations, the neck is not in the good place ? There are few deformations of the mesh !
You need to do this video again but without you messing up 5 times in a row because between the start of this video and when you get it to work you fix the issue. This is because it's unclear where you fix the issue, took me a bunch of watching and reproducing your steps to find what you did to fix it.
when I export the fbx, the texture is not exported, how can I fix it ?
For someone starting with blender, this was amazing. Thank you so much!
Life saverrrrrrrr, million thanks brother. You get a sub for this.
lol 😅😅this was driving me insane past few days!! thanks a lot :)
You are welcome, I am glad that I gave you some help 🙂
this is a great way of doing tutorials! thank you sir
Life saver, really good video, hope to see more, even if it's not useful, u have cheerful voice
Worked, thanks for that. It was also helpful showing the problems and fixing them as well.
thank you, i was a bit rusty after i jumped back in. i use multiple meshing apps, sometimes i get confused. :D
Thank you x 100. I had just did this same thing trying to make a mod to an asset and I know 0 about animations but when I imported my modded mesh the bones were all mucked up and animations wouldn't run. It was indeed a nightmare.
Your vid helped fix all of that.
Thank you, thank you very much. Solved the problem that after I exported to blender, I imported Unreal again.
The mirror modificator duplicates the whole mesh that's why it doubles, you should just activate mirror editing on X ^^
yep, you got it :)
see my issue is the fact that those bones are all jacked, they arent connected in blender, but are in unreal. Surely we are exporting from Unreal and Importing into Unreal incorrectly which is what lead me here but good vid!
Thanks for that tutorial. You did not use any pricey tool nor made any fancy BS to it.
Why on earth is there not a "free" in-house solution from any of those two companies?
I guess there is a way to use your own model mesh and replace the mannequin mesh, like use your mesh with that mannequin skeleton?
Thanks for the comment. There is a free in-house solution that you can check in a video a made:
czcams.com/video/KtiWmjPFpi0/video.html
You can also check more up-to-date info about this open-source plugin made by Epic Games:
epicgames.github.io/BlenderTools/send2ue/
6:48 The file huge because you are using the mirror modifier, which doubles the mesh when you export. You use mirror when you have half of the model. In this case you are using mirror on a full complete model, so you end you with two models one on top of the other.
Yes, you got it!
bro i have to thank you so much. i have a lowpoly pack but i want elfes and i just wanted to add ears to make more variety and with your video i finaly done it. thaaank you.
exactly what i needed
So glad I found this video. Thank you for this!
dont be sorry lol, i had so many headake with this process, i made me mad. I will try your methode ^^
Thank you so much. Exactly what i needed
dude your a lightsaber! thanks so much!
how do iattach an existing object to it and have the unreal engon reconize its atached to a place exaple like a head chang?
thank you so much. this was slowly eating on me😂
yes, I can rely on that feeling when you face a weird bug in a project 🙂
Thank you SO MUCH! This helped me!
How do you add a character from sketchfab to this bone structure?
I keep having this same issue no matter what I do. When I export my character into Unreal it keeps saying 'Failed to merge bones' I have tried everything in this video... Do you have any idea what else it could be, or would you maybe be able to take a quick look at it? Have tried for so many hours now and I am starting to give up....
Great tutorial!, I wanted to ask do i need to apply the scale of the Imported Mannequin ? It dosent seem to affect anything but without applying the scale it gave me allot of problems in other Stuff rig related.
Edit: I tested out Applying the Scale of the armature it shrinks the Character into A tiny bit
I think apply Transformation to your model is always a good thing before exporting it.
You're the real MVP
Afternoon Sir! I'm a character artist and I am having a bit of trouble duplicating your success in the video. I'm trying to do the exact same thing you are doing but with a metahuman. I've followed your steps exactly and I still am getting this error. Is there a different procedure for metahumans or is there something else? Would you be willing to do like a zoom call or something if you have the time. I can pay you for your trouble (we can schedule something for the week of the 30th). Thanks in advance if you get this
That a good question; MetaHumans are a bit specials in Unreal Engine. I need to check what is going on with them for that process, I will let you know if I found something.
