Hello and thanks for looking at my question.
I’m trying to do a quick rigging test of a horizontal character (like the dragon in the demo, just a chain of spheres for now) but I’m having a blocking issue which has me tearing my hair out.
I’m beginning to think that rigging horizontal skeletons in the Unreal skeleton editor simply is not possible.
When I convert my static mesh to a skeletal mesh, it forces the root bone to start and end at the x center of the mesh, when it should be at the far negative x of the mesh because it is a horizontal rig.
When I try to use edit skeleton to move the bone to the far negative x of the mesh, the beginning of the bone moves, but the end of the bone stays at the X center of the mesh, and Unreal will not let me move it. Scaling does not work, the edit tool does not give me a handle to move the end of the bone, and no changes to ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ ‘use plane as secondary’ , or ‘secondary target’ under orientation have any effect at all, nor does the orient button or auto-orient except to rotate the bone slightly.
If I add a second bone, it starts from the end joint of the first bone at the middle of the mesh (when it should be near the beginning of the mesh) and won’t let me edit that position either.
Am I doing something wrong or is this just not supported by the skeletal rigging system and I need to do horizontal skeletons in another app?
Thanks for any help!