Epic Rant about the state of the Unreal Engine documentation about animation

Apologies, this is a rant.

I’ve been using Unreal for many years. I’m not an animator, but I’ve always kept an eye on the animation side of things.

I’ve been wondering about something for a very long time, 7 years to be precise. Why isn’t there some clear and official documentation about how to animate the standard Unreal Mannequin (UE4 or even MetaHuman?) into the most popular 3d packages our there (Maya, Blender, etc)?

A quick search with the term “MetaHuman” or “Unreal Mannequin” in the Unreal 5 or Unreal 4 documentation returns 0 results. Why is that so? (This might be a bug with the current forum search engine.)

About the Unreal 4 Mannequin, it is one of the most used skeleton used on the Marketplace. You’d think that by now, there would be an official page somewhere, explaining in detail the structure of this skeleton and the philosophy behind the structure and the bones and why Epic created it (i.e ik_hand_gun). Now, I know what these bones are used for, because I have spent countless hours searching on the web for answers, and like most of you, I found out what they are used for. But that is beside the point. This should be officially documented somewhere. Learning about the Unreal Mannequin and its structure and how to animate it, shouldn’t be a treasure hunt on YT or on obscure blog posts. This information should be readily available in the official documentation, with many workflow examples taking into account these various packages. I understand that many tools are used internally, and that there isn’t a single way to animate. But I think that it would very beneficial for the Unreal community to learn more about the internal practices of Epic on that subject (which tools are they using, why and how, when animating the standard Unreal Mannequin).

It’s almost as this information needs to be secretive for some reasons or something. It shouldn’t be.

Another example of how poorly supported / implemented the documentation about animation is: we still have a stickied thread, from 2014, yes 2014 you read that right, where people are still asking question and finding bugs about the A.R.T tool. A tool that was created from a (now EX) Epic employee and that is pseudo supported, externally by this person. Every time I open that thread I cringe when I see people finding bugs and asking questions. This plugin is still officially on the Marketplace with the current description:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/animation-and-rigging-tools-faq-known-issues-and-feature-roadmap/2200/1942

“The Animation and Rigging Toolkit is used by Epic for all internal projects, including Fortnite, Paragon, Robo Recall, and Unreal Tournament. Autodesk Maya is required to use the tools (we use Maya 2016 internally), as is a Windows operating system. These tools allows you to rig and animate your own characters, with a robust suite of tools to make the process as easy as possible. These tools are fully compatible with the Epic Mannequin (he was built on them after all!), and all Epic skeleton animations available on the marketplace.”

Could we get some visibility about this please? And I don’t mean: what do you mean, you haven’t watched the video blog from March 2017 at the 2 hour 16 seconds mark that will give you the answer about your question? If Epic is still using this tool, and which version btw are they using V1 or V2, and with which version of Maya (still using 2016, in 2022?).

So my questions are:

  • Is Epic still using this tool? And if so, could you please create some official documentation about it?

  • Could you create some official documentation about how to animate the standard Unreal mannequin, with examples for various popular 3d packages (Maya, Blender, etc). Including best practices when using HumanIK (in Maya) or Auto-rig (Blender option). Examples that include animating / characterizing / auto-rigging or taking into account bones that are part of of the standard mannequin such as the ik_hand_gun.

  • If you are moving away from the standard mannequin (Manny and Quin) could you please create some official documentation about the MetaHuman bone structure and explain in details the role of each bone (not a 3 hour video, just an official page in the documentation that lay it out clearly and concisely)?

/rant over.

I apologize in advance if the information that I am looking for is already available in the official Unreal Engine documentation. Please kindly point me to where I can find it.

Thank you.

Please Epic, share with us, the Unreal Community, your best practices, the tools, the plugins, the software and the workflows that you are using when creating animation for the Unreal Standard Mannequin and the MetaHuman Mannequin. The Unreal community using your tools would be immensely grateful.

Thank you.

1 Like

Another suggestion for Epic. It would be really great if there was someone dedicated to listening and answering to users in the forums. Someone that would take the feedback and interact with the community on a frequent basis. It often feels like we are in an echo chamber here and that we are left on our own, speaking amongst ourselves, but never really knowing if our feedback is heard from the people working with and making the Unreal engine. I understand that Epic employees have better things to do than spending their time answering questions on the forums. But how about having someone doing that full time?

I think that it would be very beneficial for the Unreal community, to be able to interact with someone managing the forums and to know that they are relaying the information to the Unreal team.

Thanks.

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The Open Source aspect of the engine is great, but I think that engaging more with the Unreal community through the forums would be a wonderful way to fully embrace this philosophy and expand your user base. Listen, share and communicate more. We all benefit from this approach ultimately. The current one-way communication approach is intimidating and not really inviting for new users and even for people like me, that are extremely familiar with the engine. Some thoughts, for your consideration.

Thanks.

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+1 on your requests. I think they would be beneficial for the community