I’m fairly new to Unreal, and I’m trying to start a small game project using free assets and blueprints. My most immediate obstacle, however, is that I seem to be unable to import my character model to the project, as I keep getting error messages stating “Unable to merge Mesh”, “Different hierarchy”, etc. I have seen tutorials on Youtube that show how to swap default Unreal mannequin model by another character, but not how the character is made. I use 3DS Max for modeling, and I know from the Unreal website that it is a viable software. I used a regular Biped to rig my character, with the exception of 2 additional bones the shoulder pads. Does anyone know if there is some process to building a character for Unreal, some rules to follow, etc?
It looks like your issue is probably that those additional bones need to be linked to the rest of the biped, if your skeleton rig doesn’t have the same root object (in that they’re all linked together in some way) then it can’t import it.
seems to me that i remember that bones can only be added to the ends of the skeletons, not in the middle… like off the head, toes and fingers… but not off the shoulder, spine, neck etc…
You should be able to add them wherever you want, other bones would have multiple other bones attached, for example the hand bone would have 5 fingers attached.
are you having issues importing a new custom skeleton or are you trying to import onto existing epic mannequin skeleton?
there could be an issue with naming conventions but you should definitely be able to update the skeleton in ue4. I make small edits to my rig all the time (including adding bones (specifically twist bones to arms and legs)) and have had no issues with reimport.
I’m trying to import my model onto the existing Unreal skeleton. As for the extra bones, they are linked to the Spine 3 bone. I’m honestly not sure what more I could do with the naming convention since the 3DS Max Biped seems to have the same bone names and hierarchy as the Unreal skeleton.
Im sure there is a way, but if you rig your character with the unreal skeleton you will be able to take advantage of the stock character animations available in the engine.
Thanks for advice so far guys, lemme show you what I got so far
Since the rig has been taking time, I figured I’d at least texture the model, pretty it up.
I just got back from meeting the cinematics director of Valkyrie Profile and Street Fighter V (I currently live in Tokyo), he told me the rigging problem seems to be with the root bone of the skeleton. He also said that many members of his team use Auto Rig Pro on Blender. I was using Mixamo to auto rig my model, and he mentioned that although it’s easy, it has been known to have export problems.
Mixamo apparently removes the root bone, probably one of the reason I get this error message
“The following bones are missing from the bind pose:
Bip001 L Finger0Nub
Bip001 L Finger1Nub
[etc]”
I guess it’s time to learn Blender and fire up Auto Rig, unless we got a rigging expert in here who can help me out. We got donuts. wink wink