Hi everyone,
I figured this is probably the place to announce this and get some user feedback.
I created this little utility script to suit my animating needs - it’s far from being finished, but I put a lot of effort into getting it to play nice with the mannequin and obviously any other character that shares the same skeleton.
For now, this is a simple “paste and use” script.
The plugin version is coming up next and will expand and improve - my - workflow.
For right now, after well counted hours of eye gauging and head bashing, along matrix calculations, quaternion euler notations and a bunch of other nerd stuff, the script does exactly what I need it to do.
Open an FBX of the mannequin exported from unreal, rig, and work. And that’s why I’m sharing it.
There will probably be at least 3 other updates.
The next one will be focused on animation and having the rig swap back and form from dummy to rig and rig to dummy so that incoming animations can be keyed and modified.
The one after that will likely bring the script into a full UI plugin with options to key, reconstruct the rig, and eventually probably export.
It really all just depends on how my workflow goes.
Nice work. Coincidental for me as I’ve just been looking this last hour for workflows for Blender to UE4. I did find a UEfy script that the guy is selling for $40.
I’m a Max user looking for alternatives so I have a basic question for you. Does your tool build a rig with rigify based on the UE mannequin with bones targeted/named for plug and play back in UE?
While this is currently pointless, progress has been made towards allowing editing of incoming animations.
The constructed rig can now follow the FBX animation which is a start in the right direction to allow us all to edit any exported animation however we need.
Everything is working, and tool-tips and context lock has been added to the add-on.
The promised new animation features are now live. You can import an Unreal animation and work on it!
Just be mindful not to import animations that utilize the fingers for now. this issue will be addressed soon.
It’s already half the way there, as I implemented most of the new practices with a version check. The new class registration thing is probably most of what needs to be addressed for registering it. I’ll be giving it a look as soon as I manage to output at least one “how to” video today.
Just pushed another small update that I needed to push to be able to properly animate walk cycles.
The next update, when I wrap my brain around how, will be to properly do the same thing for the shoulder positions, which cannot currently be pasted as opposite (due to the bone structure of the original bones).
This time around I addressed the IK bones and locked them in so they always follow the arm/leg on their own (and cannot be manually altered while armor constraints are enabled.)
Passing my run animations through this made it possible for the IK system to work a tad bit faster to the point it almost looks like that of an AAA game.
Hi, I am interested in your addon.
I was wondering if could it be possible to see a tutorial rigging a personal mesh from bottom to top and set it for unreal engine.
Thanks in advance.
P.s. the download for the version 2.79 do not work, could it be possible toto get that version of your addon too?
There is no “set for ue4”.
If you are creating a custom mesh there are no rules to follow other then remembering the fact that unreal is a right handed coordinate system with Z being your vertical axis.
You can create any rig, animate as you please, and import into unreal without any major issue.
If you want to utilize existing animations for a biped character you can then simply re-target between your skeleton and the unreal skeleton - so long as the bone hierarchy is somewhat similar (using the built in rigify metarig as a base would pretty much guarantee this).
All that said, thanks for letting me know about the link. It is now fixed.
You should try the latest version for blender 2.8 though, it’s much more performant (and up to date with the shoulder/hand/finger twists).
I will eventually create a couple of tutorials about auto-rigging custom characters utilizing my add-on, but for now at least, it’s really only intended to optimize and create new marketplace content compatible with any UE4 animation.
It’s also important to note that If you are doing anything at any level above pure armature your face mesh and body mesh should likely be separated into different skeletons so that you can isolate body movement from facial expressions and custom animate overlapping events with curves and additive animations within unreal.
Maybe it won’t be too much work to port it to 2.8 (at some point)? 2.8 release is just around the corner and api shouldn’t change anymore 