Which kind of bone rigging should i use in Blender for best results in UE?

Development Character & Animation
1

I saw different ways to do bone rigging, which methods are recommended for best results?

Method 1 - “Direct Bone to Object” (2014) <— Use this for mechanical animations.
Example How To Rig A Mech For Animation In Blender 2.69 How To Rig A Mech For Animation In Blender 2.69 - YouTube

Method 2 - “Automatic boning” (2013)
Example Blender Tutorial: Basics of Character Rigging Blender Tutorial: Basics of Character Rigging - YouTube

Method 3 - “Rigging with Groups” (2011)
Example Blender’s Armatures: A Crash Course http://www.cgmasters.net/free-tutorials/blenders-armatured-a-crash-course/

Good introduction
The first 10 minutes are interesting then repetitive. Skinning in the last 5 mins of Part 3. Blender 2.6 Tutorial 30 - IK Rigging Pt. 1 / 3 Blender 2.6 Tutorial 30 - IK Rigging Pt. 1 / 3 - YouTube

Basic Setup for scale and orientation
http://rowvr.co/2015/01/03/get-from-blender-to-unreal-engine-4-quick-workflow-tips/

I adjusted the unit size to 0.01 cm to conform with Unreal’s metric system. When is the right moment to do this, from start or before exporting? Because… see image, i placed a bone…

ughhh.jpg
ughhh.jpg1280×860 75.3 KB

2

Personally, I create the rig by placing a root bone and then extruding it (make sure to extrude from the correct end)
For weight painting, I just parent the mesh to the armature and go with Automatic Weights. It will certainly need some cleaning up though.

If your mech mesh (heh) is composed of clear-cut parts you can just parent it with empty weighs and paint it from scratch. Shouldn’t be an issue

For proper scaling you have two ways to go on about it :

  1. Work normally as you would in Blender and import in UE4 with either a scale of 10 (should yield a mesh the size of the default hero character) or 100 (much bigger)
  2. Scale up your object 10 or 100 times in Blender. Either do that in Edit Mode (but it might break just about everything) or do it in Object Mode (CTRL+S) and then “bake” your scaling (CTRL+A in Obj. mode)
    As a matter of preference I prefer setting my scale from the start, so I won’t have to deal with it later (and potentially forget about it)

By the way, your mesh is facing -Y. Might want to rotate it and apply rotation (again CTRL+A)

3

Also, is this your first custom animated mesh you’re importing in UE4?

might want to read this thread, as the whole Blender to UE4 entourage gave me quite an headache

4

These are required setup modifications to have orientation and model size fit Unreal, see above link (Basic Setup for scale and orientation). And after tempering further, i can confirm it works, however its a bit off in the anim view, and getting an error that bones are to small to create physic assets …

spidy-in-Unreal.jpg