Vehicle rigging from blender to UE4

Hi,

I don’t get my vehicle working in UE4. Hours of work have ended in having five different meshes in UE4, without any relationship to each other. Or some other not-working-stuff.
I have been watching the tutorials from piinecone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyxLVf_6Y_A), Unreal Engine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ariPx6M33o) and others. I have been reading the manual (https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Physics/Vehicles/VehicleUserGuide/).
It is all very interesting. But it didn’t really help, as they are either made for other software like Maya or an “old” version of UE4 is used, which options different to the actual button. Or I am simply too stupid to get it working.

I am experienced in blender modelling, but not in rigging.
I am new to UE4.

So I am asking you to give me a quick overview of what I really have to do to:

  • Model in blender (one mesh for all or one mesh for each object?)
  • Rig in blender (one armature for all or one parented armature for each object?)
  • Export from Bender (FBX) (I am pretty sure to have good settings, but who knows?)
  • Import to UE4 v4.8 (Which button is important, which doesn’t matter)

If I get it working with your help, I am willing to make a new tutorial to help others with the same problem.

Regards
Chricken

its a case of moving goal posts when working with blender and UE4 as both get regular updates when compired with other (expensive) software :wink:

  1. both ways are an option , depending on how complex your mesh is and if you want to use anims with it, i prefere a single mesh which i useually join together after i’ve completed the rig , this way help when centering the bones to the pivot points
  2. afaik ue4 will only support 1 rig/armature so thats the best way to go
  3. straight fbx export but make sure you untick “add leaf bones” check the smoothing, some work better for others so you’ll have to play around with it
  4. i ALWAYS untick materials,textures,physicasset,colision and maybe a few more

i’ll be honest i haven’t updated my video’s in a while due to constant changes, but if your having problems then maybe i can redo some

For vehicles where movement is limited to rotations and translations I found the several mesh options easier. I basically followed the lines suggested by EPIC Tank tutorial where you then attach meshes to sockets, but I am more a programmer than an artist so maybe I am not soing this right.

Geodav I really like your tutorials it would be great to have an updated Blender to UE4.8 tutorial…

thanks
Fred

ok i’ll do my best to start this week, i’ll throw a mesh together tomorrow and hopefully start recording in my useual manner :slight_smile:

just checked my video from Dec2014 , while its 6 months old its still farelly ok a far as things go UE4 Blender Vehicle Basic Setup a - YouTube
with blender 2.75 due to be released soon i’ll wait for that and in the mean time maybe do another mesh

Hi Geodav,
thanks for your tutorial. I didn’t know that one.

I like your calmness and voice. And of cource your sense of humour. Orientation is important!
That video helped me a lot, but a few questions stay unanswered.

  • Is the vehicle mesh one single mesh or are the wheels independent?
  • How do you bind the bones to the wheels (did you do that at all?)? Or does that magic happen in UE4?

Thank you and kind regards
Christian

ok in general i use a single mesh, i use an armature and set the vertex weight to the bones (skinning)

if your not sure just check some of my older udk/ut3 blender tutorials, there maybe a few ui changes but afaik it s the same