To update an old existing rig, use the following steps:
In Pose mode reset the Pose on rigify (Alt + R, Alt + G, Alt + S)
Go to Object Mode, deselect the armature object and hide it (eye icon)
Select the metarig object in Edit Mode
Use wireframe view and select only the left side of the character (all arm, leg bones)
Right click and select ‘Symmetrize’, then deselect everything
Refresh list in Uefy Script Panel and set Rig to ‘Armature’ object
Unhide Armature Object
Select metarig in Object mode and click on ‘Re-generate Rig’
Select the Armature in Object mode and click on ‘Build Skeleton’
To summarize, we edit the metarig the character was built with. Symmetrize the arms and leg bones. Then re-generate the rig, this overwrites the existing rigify rig. Then we tell Uefy to make it compatible with the game engine with Build Skeleton.
After the above steps you should see much better mirrored poses.
This looks like a great tool I would like to use but I am pretty new to the Unreal engine and animation. Before buying the pro edition, is the lite version a good representation of the pro version or is it completely different? ie. is the process pretty similar for biped characters between LITE/Pro or is the Pro version significantly easier?
I also want to make sure I don’t go learn how to use the LITE version then need to relearn how to use the Pro version
No the Lite version is very simple and different from the Pro Edition. It is basically the old version of the product. The Pro Edition was rewritten from scratch and introduces many new ideas and workflows that just don’t exist in the old version.
The lite edition is however free of cost and it still works. You can use it if that is important to you. But the pro edition is both easier to use and lets you do more complicated rigs.
I used the addon to export Manny89 and then reimport with blender based rolls.
I retargeted the original animations from the third person character starter pack to the blender based rolls manny89. I copied the IK foot control rig that is referenced in the original animation blueprint.
I am having an issue with the IK foot controls. I can see in the preview that the ik_foot_r & ik_foot_l are locked in place and the animation data from the previous animations did not transfer with the retarget.
I just wanted to ask if you reckon its an error on my part / has this worked for you?
You need to create chains for those bones in the IKRig and then link them together in the IKRetargeter. You can use the IKRig file for the original SK_Mannequin as reference if needed.
All the required ik bones are present in the uefy export with correct hierarchy and names but I have never used the foot_ik controls in any meaningful way. I got foot placement working using the main foot bones so never needed the ik bones.
I am sorry to say I did notice that particular point in the video and created the chains for the ik bones accordingly, so am not sure what the issue is.
It is okay as I will do what you did and roll my own solution, I have seen other comments about this issue separated from anything to do with your plugin so I would think its unrelated.
Hey I’m experienced in blender (not animations) and newish to unreal engine. If I create a character without a rig, but want to use this to create efficient rigs for unreal, what do I need to do to get this done? (There are only videos for doing this from the ue mannequin or an already completed character, and I’m struggling over here) please help!
You need to add a basic skeleton to your mesh and weight paint it.
For example if you have only a static mesh (no bones) then in object mode do Shift + A → Armatures → Uefy Script → Reference Skeleton → Basic Posing Skeleton.
This will add a prebuilt skeleton into the scene. Rotate/Move the bones into you mesh and use automatic weight painting. Then manually update/fix the weight paint in problem areas with blender’s built in weight painting tools.
At this point your mesh will be just another character with an initial skeleton that can be rigged with uefy + rigify combo following the tutorials for use in UE5.
I did an older video for the lite edition for rigging a static mesh ( How to rig a character from Blender to UE4 with Uefy Script v1.3 - YouTube ) where I handmade the entire skeleton before using auto weights. But with the basic posing skeleton in Uefy 2 you can skip that and get straight to skinning weights.
I appreciate it a bunch man, I’ll give that a try that sometime today. One thing I noticed that I don’t know how to configure yet. How do I make a character mesh show up in the uefy show up in the character properties?
Hey so I got it working and this is kinda awesome! One thing I haven’t tested yet is creating animations and exporting them into unreal, but I was wondering if you’d give me your opinion on how I should do this before I implement anything. What armature should I use to rig my character, should I just use one of the manny presets and build off of that or should I create a rigify rig and then follow one of the tutorials you’ve provided to implement it for my own character?
Last time I started working on animations I pulled them from rigify, and some of the animations got messed up when I tried exporting them into unreal
What might cause this to happen? I followed the Import and Retargeting videos exactly, and the animations import fine from blender, it’s just when I try to retgarget it to anything the writ and ankle bones are all out of wack
In blender the procedure I follow to create my character is:
import the manny89 metarig
running the Fix Metarig command to fit the UE5 mannequin
generating a rig
weight painting the character
and then building the epic skeleton
Once I export the mannequin it’s imported correctly, and I follow everything in the import and retargeting video. This may be a new question, though what might cause this to happen?
Retargeting works when I retarget my animations in blender onto manny, but not the other way around, and it also doesn’t work when I do it to another character I’ve imported.
On Blender side it could be a weight painting issue involving twist and/or metacarpal bones.
On Engine side it could be a misconfigured IKRig or IKRetargeter.
I can rig a character and get it working correctly as shown in the videos. So this is something that was missed on your side. If you want I can review your blend file. You can send a reply to the email with your Download Link and Order ID. Just attach the blend file and I’ll let you know if there are any issues in it.
