Hello! I’ve recently (3 days ago) jumped in and started to learn how to use the Unreal Engine. I have some prior experience in game dev/design, and now I’ve run into an issue that I can’t solve.
Rigging. I can’t wrap my head around how Unreal handles character rigging. I’ve been trying for the past 2 days to get a rig from Blender into the engine, exporting it as part of the fbx model, then importing it as a skeletal mesh.
I’ve been watching YouTube tutorials, read several websites about it, and still can’t figure it out.
I’m currently going for a very simplistic game design, with rather lowpoly meshes, and because of that it feels a bit overkill to use the Mannequins rig since it’s has hands and fingers, which my character doesn’t have.
Does anyone know of any good tutorials out there that explains the process in a good way? And that doesn’t use the mannequin or uefy?
Once you go to the process a couple times, it should be simple to just remove excess bones you don’t need from the armature, import as a new skeletal mesh, and import animations you create or retarget for it.
Well, I’ll definitely check out the export settings, since the biggest issue i’ve been having is that the armature doesn’t export with the mesh.
What I don’t get is if Unreal requires the rig to be structured in a certain way, or if the bones need to be named in a specific way? All tutorials I’ve been watching say that you have to name the bones the same names that the Unreal Mannequin use? Or is that only if you’re going to be re-using the Mannequins animations?
Q: Does Unreal requires the rig to be structured in a certain way, or if the bones need to be named in a specific way?
A: No. unless you intend to release the character/mesh on the marketplace bone names/structure do not matter at all.
Q: Do you have to maintain bone names if you want to re-use the mannequin or other animations?
A: No. Re-targeting does that for you. You can actually skip bones in the chain and get decent results, so you don’t necessarily need to have either the names or the bone structure be the same.
As far as export settings go, My plug in has presets that I use daily. One button click beats having to go in and manually pick/choose the settings every time you need to export. Especially since I enabled the FBX/Edges/Faces shortcut that export the mesh/armature whatever along with your preset smoothing groups.
Might be a ‘no-duh’ thing, but try selecting your mesh, followed by the skeleton (in object mode) then make sure that ‘Selected Objects Only’ and Armature are active in your export settings. If the mesh and armature aren’t exporting together then that’d be the first place to start. I understand MostHost’s enthusiasm about his plugin, and would suggest using in the future, but get the basics down first.
It is real helpful if you present a use case that includes a file. There are so many things that can go wrong. But to get to the solution, we have to start with something we can look at and see first hand. Screenshots don’t do it even unless it is a real simple question.
