Training Livestream - Blender to UE4 - May 30 - Live from Epic HQ

[T.Wright]

What if I don't use Rigify to Unreal script?

My rigs are usually go as Armature > root > pelvis > and so on. So are you saying that now when FBX with such hierarchy is imported into 4.16+, UE4 will automatically remove Armature "bone" and I will end up with the following hierarchy: root > pelvis > and so on ?

Yes, exactly. It doesn't matter how you export your rig. If it has "Armature" at the top, UE4 will now delete that bone/null automatically for you.

[muchcharles]

Seems to work for me.


You can share the .blend file you've got.

Thanks for reproducing. I still can't seem to get your result. Here's my .blend file:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1...WhPbDBEYmlFR00

That's with Blender 2.78c. I've tried with UE4.15 and just now I tried with 4.16 as well.

But then this .blend file, created with 2.76 works fine and has half as many verts as triangles when I export it FBX from 2.76 with edge or face smoothing and import with "import normals and tangents" or "compute normals":

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1...nhaWnN3MjA3REU

[Seim2k]

Hello Community,

i have a problem importing the Blendman.fbx file to Unreal (4.14.3). When i run the script in Blender (2.78c) and import Blendman it will not work, but if i didn´t run the script it works, but without the Rig ....
I attached some screenshots for better understanding whats the problem. When i open the .blend - file Mr. Blendman looks way to short. Anybody have similar issues and know what to do ?

Thank u

Edit: I already reinstalled Python to 3.6.1.

After opening in Blender
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...m95UWk2RHRORW8

In Scripting-Section
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...FhOV3RkdnB2SkE

Import to Unreal failed
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...TVjaERvUVBWM0E

[spockTheGray]

Hello Community,

i have a problem importing the Blendman.fbx file to Unreal (4.14.3). When i run the script in Blender (2.78c) and import Blendman it will not work, but if i didn´t run the script it works, but without the Rig ....
I attached some screenshots for better understanding whats the problem. When i open the .blend - file Mr. Blendman looks way to short. Anybody have similar issues and know what to do ?

Thank u

Edit: I already reinstalled Python to 3.6.1.

After opening in Blender
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...m95UWk2RHRORW8

In Scripting-Section
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...FhOV3RkdnB2SkE

Import to Unreal failed
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...TVjaERvUVBWM0E

Yes - I am seeing this exact same thing in Blender 2.78c as shown in Simon's first link - just download the BlendMann.blend and open in Blender 2.78c on Windows 10... anyone else seeing this or know how to fix it? Maybe an older version of blender was used for this (relatively recent) video tutorial?

[Kneebiter]

i have a problem importing the Blendman.fbx file to Unreal (4.14.3). When i run the script in Blender (2.78c) and import Blendman it will not work, but if i didn´t run the script it works, but without the Rig ....
I attached some screenshots for better understanding whats the problem. When i open the .blend - file Mr. Blendman looks way to short. Anybody have similar issues and know what to do ?

You see the little button at the top of the screen? The one that says "Reload Trusted"? You must be loading the file from an untrusted directory, so it won't run the Python scripts needed for Rigify to work properly. It's a security feature to prevent somebody from doing bad things to you through a Blender file.

Hit that button and it will work fine. You can go into preferences to add directories that Blender will run scripts from.

[Kneebiter]

Has anybody had much luck with the retargeting from the Epic skeleton to the Unrigify? There's something really odd about the retargeting. When I retarget to Lui's version, it works perfectly. When I retarget to a UE4 skeleton exported to Blender and then re-imported with a new skeleton, it retargets perfectly. But this guy, not so much.

I modified the stream asset, if anybody's interested. My version makes the following changes:

- Creates a duplicate asset on a separate layer with bone names matching Unreal's expected names so that you don't have to manually map bones
- Sets default name to "Armature", which causes 4.16 to remove the extra root bone
- Sets correct scale in the Blender document and removes the scale change from the script

It's essentially the same as the original Unrigify, I just tweaked it to avoid manual work. That being said, I'm probably going back to Lui tools, as I can't get the retargeting to work quite right on this rig for some reason. It would be nice to have a generic Rigify to Unreal solution, but there still seems to be a missing link in that chain.

