disregard, recreated the metarig and it fixed my errors, now i’m running in to an issue where some of my originally detached objects are losing their weights when creating the ue4 skeleton
When I rig MakeHuman characters I make extensive changes to the imported character. I completely straighten out the spine and also reorient the hands and fingers to make them more like the mannequin. Afterwards when I start the use the addon the metarig and rig match the character I posed not the original import which doesn’t really matter.
Weight paint is associated with vertex groups. Find the vertex group that has the name of the old bone controlling the object and rename it to a bone that will be in the exported character.
There are tools in the addon to help with this you can review the advanced rigging ( https://youtu.be/v8UfX62SlI0 ) video to see how to add extra bones and transfer existing weights to the new rig.
Is there a way to stop Makehuman skulls squashing on the mannequin idle animation? I had to adjust the metarig skeleton a bit to fix the curved back and long neck, but this causes the bottom back of the skull to squash. Not adjusting the spine leaves the rest wrong. I’ve played around with a few spine adjustments but I can’t seem to fix it.
Pose, no animation - back of head looks normal:
During idle animation, with spine adjusted the fix back curve and long neck - bottom back of neck squashes up:
During idle animation, without required spine adjusted to fix back and long neck - back of head is better but neck is too long:
When I rig makehuman characters I completely ignore where the original makehuman spine is placed. I try to place the pivot points or the base of the bones on the same plane as the original pivots but I keep the spine generally straight and centered in the mesh or place it something similar to the Epic mannequin. Don’t hesitate to try different placements till you get a good result. You can also change the location of the pivot positions at the cost of doing some weight paint adjustment.
The second issue is that the default idle animation of mannequin is just as terrible as the makehuman default spine placement. Nobody stands like that, it is very exaggerated. It looks weird on just about any character. So try retargeting some more animations from other packs and see what kind of results you get.
Before making edits to the spine placement also make sure you updated the translation retargeting options on the spine as shown around 35:30 in https://youtu.be/mg75kSkKkug?t=2130
Thanks heaps. The translation retargeting is already set to those (I’m using the ‘original bone rolls’ option and the original skeleton/animations too - no retargeting). I’ll give your other suggestions a go.
if I want to attach a sword to hand, I must parent it to hand_FK? I’m a noob(newbie) in blender.
I generally handle attachments like that inside unreal editor rather than Blender.
I would create a socket on the skeleton in unreal editor and use that as the attachment point. You can also create the socket in blender and export it to unreal along with your character.
It also kind of depends on what you are trying to do. Sockets are pretty much locked in place. You can also have a dedicated weapon bone in your rig if you want to animate throwing it around.
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working on rigging a humanoid character that i eventually want to export to Unreal. The character has multiple eyes so using the human meta-rig face was not feasible. I can add basic.super_copy bones that are none deformable via rigify(but are deformable via blender) and generate a rig just fine. a problem arises when i try to generate a free form armature. i get the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
self.process_type(name)
self.process_super_copy(source)
self.process_chain(source)
self.process_bone(bone, parent)
bone.use_connect = target.use_connect
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘use_connect’
location: :-1
any help would be very much appreciated!
That error usually shows up when spine bones are misconfigured. In newer versions of rigify you can have a space between the spine and neck bones. But you have to turn off “Connect Chain” for Spine.004 in Pose Mode → Bone Properties → Rigify Type → Options
You can see more on the topic at Blender 2.83 LTS and Uefy Script – Rakiz Random Rambling
It is likely the issue is with the spine and not the eye bones. If not make sure all the eye bones have unique names that do not end in numbers or dots. Also make sure all the eye bones have a parent bone in the metarig.
In order to do animation with a weapon, it is still desirable to have it in front of your eyes. Is your uefy compatible with animations from ControlRigMannequin 4.26?
(I use google-translate)
If you want to see a character holding a weapon in Blender. You can use constraints on the character’s armature to attach an external object. These features are part of Blender.
It depends on what you are trying to do. For example in Paragon all characters have weapon bones as part of the main rig itself. You can do the same thing by adding extra bones to the character rig.
Alternatively you can also use ‘Free Form’ mode in Uefy 2.0+ to build standalone weapon rigs with moving parts like detachable clips, moveable bolts, deformable bows with strings etc.
I have not studied control rig at this time so I don’t know how it works. But even so I can tell you that a mannequin rigged with ‘UE Rolls’ will work because it will just be using the original mannequin’s skeleton.
I used uefy 1.3 to create the character. Then I tried to apply the standard ue4 animations to it and it worked. Many thanks. Then I made the movements in Control rig mannequin 4.26 and tried to apply them to the character from Blender uefy 1.3. And it worked again. I don’t even know how to express my gratitude. Although I know, I will need to buy uefy 2. I have a request, do a tutorial on how to export animations from Blender-Uefy to ue4. Pleeeeaaaaaaase. (I use google translate)
Animation export from Blender to UE4 can be done as shown in https://youtu.be/Z9BYQMox7zo
You can also check how that animation was made by following the playlist at Animation Tutorials - YouTube
There is a problem. Cannot be used root motion in ue4. It turns out that you need to animate the root in blender.
If you animate the root bone in Blender you get root motion animation in Unreal that can drive the capsule if any. If you don’t animate the root bone it will stay in place.
This is working as expected.
If you retargeted an animation on your character. Then your source animation must have root motion too. I have made root motion animation controllers using root motion animation from the marketplace. It works correctly. If it is not working for you then you missed something or your source animation doesn’t have root motion.
That was my fault. For some reason, I decided that the root was only for positioning the model and did not animate it.
And the question arises how to control (maintain) the position of arms, legs (in local and global) when animating a root? Im trying use cursortoselectedselectedtocursor.
Hi, I’m new to making character rigs. While using Uefy, I’ve tried to follow along with the tutorials, only to fall short. I’m writing this in hopes of someone answering, and maybe that’ll help me better than watching a video.
The character I’m trying to rig is one I made for UE4, in T-pose. The mesh has a double mesh, which is intended to make a stylized outline around the character. After I move the basic human rig in place and made the fingers, I then parent the mesh to the rig with automatic weights. What happens is the mesh underneath working just fine, while the outline mesh doesn’t get weighted. And trying to manually paint the skin weights for the outline mesh has proven almost impossible. Is there a workaround for such a character mesh?