I’m trying to rig the face of a character in Blender to eventually bring into Unreal. I’d like the mouth and eyelids to follow the curve of the face so there’s no unnatural warping. As far as I know, modifiers in Blender don’t carry over to Unreal, so I can’t use a shrinkwrap modifier to keep the bones locked to the curve of the face. Is there some kind of constraint in Unreal that would keep the face bones constrained to the curve of the face?
The character, for reference:
Hello there @pastelfable!
Indeed, any modifiers in Blender need to be fully applied before exporting to the engine, so you would need something else to keep the face bones tied to the face’s curve.
There are constraints in UE that should work just fine for your setup.
Create a Constraint
Constraint information, as well as the workflow for adding constraints, is located in the Animation panel when Animation Mode is enabled.
Constraints are established by creating a Parent - Child relationship between two or more objects. To create a new constraint, first select your Controls you want to constrain (child), then click Add Constraint (+) and select a constraint type. Your cursor changes to an eyedropper tool you can use to select the object to constrain to (parent) in the Viewport.
Constraining is not limited to Control Rig elements, you can constrain any object or Actor. Additionally, Actors can be constrained without needing Sequencer to be open.
After creating your constraint, you can view its keyframe information in Sequencer for the constrained Control. Most constraints will also create compensating keyframes, which maintains the current visual position of the child when the constraint activates. These compensating keyframes are linked to the constraint keyframe, and follow it if you change the timing.
Please review the full Epic doc below on how to use them, as well as a video guide on the matter, here:
this is very helpful, thank you!!
