bug in Unreal Engine 5.7 related to Control Rig

Development Character & Animation
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1

This appears to be a regression issue in Unreal Engine 5.7 related to Control Rig playback inside Level Sequence, specifically affecting finger animations.

Finger controls work correctly inside the Control Rig Editor, and the rig evaluates without any problems. However, when the same animation is played in a Level Sequence, the fingers do not move at all, while the rest of the body animates normally.

Screenshot 2026-01-19 223503
Screenshot 2026-01-19 2235031049×481 95.7 KB

Screenshot 2026-01-19 224033
Screenshot 2026-01-19 2240331110×464 103 KB

What makes this behavior confusing is that after using Bake Animation Sequence, the exported animation contains the finger movement exactly as authored. This confirms that the animation data is correct and that the Control Rig is solving properly. The issue seems to be limited to how Level Sequence evaluates or displays Control Rig results in real time.

To confirm this is not a setup issue, I tested the same character and Control Rig in Unreal Engine 5.4, where everything worked as expected. The problem only appears in Unreal Engine 5.7, suggesting a regression in the engine.

Since the animation works after baking and works correctly in UE 5.4, this strongly points to an engine-level Sequencer issue rather than a rigging or configuration problem.

2

I found the solution.

In my case, I was animating the character’s fingers normally inside Control Rig.
Everything was working: no errors, no rig issues.

But as soon as I played the Level Sequence, the fingers stopped moving completely, while the rest of the body animated normally.

What was even stranger?
When I baked the animation using Bake Animation Sequence, the resulting animation contained the finger movement correctly.

At first, I suspected:

  • Control Rig

  • Sequencer

  • Or a bug in Unreal Engine 5.7

Especially since I tested the same project in Unreal Engine 5.4, and everything worked without any issues.

This confirmed that the problem was not in the animation and not in the Control Rig, but in something deeper.

After searching and testing, I discovered that the issue was related to the LOD of the Skeletal Mesh.

In SK_UEFN_Mannequin,
some LODs reduce or completely disable the finger bones.

Unreal Engine 5.7 applies these LOD settings accurately during Level Sequence,
while:

  • Control Rig Editor ignores LOD

  • Bake Animation bypasses the issue entirely

Once I:

  • Forced the character to LOD 0

the finger animations immediately started working again inside the Level Sequence.