On the engine side I can’t help you much. You will need to figure out what you did different on your own. I’ve provided the IKRig and IKRetargeter tutorials as a reference and Unreal Engine 5 itself has documentation on how to set it up correctly.
Hi, started with Uefy 2.5 for Blender 3.41 building a relatively simple character for UE5.1.1. The joints are made up from balls and separately the body parts are meshes. I like to rotate the joints on the centre of the balls, like the Mixamo Y-Bot, so there is no deformation of the body mesh during animation but only rotation on the balls, keeping the balls round without deformation.
In the tutorial “Rigging a character for Unreal Engine with Blender, Rigify and Uefy 2”
you mention that in that video you do not deal with multiple meshes for the character, so you join the meshes together.
Is there a video for multiple meshes that are separate or do you have a suggestion how to deal with this kind of situation?
Using multiple meshes instead of one is pretty much the same process as it is for a single mesh. Just make sure the transforms are correct on each mesh. Then add it as a child to the armature in parallel with the other meshes.
For what you want to do I don’t think multiple meshes are needed. You can add an additional bone on the joints; a simple ‘basic.super_copy’ would do. Then weight paint the rounded ball portion of your mesh to that single bone without any other influence. You don’t need multiple meshes to achieve this.
I think some of the paragon characters in the marketplace with mech type limbs or just robot type characters in general do this often.
I’ve been using Uefy 2.5 to re-rig some Synty Polygon characters and it has worked great so far, thank you for building it! I’m now trying to rig their Modular Character which contains some additional attachment bones, so I’m in the process of adding them to the metarig following your advanced tutorial here: Advanced Character Rigging with Blender, Rigify and Uefy 2 - YouTube
I’ve followed the steps (including using the basic super copy as instructed) to add my bones, but I hit a problem when I go to generate the new meta rig. First, under the Rigify buttons it shows “re-generate rig” rather than just “generate rig” - this doesn’t seem like an important difference but I mention it just in case it signals that I did something wrong. Second, when I click re-generate rig (after making sure my previous Rig isn’t hidden as instructed), it appears to succeed however Uefy can no longer find the rig - the property is now red, and pressing refresh list doesn’t find it (and it never appears in the drop-down to let me pick it manually). That means that I cannot build the skeleton since Uefy throws an error about the missing rig if I try.
Things I’ve double-checked myself after running into the error:
I used the basic super copy as directed
I named my bones including _l and _r as needed
I made sure my bones had valid parents
I made sure my bones were on the correct layers
If you have any insights into what I might have done wrong or if a more recent version of Blender (I’m on the latest 3.4.1) might have changed something in a way that requires a different procedure, please do let me know. Thank you again for building this tool!
I’m using Blender 3.4.1 and Uefy 2.5 at the time of this writing and it works correctly.
When you first click on “Generate Rig” blender will create an armature object named “rig”. After clicking “Build Skeleton” Uefy will process that object and rename it as “Armature”. The rename is important for correct export to Unreal Engine.
After you modify the metarig and run “Re-Generate Rig”. At this point the armature object is still named “Armature”, so just click on the refresh list button and set the rig field to “Armature”.
You can always check the list of objects in the scene to check the current name of the armature object.
I appreciate it a bunch! I recently created my own character and tried using the manny89 preset again, built the skeleton and created a test animation, all of that works fine on it’s own when imported to unreal. The catch is the hands again, I just don’t know what I’m doing in this case.
If I import another already made character and go through the tutorials this works perfectly, and there’s a bunch of functionality to do just about anything you’d need to fix any custom mannequin, I don’t know what’s causing it to happen though and I’d like to get this sorted out! I created my own character and here’s the blend file, and setup the retargeting, I just think it’s something weird that’s happening on my side. If you’ve got a second I’d love it if you’d review it and let me know if you find anything, I already set everything up here, created a character and made a test animation, everything checks out and the rig was created from the manny89 preset.
I only have an email receipt of me purchasing Uefy 2.0, no order ID so I’ll link proof of purchase below, and my character is here also. You don’t have to review it, this has already helped me with importing multiple characters and getting them game ready, though I’d appreciate it and it might clear up some scenarios for others also.
I can already get a character animated through normal approaches, but I’d pay to get a post process pipeline out there for unreal to eliminate a lot of the guess work and have all of the ik stuff setup and very closely tied to what’s already in unreal. I know that’s a lot to ask, though it would save devs that want to focus on programming so much time and this is the last piece needed to get it up and running
Here’s it happening from converting a rigify rig to unreal, I don’t get what’s happening anymore. I’d pay you to make a video to do this process from a rigify rig or one of the presets though, I don’t wanna spend weeks on trying to get retargeting to work when I’m trying to create abilities for the gameplay ability system
You are getting errors due to weight paint issues, not because of the rig.
Part of the hands and feet in your character are weight painted to their respective IK bones. This is why they are being deformed randomly. The IK bones are exported from blender but they are not supposed to have any influence on any vertex.
If you remove the weight influence from IK bones on the mesh that should solve your problem. You won’t notice any issue in Blender itself. Because in Blender the IK bones are constrained to move with the hands/feet by default.
I went through the weight paints but I didn’t realize the influence of the IK bones would cause that, and I’ll keep a note of it from here on! Aside from my mistakes this is awesome dude, thanks a bunch!
