I am almost sure that you have to have a Rig attached to the mesh before importing your FBX scene into so you can use the Skeleton in Unreal 4.
If there is no way around this, which I am sure there is not, I am thinking about using Blender since i cannot afford the months fees just yet for using Maya or Max.
I found a tutorial on how to create a Rig in Blender and the guys shows how imports into UE4 and even plays the animation he created in Blender…
I will let you know if i can get this to work, which i think I will be able to, I can see no down side to using Blender over Maya or Max for Rigging.
Is there a down side? A Rig is a Rig right? As long as I can re-target the Skeleton once I get it in UE4, right?
Not sure i want the answer to this one…geez…I hope i can get Blender to do this…
Will post up my experience on this, good bad or else wise.
I have to add that i found the rigify tutorials so now I am relived i don’t have to make it bone by bone, but there are more bones in the UE4 Skeleton than the rigify skeleton.
From what I understand you don’t have to match the bone count, but the bind poses need to be similar for the target and source when it comes to retargeting. As for the downside of using Blender over Maya or Max, I haven’t used Blender myself but having rigged in Maya a few times you aren’t missing out on the whack a mole experience that is painting skin weights in that program. =P
I did see that part of the tutorial where it shows the weight painting. I remember trying to do the very same thing in XSI many years back and it was a nightmare.
I just might go with a Rigging Online Service. I’ve see a few of them around, but i am not sure.
I might just wait until i get back to work and then just rent Maya per month, i am not sure what to do about this just yet.
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I use Maya LT and it has rigging tools. I think the same ones as the full version of Maya, not sure tho since i havent used the full version in over 5 years.
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“whack a mole” lol, i couldnt have described Maya weight painting better myself
, One quick question before i go ahead and do Maya LT for a year, does it have the exact same interface as the full Maya Version? Ive got lessons on the full version of Maya that I want to do with Maya LT.
Is the interface and menu’s toolbars all the same?
I went from Maya 2011 to Maya LT. And i got into it right away. So the difference between a newer full version of Maya and Maya LT should be even smaller. Its basically like the full version minus most of the rendering functionality, like mental ray is missing and many shaders and materials exept for the some basic ones like phong. It has everything you need for game development unless you want to do movie style cutscenes. There where some stuff moved around for me coming from Maya 2011. But if u come from a newer version its prolly the same.
Apologies for the delayed reply, I wasn’t notified that there were any responses to the thread.
It looks like answered your question though. A few tips that I feel inclined to share given my near frustrating experience with Maya:
Flood the root bone with maximum skin weight value
Lock all of the joints you aren’t using, and only unlock the root and whichever joint you plan to weight. Use paint for the most part, only use replace if you need to replace the value with 0.
You can exceed 2 unlocked, but be very careful, make sure you’re doing it because they overlap, you shouldn’t necessarily unlock the root, forearm and leg for example if your’e planning on weighting the forearm.
Mirror joints, probably goes without saying but you only need to do half of your character provided they’re symmetrical.
Not many tutorials go over the whole joint locking, but that’s vital given the aforementioned whack-a-mole you’ll run into otherwise, and that’s a surefire way to waste hours. =P
Good luck!
Haha, I felt it was the most appropriate way to convey the experience. xD
