Character animation is misaligned after replacing mannequin with custom mesh (UE5 + Blender)

[Tacsbul23]

Hi everyone, I’m working on an indie FPS game using Unreal Engine 5 and I’ve run into a problem with character animations.

I originally created my animations in Blender using the default UE5 mannequin rig. Everything worked fine with the default mannequin mesh. I also modeled my own custom character in Blender, and I want to use that instead of the mannequin.

To rig my custom character, I used Auto-Rig Pro and made sure to export it with a UE5-compatible mannequin skeleton. However, when I import the custom skeletal mesh into Unreal and swap it in place of the mannequin, the animations are completely misaligned. bones are in the wrong positions, and the character looks distorted during playback.

Even when I try using the animation retargeting system in Unreal, it doesn’t help much. The poses are still off and the bones don’t align properly.

Has anyone successfully replaced the UE5 mannequin with a custom mesh rigged in Blender (with Auto-Rig Pro or otherwise) and had it work correctly with the original mannequin animations? Any tips or workflow suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[brs-sebascova]

Hello there @Tacsbul23!

Blender and Unreal don’t have the best relation, they tend to clash with each other in different scenarios, specially animations. If the mannequin skeletons are the same, the animations should lock as intended with AutoRig.

So, the first approach would be to reset export/import settings in both UE and Blender, in order to rule out any conflicts between either configuration. After that, test importing back the mannequin with your usual pipeline.

If the issue persists, please test the method detailed here, it has worked for me in other similar scenarios.