How do I create an animation with Control Rig?

[PantheraDigital]

I’m making a game using these animations for sword combat. They all use the same base pose to start and return to. I retargeted the animations to the UE5 Manny skeleton since it has rigs already set up like IK and Control Rig.

I want to add a few animations like blocking and a parry stance. I discovered UE’s Control Rig system which seems to be how I can achieve this but I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know much about actual animating so my plan was to use the Control Rig to create a few key frames, save it as an animation (I assume this can be done), then make it a montage and add them to my character.

However Looking at the control rig quick start didn’t seem to help me much after just dragging in the Control Rig. I see I can create poses from here however I need the Control rig to start off in the idle pose my animations use. I tried adding the animation in the sequencer and tried saving the pose from the animation and adding that, but nothing worked. The rig stayed in the default pose.

How do I get the control rig to take my idle animation’s stance so that I can create animations from the idle pose?

[PantheraDigital]

I think I found my answer in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04EPprP2OVg

I haven’t properly made an anim yet, however this seems to be what I was expecting and allowed me to play and adjust an already existing anim with a control rig. A little odd but in the sequencer you need to delete the control rig leaving you with the mesh, add the anim, then bake it to the control rig, which then re-adds the control rig with the anim on it.