Hi there!
At first, I want to say I am an animator and I am very new to the engine. I have no access to Maya and we all know that exporting and importing animations from blender is messy all these axis rotations and stuff. And then I saw this Control Rig option and I was like "oh! it might not be the most complex rig ever but I will be able to animate inside the engine. Make something simple and put it instantly into animation controller (unreal calls it sequencer… ?) At first animations may not be most complex but I will be able to prepare what I need for a controller and learn more about animation system to know what HOW to prepare animations in outside software.
I have seen some tutorials and I don’t understand something. According to some you just ->install addon ->control rig sequencer ->control rig asset->you put mannequin on the scene ->go to sequencer ->choose a track ->there should be control rig to choose-> and TADA you have this control rig panel and can start animating.
I thought I am doing this right but I might miss something :c For me there are never any control rigs to choose from tracks. There is some option but this turns mannequin into pancacke and I have never seen control rig panel appeared.
Documentation is for me a little bit unclear because there is some very small article about how to create ik controllers by blueprints but it was never said that you have to make entire control rig this way if you want to use it. It was advertised as click to go solution.
I might be not the smartest person but if I will have to learn how to create this rig by blueprints I guess I will learn somehow I just want to be clear if it is needed…
Please don’t be harsh 
I wish you best
Well the concept of the control rig design has been around for a while now and is a fundamental feature of Motionbuilder and creates the ability to manage large amounts of animations through a single channel solution. As it stands any rigged biped or quad character can be imported into MB, and depending on the naming convention used, drag and drop a control rig and your ready to animate using advanced control systems and features.
So
Having authoring tools outside of Unreal 4 is there and the real requirement is a bridge from Motionbuilder to Unreal 4 which is also available via live update.
But
The ability to re-target animation in UE4 is also available and is the first step towards creating a much more useful and complex control rig.
Actually… using the control rig you can create ik controls, pole target etc, then using control rig sequencer create animations inside unreal, then export (internal, should be called convert) the sequence into an existing animation,
I’m only just starting to playing with it but have tested and it works, only problem is selecting the controls I haven’t figured out how to create the pretty control selector, just clicking on the names of controls in the list, will play some more and return with a dtailed walk through, unless someone else can help 
How did you export the sequence as an animation? For some reason the export button is missing in the new version of the control rig sequence.
create the sequence, make animation… then in the content browser right click on the “control rig sequence”, at top should be the export option, if this doesn’t show up not sure???
next screen should open and then you have convert control rig, at this stage it looks like the animation sequence can only use existing animations, the create new animation sequence doesn’t work., just duplicate an existing one, it will overwrite it, so be careful.
The whole process is a bit janky, seems to not work at times, saving seems to clear it.
Use Sequence Recorder, I’m using that to record realtime animations from IKinema Orion in UE4, works perfectly
made a quick demo to fill in the gaps, create control rig, ik, animate in sequencer, convert to animation.
basic but should give the basic idea.
Yeah, it would be nice if you could select from a couple of primitives in the blueprint to represent the controls.
Works perfectly thanks!
Well after a bit of digging…
in 4.19 it’s all built in, if you use the standard unreal mannequin you don’t need to do anything much at all,
Enable plugin, open animation tab in modes, create new sequence, add track using default base human(built in, hard coded) place skeleton in level and select it, boom fully rigged and ready to use.
But in 4.20 onward the hard coded ready made rig is missing, it looks like we can now build it internally as above but there are no updated instructions on how to set it up fully.
Only really missing the cool clickable Control diagram and ik/fk switching.
We could do all animation work in 4.19, using the default mannequin and create then convert animations for use in any engine, and avoid the new setup until documentation catches up.
[FONT=“Verdana”]Is there a way to manipulate the control rig directly in VR? Looks like at the moment it can only be used along with the sequencer…
Any ideas?
Hey [USER=“4519”]Basement Bob[/USER] , unless I am doing it wrong, the only issue now comes if you connect more bones. You will have a bunch of boxes in the same spot and not know which box is to what part of the bone. Unless there is a way to make the box attach to a specific bone.
Hi,
I have checked a lot of tutorial but in my way where is Structure-> Rigt Hierarchy?
What I’m doing wrong?
Same problem here! Anyone got a solution for this problem. Currently I am in V. 4.23.
Thx!
Only site I found yet to the newest version. Working in 4.24
Also using Control Rig in 4.24 now and I’d really appreciate an update on the documentation or a pointer to a tutorial explaing the ideal worklows. Thanks in advance.
So thank to this, I created a spine control rig and wanted to try it. My question is how can I use this in editor and changing it in realtime?
Sorry but I’m bumping this. Still no documentation that makes sense of it. All tutorials on the web are with the old systems and nothing is apparent. Even from looking though the old tutorials.
Use 4.25.
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