What is the best workflow for rigging characters for Unreal?? I mean, using epic skeleton. Let me explain it a bit… I’m developer, not artist so even I have certain knowledge about this I don’t know how to use modeling software.
I suppose that you are going to say: Maya and ART but… I tried it in the past and I had a lot of issues. Probably because ART works better with some Maya versions than others, that’s why I’m asking for a specific workflow.
I’m obviously opened to other alternatives like Blender or 3DMax if that “proper workflow” includes a pay version of Maya. Anyway is good to know.
You just have to build your own rig and map it accordingly. I made one for 3ds max with CAT, as I enjoy the layering and being able to switch between poses and have more control over my animation channels
Easy for you to say! hehehe. My initial idea is not really to learn animation because that will take probably too long… I’m trying to develop my own project so I will gather characters from different resources and I will buy animations from the marketplace, so I need those characters to have an epic skeleton. Probably I will modify few animations but just minor changes, not animations from scratch.
Has 3ds max / cat any tool to auto weight like ART? just asking.
Auto weight is a broad term, no matter how good the automation the weight painting is still very manual process ( for quality ) in most cases unless you are copying weights from a existing character in 3ds max i believe this is called Skinwrap, as for tools Biped & CAT are very much like ART as they provide a framework and streamlined workflow to deal with skeletons/poses/manipulation.
In the end it depends on what you feel works best and allows you to achieve the results you want without too much hassle.
You can use retargeting then instead of worrying about custom rigs that are compatible with the Epic skeleton. Especially true if you intend on buying custom characters.
Thanks guys! for your words, it seems like I will have to search for my own environment. About retargeting, I don’t want to have a different skeleton for each character, so unless the characters have epic’s compatible skeleton I will get rid of their rig and I will rig them again. At that point I know I probably will have to use retargeting due to different body proportions (always talking about humanoids) but always with similar skeletons.
I will probably try with Blender. Does anyone use it for this?
If you delete the rig thats incompatible you loose your animations if it has custom animations, unless you do the new rig, transfer the animations… which is basically doing re targeting outside of UE4
If you need blender advise you need to head over to the blender forums. Lots of very helpful people on there who does use it for ue4
Yeah, you are totally right but I think I won’t get characters with animations included. In my mind is more like buy a big pack of animations (and they should be done for the epic skeleton) and use them with different characters who obviously will need to have an epic’s compatible rig.
