Hey, has any of you played with the Skeleton tool ? Making a skeleton from scratch or editing one ?
I was very excited when I saw that UE(5.4.3) provided the ability to rig, skin and create controls for a character in engine.
I know the process of rigging/skinning from Maya. I have, I believe, a good enough knowledge of that task that getting familiar with this tool should be good enough to make a basic rig.
So I played with the Skeletal Mesh Editing Tool (Beta).
And I was very wrong… I couldn’t even make a simple skeleton !
Everything is behaving so oddly to me:
If I rename a bone and select a different one without pressing the Enter key, the new name will instead go to the newly selected one.
Same logic with transform values.
Is this how it is supposed to be ?
Speaking of transform values, what is this with verry small decimals that pop randomly (0.0000002)?This hurts my OCD !
Sometimes when want a rotation values, I get a different value than what I typed.
I suspect rotation order but I can’t find any option about that.
Same thing with Orienting the bones, I can’t get what I want. And sometimes I get surprising joint flips I can’t explain.
A skeleton should have clean rotation and transform values but I couldn’t find tools to do that here.
Is it because it is not that important Unreal and all the magic happen when creating controls ?
(And I lost my work 3 times in the weirdest of ways.)
I wanted to have your opinion on that tool since I couldn’t find any info about that matter.
Is unreal dealing with skeleton in a different way than Maya ?
Maybe the tool is just in an early state of development (Beta) ?
Or is it me not understanding the tool ?
Hi! Let’s clear up some misunderstandings by going over your each question
I might be mistaken, but I don’t think you can create a skeletal mesh only using Unreal. Even if there is a way, which I doubt, whyyy?
The tool is awesome and certainly comes in handy while editing skeletons from the engine, since it’s more practical to do so than completing the adjustments from a 3D editor and reimporting. But no, it definetly works and you don’t need to worry about those labelings saying “Beta” or “Experimental” at all. They’re not about that, a plugin without those can cause you problems while those don’t. As for your issues on trying to edit a skeletal mesh, I couldn’t really understand what exactly you mean but here’s a video I watched myself to learn how to use this plugin: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MMe80uQr_Vg
It’s not the engine, but that plugin is of course not the same with 3D editors. I hope you manage to find where the problem is from that video I’ve sent.
Like I said in the beginning, that tool is actually used for editing skeletal meshes. And it would definetly be easier to implement your adjustments using a 3D editor if they’re kind of an overhaul. Also, keep in mind that even if you change something so slightly in your skeletal mesh, you would also need to reimport all your animations (and also adjust the animations as well to work with the new mesh) so it’s not really something you can play with occasionally. Also this comment of yours sounded a little suspicious to me:
Are you trying to shift the creation process of your models and animations to Unreal Engine? You already mentioned that you’re comfortable using Maya, what’s the reason behind this? It’s not practical at all to attempt to create these in the engine. Some others I interacted with on the forums said they prefer everything to be inside the engine claiming it’s more organized but no! It won’t make your assets organized either! It’s better to keep the size of your project minimal and not bloat it with experimental assets. Maybe there’s something I don’t know about in your case, but this was my opinion that I wanned to give just in case. So I hope the video I sent works out for you, and also hope I was able to clarify some use cases if there were any misunderstandings!
If you right click on a static mesh, you have the option to transform it into a skeletal mesh.
It creates a skeleton and a skeletal mesh.
As you show on your video, with the Skeletal Mesh Editing Tools plugin activated, you access this window that allows you to built the skeleton starting from a Root Joint
I’m interested by this tool because switching the skeleton/rigging/skinning task from Maya to Unreal means doing everything on the same interface.
I’m very interested by the Control Rig creation process of Unreal and animating in engine.
So why not doing the skeleton here as well ^^.
Plus I’ve been thinking about switching from Maya to Blender but I’ve always been scared by the task.
Re-learning moddeling, skinning, rigging and animation would be such a big task
Whereas, only re-learning modelling and keeping the technical part to Unreal that I am used to sounds better to me ^^
and you don’t need to worry about those labelings saying “Beta” or “Experimental” at all. They’re not about that, a plugin without those can cause you problems while those don’t. As for your issues on trying to edit a skeletal mesh, I couldn’t really understand what exactly you mean but here’s a video I watched myself to learn how to use this plugin: 
