Due to better Animation compatibility we are creating a new character attempting to use the new Unreal Mannequin (So we can easily re target, anims and Mixamo anims etc… Trying to make it universal).
When I export the UE4 Mannequin from UE and try to import it into Blender it messes up. See Import Settings pic below and result after import.
You can see many of the bones lose their transform or their IK rig.
So we decided to use the Mixamo Auto-Rigger and download it with the Unreal Engine 4 exports but of course the pose used to be the T pose and now the new Mannequin is the A Pose, so when you re target those animations from Mannequin to Mixamo you get weird deforms within Unreal.
I’m guessing Mixamo won’t update their exporter due to the recent acquisition. So we try to import the Mixamo UE4 rig into Blender and that messes up with the leaf bones (What are leaf bones for?) bones stick out of the mesh etc…
It seems there is no viable way of working with the new UE4 Mannequin and Blender.
It’s not a mistake, it’s a by product of how UE4 handles bones vs. how Blender handles bones (for instance the huge bone in between his legs is the ‘root’ bone in UE4). Blender creates crazy rotations and scales when you import an fbx file. You’ll basically have a hard time animating THAT skeleton unless you use Maya (I think Max and a few other programs will work as well). There’s nothing wrong with it though. If you export it with the right settings it will look right in UE4. There are a ton of posts concerning this, but you can in theory add IK and such then TRY to animate it but I have yet to see where anyone has gotten it to really work well using Blender. You can, however, create your own skeleton and export it and it will work fine UNLESS you need it to work with that particular UE4 skeleton in some way (as in retargeting). It’s a weird thing, you can work with that skeleton by skinning your character to it - OR - you can create your own skeleton with it’s own animations and use that - but you can’t mix and match - and both solutions require a lot of work.
It’s super annoying. It’s just a ball ache to use. The lack of compatibility with Blender doesn’t make it a viable tool for characters (and animation) it’s a shame because it’s free and powerful.
I’m running out of options here blender just doesn’t work with Mixamo and unreal mannequin
And creating a new skeleton means I can’t take advantage of the animations made for unreal.
Hi, some time ago I wrote an addon for blender to help in things like these , just few days ago, I update the addon for blender 2.75 and with the new mannequin , I hope can help you
Yeah, Rawzombie - look at your bones. At least they’re facing in the right direction. LOL Look at the Blender bones they’re all facing in different directions. Or, more accurately, they’re facing in the same direction - only clockwise. LOL Try animating that! It’s a pain to be sure but at least the original content was created in Maya and so will work better. That having been said, unless you have a dire need to use Epic’s animations you can still create your own skeleton and that will usually work just fine. Of course if you’re trying to create content for the marketplace you have no choice but to work with that skeleton.
Hi guys , i feel your pain, i have some older videos on my youtube channel ref character rigs between blender and ue4, unfortuneately i haven’t had time to do a workflow with the latest UE4 Rig (A-pose)
the videos cover the rigify rig and the older makehuman rig these video are a year older, if needed i can redo some of it.
the best option atm would be to use a normal made blender rig and then in engine re-target the free anims
Thanks for your time Geodav, You’re considered the Guru of Blender.
It’s a shame this is our only option and it just doesn’t work.
My issue that goes hand in hand in this, is that I can’t Skin or Rig that well. So I was using Mixamo Auto Rigger for just a mesh created in Blender. The bad thing about this is that it messes up when I import it back into blender to animate it.
It’s terrible I am half tempted to get a month subscription to Maya LT import the character and export it to see if this will fix the issue in Blender (Making it Legal and non watermarked?). Then again it could be just Blenders importing that is the issue. Either way I seem to have no other choice than to succumb to Autodesk the big stack bully of the hobbyist/Indie world.
Can anyone confirm if the above will work, Importing to Maya LT then exporting to Blender?
@Conkerballs i’ve got multiple mixamo characters so i can have a look tomorrow, if i can find an option i’ll do a video, as you mentioned i doubt we’ll get any help from the mixamo side
Always appreciated I will check out the video when I get home.
Animating in Blender is quite nice, I do love Blender as a tool <3.
My work flow to get round this issue would be…
Use Mixamo AutoRigger for mesh, Import into Blender (Ideally it would work) Export, Put into Ikinema Web animate, retarget all animations needed, import to UE4, done.
Then animate any future animations needed in Blender and just export to UE4, and when the Mesh gets updated just export the Mesh to UE4.
I have a feeling this is gonna be an issue tho… Ill post back on your video soon. Thanks again.
Check out UE4 Blender Tools (or whatever it’s called)… here [ADDON BLENDER] UE Tools - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums. I’ve been working with it for a few days and it works pretty good. You have to animate a character, export it and the animation, import them to UE4, then retarget the animation to the UE4 guy. It sounds like a lot of work but it only takes about 3 minutes (not counting the animation process). I’ve not had a significant problem with it yet. Banged out 6 or 7 animations in a row yesterday.
I feel your pain on this. The blender to unreal workflow is…difficult. To be frank is just not as easy as Unity. There are so many “got ya’s” it seems you have to worry about. That said, I do think it will get better. In the meantime, it has been posted above already but the Blender UE4 tool is the best tool i have seen to help with the process.
Thanks for the tool and thanks Geodav for the video will help many people using the default skeleton and mesh.
My issue is the importing. I cannot import my character which I have put through the Mixamo Auto-rigger into blender the twist bones and IK bones etc… make it impossible to animate it in Blender. Likewise with the exporting the default Mannequin to blender (however the above rig from GeoDav has fixed that side). If you import it to Blender and export it, it does work in unreal. It’s just because the bone/rig messes up you cannot animate in Blender, you would have to animate in engine and you have much less control to do better animations.
Basically you cannot use an autorigged Mixamo character with your own mesh. I use Mixamo autorigger because skinning is an art in itself and Mixamo does a fairly good job at it in less than a few minutes. No solution to this. Has put character on hold.