[Seim2k]

Thank you Kneebiter. It worked !

[mzprox]

Has anybody had much luck with the retargeting from the Epic skeleton to the Unrigify? There's something really odd about the retargeting. When I retarget to Lui's version, it works perfectly. When I retarget to a UE4 skeleton exported to Blender and then re-imported with a new skeleton, it retargets perfectly. But this guy, not so much.

I modified the stream asset, if anybody's interested. My version makes the following changes:

- Creates a duplicate asset on a separate layer with bone names matching Unreal's expected names so that you don't have to manually map bones
- Sets default name to "Armature", which causes 4.16 to remove the extra root bone
- Sets correct scale in the Blender document and removes the scale change from the script

It's essentially the same as the original Unrigify, I just tweaked it to avoid manual work. That being said, I'm probably going back to Lui tools, as I can't get the retargeting to work quite right on this rig for some reason. It would be nice to have a generic Rigify to Unreal solution, but there still seems to be a missing link in that chain.

Hi Kneebiter, the file you made seems to be working fine, except ue still cant identify all the bones correctly. other than that the retargeting works fine if everything set up corretly. What problem did you find?

[Kneebiter]

Hi Kneebiter, the file you made seems to be working fine, except ue still cant identify all the bones correctly. other than that the retargeting works fine if everything set up corretly. What problem did you find?

The retargeted animations aren't quite the same as the original. Hard to describe exactly what went wrong, but the retargeted animations look like someone not fully in control of their muscles.

I'm curious which bones didn't map correctly? That could explain the problem. The only bones I noticed not mapping was spine3, plus the custom and IK bones. There simply wasn't enough bones in the rigify deform spin to have a hip, pelvis, three spines, and a neck.

[mzprox]

The retargeted animations aren't quite the same as the original. Hard to describe exactly what went wrong, but the retargeted animations look like someone not fully in control of their muscles.

I'm curious which bones didn't map correctly? That could explain the problem. The only bones I noticed not mapping was spine3, plus the custom and IK bones. There simply wasn't enough bones in the rigify deform spin to have a hip, pelvis, three spines, and a neck.

unless we are talking about very small differences I couldn't find any between the default mannequin and blenderman using either a mixamo or starter content animations.I mapped spine 2 to both spine 2 and 3. all ik bones were set to none. in retargeting options all bones were set to 'skeleton' except pelvis which was 'animation scaled' and root which was 'animation' wtih these settings it should work.

[Kneebiter]

unless we are talking about very small differences I couldn't find any between the default mannequin and blenderman using either a mixamo or starter content animations.I mapped spine 2 to both spine 2 and 3. all ik bones were set to none. in retargeting options all bones were set to 'skeleton' except pelvis which was 'animation scaled' and root which was 'animation' wtih these settings it should work.

Thanks! The only difference from that is that I simply didn't map spine3. I'll try that when I'm next at my personal computer.

Update: mzprox - targeting spine2 to both spine2 and spine3 was the solution. Not sure there's any way to automate that, though, since I can't assign the same name to two bones in Blender, but I can deal with manually selecting one bone.

[muchcharles]

unless we are talking about very small differences I couldn't find any between the default mannequin and blenderman using either a mixamo or starter content animations.I mapped spine 2 to both spine 2 and 3. all ik bones were set to none. in retargeting options all bones were set to 'skeleton' except pelvis which was 'animation scaled' and root which was 'animation' wtih these settings it should work.

What actually happens when you map one bone to two bones like that, do both bone rotations get additively applied in succession to a single bone when you retarget an animation?

[ayretek]

Unreal Engine is supposed to remove the extra bone now. so make sure you are using the version of Blender & UE4 mentioned in the stream!

[muchcharles]

Unreal Engine is supposed to remove the extra bone now. so make sure you are using the version of Blender & UE4 mentioned in the stream!

I meant the extra spine bone, not the armature root bone.

[ayretek]

oh.. sorry, wow usually pay more attention.

I've done this before & usually doesn't hurt the animation & I actually didn't notice any adverse effect.
( there may be some certain 'use' case where there's an issue but I haven't seen one yet, that you couldn't adjust settings etc. to come up with decent results)