Do characters need to be rigged for the Marketplace?

If we are submitting something like a Character, Giant Mech, Robot, whatever, do they need to be rigged?

Is one able to rig directly through the Blueprint system?

Static models are allowed, but I am sure, as characters, they would sell better if rigged. Checkout you can rig your character in a few click. Hope that helps.

Cool, thanks for the info.

What about more mechanical objects? Can those be rigged through Blueprints or would you guys recommend rigging them through Mixamo / Maya or whatever 3d program?

Also, is it even possible to rig through the Blueprint system?

Not 100% sure, but I think to retarget/skeletal animation data you’d need an existing skeleton on your imported mesh. But that is only from what I have tried. Typical workflow would be Maya, Max or Mixamo, unsure about being able to do it through blueprints by default, but since source code is available you could make something to do that I am sure. BTW nice Turbosquid page, is that your work, good job if so.

I am on mobile so hard for me to find the official marketplace requirements I think it’s a sticky forum above. Anyways characters have to be rigged to the epic hierarchy to be able to be sold on market place. Also it is against mixamo’s terms to sell characters that have been rigged by their applications.

When the marketplace first came out they said special characters with unique requirements do not have to follow the same guidelines as a humanoid meaning it can have a custom rig, not sure if that Is still tw case.

I’m not sure who would buy character without rig ._. Just why? Rig manually someone else character is the toughest work, I definitely won’t pay to get just more work =/

I share zeOrb’s opinion. Why would I, or anyone in that matter, want to buy a character, something which is supposed to be animated in someway, without the necessary rig? For me that’s like half of the product is missing and has no use for me.
I would go as far as saying that if you are specifically talking about characters you have to follow Epic’s guidelines. There is a section which would apply called “Skeletal mesh requirements”. Link (scroll down to the section). Otherwise your content is most likely (or even guaranteed) to be rejected.

Also, I don’t think you can rig a character within the engine. You can re-target animations, add sockets, but I never heard of someone creating a rig within the engine. That’s something which is, to my knowledge, only possible outside the, or any(?), engine and within the modelling program itself (Maya, 3ds Max, Modo, Houdini, Blender or whatever you use).

Greetings,
Dakraid

Thanks for the replies.

I have another question. Let’s say I submit something like a Giant Crab.

Crabs have eight to ten legs and pinchers.

The rig would obviously be different from anything humanoid.

So, how would someone purchase this Giant Crab and apply animations?

Would I have to provide the Maya file as well? Along with the .fbx file?

As far as I know you don’t have to provide the source, but it’s always a plus in my opinion. I think that we are able to export the skeleton through the editor anyways, so it’s not really necessarily for someone to have the real source file, but I’m not 100% sure about that.

If you really want to know it for sure, I think you are better off by asking someone from Epic directly. I sadly don’t know if they have an e-mail address for things like that or who you could ask, so sorry that I can’t give you real definite answer to that.

Greetings,
Dakraid

Hi X.E.R.T! Just to clarify, you can sell your own characters that have been rigged using the Auto-Rigger, making our UE4 export a powerful option for independent artists. You made it, you own it.

The only things that can’t be resold are our animations and characters made with Fuse, our 3D character creator. We just don’t want to have to compete against our own stuff :wink:

Maybe some confusion occurred here is the conversation that told me otherwise.

Hi ,

Where can I email someone to clarify the terms of using your product. I want to use the auto rigger to rig a character, but the character is to be sold in a online market place. So I do not know if that will violate the terms of the character not being in a compressed package. I am not looking to sell mixamo characters they are my own creation just want to utilize the auto rig features and sell the rig included in the character’s mesh.

Thank you.

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for reaching out about Mixamo’s terms of use. Unfortunately, what you describe would be in violation of our EULA (www./legal). In order to use our assets and services royalty-free, the Auto-rigged character would need to be embedded in a game or film project.

I hope that helps to clarify and please let us know if you have further questions.

Thank you,

Hey X.E.R.T., sorry for the confusion, I just clarified the policy with our CEO so I wouldn’t lead you astray and here’s the official word:

If the character is completely your own, not one of the characters from the library, and no mixamo animation (even the free stuff) or Fuse assets are included, you are indeed allowed to sell the character after rigging it with our service, no restrictions and no royalties. Your content is your content and we want to enable you, not get in your way.

The specific EULA item is “Embedded Animation Data”:

In this case, your character is the “User Product” and the skeleton/autorig would be the EAD, and could only be extracted by deleting the character mesh, readjusting the skeleton, manually skinning a different character… but that defeats the purpose of automatic skeleton setup and skin-weighting anyway.

Characters from 's collection and Fuse characters **would **need to be embedded in a game or project.

If you have any other concerns feel free to drop me a line at tylerg [at]

Rock on \m/

If it is a humanoid you can semi auto rig in Blender with Rigify, even includes a face rig setup (But can not be modified to work).

If you manage to add a none rig character to the store, it probably would only sell if it is AAA-movie quality, and or has a good price.
I personally would buy characters without rig if the price is right, and quality superb.

If you look for riggers and animators you could ask here https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?25-Got-Skills-Looking-for-Talent