Difference between CR_Mannequin_Procedural & CR_Mannequin_Body & Beyond

Development Character & Animation
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I have to be honest, I’m completely lost on how to approach rigging in Unreal Engine 5.
I’m an old-school 3DS Max guy, and I’m not animation focused (I’m more of an Environment guy) so to me Biped has always been my go to easy rig system. But I really want to upgrade to the Control Rig style of Unreal Engine 5 - but I’m honestly completely lost.

Part of the confusion right now is stemming from the fact that the character I’m working on is female, but in UE5, I noticed there are 2 types of Control Rig setups… CR_Mannequin_Procedural & CR_Mannequin_Body - most of the documentation is based on the original male Mannequin, so I’m very curious as to why the CR_Mannequin_Procedural blueprint is different, and why is it Procedural, and is the default UE5 female character now going the way of this ‘procedural’ style? And if so, what does this mean to creating a new character that aims to use this new system? Should I worry about this ‘Procedural’ rig? Or ignore it and go with the male rig; ‘CR_Mannequin_Body’? which seems to have more documentation?

Another concern of mine is that Epic is a Maya studio; so where does that leave us with good ol’ Max biped and Max bones? Should I just forgo that completely and focus on rigging in Unreal?

Again, I’m a bit lost between the amount of options here… 2 different Control Rigs in unreal, and a seemingly lack of documentation regarding a 3DS Max approach.

I want my new character to be compatible with Unreal first and foremost, especially with the already playable character, the mannequins, and in this case, the female one. Should I be focusing on CR_Mannequin_Procedural?

Honestly I’m pretty lost. Any tips, direction or ideas on this end would help me greatly.

Thank you.

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Hello @Soaron, it does happen the same to me, I had all characters using the biped

I want to tell you in the end I did discard all of them and create them from scratch using metahuman
I did 5 characters in days, rigged, and working. If you consider this option tell me, or perhaps styles are totally different.

I’ll try to help you, this is a huge topic and many changes in UE5

I’m sure as you came from the old school you’ll get it fast!

At the moment let’s focus on characters in general

Of course the updated documentation

rigging-with-control-rig

maya-control-rig-for-the-body

Of course yes, there is a level in the content examples (you can download from marketplace)
where you can see how it works

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image1038×1002 67.7 KB

The retarget between 2 skeletal needs 2 elements:

IK Rigs and the IK Retargeter

It seems difficult and hard to do, but the results are so good, for example, I tried some retargets on old projects

Ok until here at the moment, tell me how is going!

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Hello @alberto ! Glad to hear I’m not the only one from the old-school that has got lost among all this. Sounds like you are getting a good hang of it!

Thank you for the links!! I will definitely look into it. :smiley:

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Welcome! Let me know when you feel ready for 19 pages more :joy:

You’ll see is not so hard, when I remember rotoscoping or frame by frame animation… this is heaven!

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I just got here but glad to see I’m not the only one. After years of being able to make any character do practically anything with Biped, I’m making the switch to UE and MetaHumans. It’s quite the road to walk, but determined to get there!

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