Best Workflow for Combining External Animations, Control Rig, and Sequencer in UE5?

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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1

I’m trying to create more lively and natural character animations in UE5.

For example, imagine a scenario where the player approaches an enemy from behind. Once the player gets close enough, the game switches to a Sequencer cinematic. The enemy turns around and punches the player.

For the punch animation, I would like to use an animation imported from Mixamo or created using motion capture. However, I may want to make some small adjustments to the motion afterward—for example, slightly changing the position of the arm, shoulder, spine, or other joints during the punch.

Can I use Control Rig to make these kinds of adjustments to an existing animation inside Sequencer?

I’m also wondering what the general workflow for character animation in UE5 cinematics is.

My current idea is something like:

  1. Create or obtain a base animation externally (Mixamo, motion capture, Maya, Blender, etc.).
  2. Import the animation into UE5.
  3. Use the animation as the base motion in Sequencer.
  4. Use Control Rig to make small adjustments to individual joints or poses.
  5. Use Sequencer to handle the overall cinematic, including the character animation, camera movements, timing, effects, etc.

Is this a common and recommended workflow?

Until now, I have been creating the character’s Control Rig directly in UE5 and doing most of the posing and animation manually inside Sequencer. While this works, I find it very time-consuming, especially when creating an entire movement from scratch.

What I would like to do instead is start with a good base animation from Mixamo or motion capture, and then use Control Rig to refine and customize it in UE5.

For example:

External animation / mocap

→ Import into UE5

→ Use as the base animation

→ Refine the animation with Control Rig

→ Use Sequencer for the cinematic

→ Add cameras, timing, effects, etc.

Is it possible to work this way in UE5?

If so, what would be the recommended workflow? Should I use Animation Sequences + Control Rig + Sequencer, or is there another workflow that is more commonly used for this type of cinematic animation?

I’m particularly interested in a workflow that allows me to reuse existing animations while still having the flexibility to make small, hand-made adjustments when necessary.

Any advice or examples of a typical professional UE5 workflow would be greatly appreciated.

2

Yes, you could use sequencer plus control rig to edit mocap anims, but if this is for a gameplay event you’ll be fighting sequencer’s expectation that the scene should play out at a pre-defined location. While not common or standard yet (as it’s still marked experimental last I checked), you might want to look into the Contextual Animation System if such events take place somewhat often at arbitrary locations. The system was pretty much designed to set up paired animations for gameplay events like sneak attacks, takedowns, and such.

3

Motion capture animations can be edited in Control Rig after all! That’s great to hear. I’d only been finding information about MetaHumans when researching this, so I’m really glad to know that I can also import my own original, anime-style character as a Skeletal Mesh and adjust it myself.

I was wondering how you would handle things when you wanted to specify an arbitrary location, but then I looked into the Contextual Animation System. It really is an impressive system! The fact that it’s still experimental is a little concerning, though. I’ll look into whether there are any known errors or issues and see if it might be practical to use.

4

Generally speaking, if an anim can be imported to the engine, Control Rig can edit it. Need to have a reverse solve setup in the rig tho to transfer anim data to the controls. Trying to do it on the fly at runtime might be a bit expensive too, but you can always do the major edits in editor, bake out sequences, then use a lighter rig to tweak things in post proccess like foot/hand IK.

That CAS is still flagged experimental shouldn’t be too worrisome, in and of itself. Lots if features Epic adds will be experimental or beta for years, even if they work fine. That said, CAS is still a bit rough, and sometimes has jittering issues. They can often be resolved by refreshing the targets and such in the scene editor, saving it, then reopening (or restarting UE altogether). Either way, might be worth trying it out for a while. As long as you backup your character/level blueprints and stuff before adding the functions/comps for the system, worst that could happen is wasting a few hours.

IF CAS is too unstable, could also just use Motion Warping to implement your own paired anim system. Under the hood, CAS is essentially a shortcut tool for setting up motion warp links between two actors. At least Motion Warping has moved to beta stage of the feature life cycle.