Ok doing a quick test; you have to be careful of what you select in Blender when you export. It can skip the root and armature if you do not check properly. But from that said, the main issue is the Materials. Unreal seem not exporting the Material to Blender. So when you bring it back into Unreal, from Blender, that is something to be aware of; your materials slots will be empty. I'm not sure how can it be fixed without re-creating manually all the material in Blender and associating the right vertices to it... looks like a very tedious process...
@@ChrixB word. Thanks a bunch for the help, I’ll be sure to see about that next time I try it for work
Hi, I had the same situation as you. And what I've found: When I import a metahuman skeleton TO blender some bones disappear for some reason, some the bone count doesn't match with unreals version after I put it back. So the solution for me was to use the blender addon Better FBX Importer&Exporter while IMPORTING metahuman to blender (u should change some default import settings there) . For export I used the standart blender exporter. Maybe this helps
@@annalevina4245 thanks a bunch
9:06 it doesnt work for me, when i import i dont have the sk mannequin by default
Thanks this helped a lot!!
Oof followed the steps and I still get the same error. Imported the skeleton and did not have any changes. Racking my brain over here.... It really is SM Hell!
can we get bones of skeletal mesh from UE, then somehow using it as new bones for model in Blender then export to using that model in UE ?
If you want to rig a custom character mesh to the Unreal Engine Manequin skeleton, I suggest AccuRig. It's free, and that has a good set of tools to do that.
@@ChrixB Thanks bro, i used ACC too, but i got problem with my model when i using model import from ACC to UE.
So i'm wondering how can manual making or fixing bones from blender to using in UE
@@oceankingdom1985 Have you tried using the new animation toolkit in UE5.3? It might be easier to accomplish this there instead of in Blender.
i'm not yet, thanks for suggest bro
This was helpful. Thank you.
I’m getting this same error but I’m importing from Maya. I have one metahuman I exported/imported with no issues, I did the EXACT same thing with the next one and I got the error
Super ca fonctionne, merci bien !
Thank You!
Golden!
So this solved the error and the skeleton binds (thank you so much) but I'm running into another issue. Trying to do a custom head mesh but the bones for the head (smiling, blinking, eyebrows etc) don't work, but the morphs do. so it wont move the eyelid, for example, but it will do the morphs (the morphs just smooth things out so it doesn't look silly). I'm using the pre made "mh_arkit_mapping_anim" to see if things work, but it just wont. Any thoughts?
So I found a fix:
- Find "import settings" on ORIGINAL metahuman face skeletal mesh
- Change file path to new morphed .fbx file (I had to change this because it didn't give me two steps from nows option, which is weird)
- Click the three dots next to "reimport base mesh" (located at the top)
- Click "reimport base mesh with new file" (select the morphed .fbx file again)
- You'll be asked to match up the materials needed, right click the yellow highlighted ones and select the correct material
Should be it.
@@MrMustachio43 thanks for sharing the solution you find!
thank god, thanks alot bro it worked finally
yeah im cry when im import it frist time ))) why why why this two good programs dont wanna work each other
UE 5.4 Blender 4.01... not working
Thanks!!!!
Thaks!!!
thanks
can you also do animations there with that SK Mesh?
I did not try that yet but I don't see why it would not be possible.
Thx
Thanks!
Sorry, still doesnt work. The weights are messed up and animations look bad.
Ok I fixed it. I mistakenly picked "automatic bone rotation" do NOT enablethis in the import setting.
Bro my guy only export rootbone and bellow dont export the group silly cause if you do what happens is the root bone ain't the root anymore its the SKM_Quinn_Simple not the "Root" the hierarchy system will get ruined if that happens winkkkk your welcome
bro just show us the working method instead of wasting a while XD
This tutorial could be done in less than 3 minutes...
Why you show us all your errors ? don't get it !
Christ Loves You all and Is waiting For You to talk to Him
u r getting too clumsy
This guys is a chad