After struggling for a number of hours, I was able to successfully develop a workflow for makehuman–> blender 2.78–> UE4.15. I am very new to this community and am not a professional, but am hopefully that somebody will find this to be of use… The process is painful, but free and works a lot quicker the 2nd time you do it.
- Create and save makehuman character. Export to mhx2 exchange format with game engine rig, feet on ground and centimeters (do not check off binary). Also select hide faces under clothes or it will glitch later. I recommend having the character be around 185 cm (I think the guidelines say the mannequin is 180, but 185 matches better for me). Make sure to save in makehuman and in blender often with multiple versions so you don’t have to start over if you mess up.
- Open UE4_Mannequinn_c from the UE Tools Pack designed by Lui [ADDON BLENDER] UE Tools - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums Note: this looks great, but I couldn’t get it to work as intended, so just using the template file gets the job done.
- Delete the two mobile layers to the right. Select edit mode. Go to armature. Select the 2nd through 4th layers holding shift. Press the b button then select everything then del key then delete bones. This leaves you with one armature layer of just the UE4 bones and one mannequin layer for the sake of comparison.
- Switch back to object mode. Import your mhx2 file in a new layer. Note: must have makehuman addon to blender installed. There are other tutorials for this.
- cntrl + J = Join all makehuman objects in object mode.
- Select mesh and bones using shift click. Press m to move the objects to the first layer.
- Here comes the tricky part… Use the make human bones in pose mode to adjust the mesh to match the epic bones. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just close.
- In object mode select your mesh. Click the little wrench make an armature (click apply) to keep the mesh deformed the way you made it to match the epic skeleton.
- Select the makehuman skeleton in object mode. Switch to edit mode. Press b and select the whole makehuman skeleton. Delete it.
- Switch back to edit mode. Select the mesh first (very important) and then shift click the epic skeleton to select it too.
- Do cntrl + P to parent your makehuman mesh to the epic skeleton. Select automatic weights.
- Select the bones. If they are green continue, if they are white hit cntrl+tab to make them turn green. Go to object mode. Select the mesh and hit cntrl+tab to change to weight paint mode. The set automatic weights will get you close, but you will most likely have to manually paint some of the weights. If you look at how an epic skeleton is weight painted you can use that to model how you weight paint.
- Delete the mannequin in the bottom layer.
- Export as an .FBX file using default options.
- Import fbx into UE4 using default options except check the advanced option ‘use T0 as reference pose’ and 3rd person demo project to start testing.
- Select the mannequin folder->animations and retarget the 3rd person animation blueprint by right clicking on it and selecting retarget->duplicate and retarget. In the next screen UNCHECK show only compatible skeletons. Retarget to your skeleton.
- To actually play your character, go to mannequin folder->meshes->and retarget the skeleton to your skeleton. You should be able to select your character from the dropdown now instead of the mannequin.