Simple question. I have been rigging with rigify for my character, which I am going to export into UE5 and or Unity.
I have noticed that you can actually rig and animate in UE5. So question is, why do people animate and rig in Blender if they are going to use it in a game engine, which the game engine has the ability to rig and animate in their own engine? Would it be easier and or better to rig and animate in the engine I am using instead of exporting and creating in Blender? I assume it will also save time to rig and animate in the game engine I am going to use? I can then use Blender for asset/character creation.
It takes some clicks in Blender with Rigify, it is not comparable in terms of speed and ease of use until Unity or Unreal will work to bring a modern in editor solution similar to Rigify.
This is the work it takes in Unreal 5 for one custom character :
In Unity
Some people prefer to work on the character only without the game level and all other stuff around, and Blender proposes more features and options.
It’s up to you to try available options and decide what is your workflow.
Good luck.
Ah so what you are saying is that Blender is more powerful and advanced in character animation and rigging, so this is why creators/devs do it in Blender/Maya etc etc and then export their character/rig/animations to the engine…
Do you all suggest that it is best to do it all in Blender then export it over?
I suggest nothing.
Take some days to test rigging and animating under Unity or Unreal, and see by yourself if it is faster and more easier to work that way, if this suits you better as a workflow for what you’re working on.
Test and make your own personnal opinion.
Thank you @Ratchet for your insight and support in the question. I will have a play around and watch some processes of UE5 animation then. Using blender is quick and rigify I have got all ready for my character, however I just want to make sure I am being proactive and not wasting any time in the flow.
Does anyone on here in this forum that uses blender for modelling use it for animation if they are using the character for UE5 or Unity… Would be good to know what others do as well.
You should ask on Unity and Unreal forums on animation topics, some people having used from long time Unity or Unreal on characters animation should give you answers also.
I tried UE5 rigging once, and as it was said above, it takes very long. As far as I know, bones arent clickable in the 3d window until assigned custom bone shape, and there is no fast way to set up one. For each bone that needs to be controlled, you have to add a control object, then attach a bone to it using position and rotation constraints. Additional problem is that Unreal uses different bone orientation compared to Blender. You’ll have to experiment with *.FBX exporter parameters (I dont remember what was it, main bone axis to X and secondary to -Z) to fix the bone orientation, otherwise inverse kinematic wont work
MIght be a little easier in Unity (I know that Mecanim humanoid avatar system doesnt care about bone orientation), but I havent tried Animation Rigging yet. It also isnt much of an an animation program compared to Blender
with Jason Schleifer on the team even if only chipping in his 2cents occasionally i’m sure there is nothing to worry about!
Im really loving rigging in unreal 5 at the moment. it uses a node graph so everything is visible on one page… and it splits the process into setup event (that can snap bones/controls around), forwards solve where controls drive the deform bones and reverse solve where deform bones can move the control bones (great for taking mocap data to drive an arbitrary rig and then layer in fixes over the top in say the NLE.)
I like rigify and all, but having to rely on python scripting for ik fk switching, reverse solve and extending existing rigs isn’t very friendly so the notes for the workshop are music to my ears!
the rigging inside unreal is great now. caveat: its great as a system.
rigify etc is python built ontop of blender’s system and python. iit;'s great if you use the stock rig but harder to modify to. a custom rig (mainly because the rig pieces are hardly documented within rigify.
if you examine the manequin, manny and quin control rigs (inside unreal) as well as the metahuman control rig, these are all a bit like rigify. Try animating with them and see if you like it! I haven’t tried but im sure you could fit a manequin control rig to another character with same bone names trivially.
I have my own rig based off the mixamo skeleton as exported from blender. I use the ik retargeter to bring in animations from any other rig inside unreal.
I can duplicate my control rig blueprint and use it on another character just by swapping out the skeletal mesh and running the setup mode. I may need to to tweak the display size of some controls but that is it. I can load it into the sequencer and quickly chain together from library anims, or can do a reverse solve and add a new layer to tweak on top and save out to the library.
Unreal has a bigger learning curve though and you have to study lots of stuff to make sense of it all but once you do it can have huge advantages.
if you set up your control rig blue print right (there are solve, setup and backwards solve sections) then you can use a standard set of deform bones in blender for all similar characters. just duplicate the control rig blueprint and set it to your new skeletal mesh. it’s close enough to rigify. if you use always use mixamo to setup the bones for example you just import into unreal. you would ideally add a rootbone to the mixamo rig for unreal though.
bone orientation doesn’t break IK: you may just need to tweak primary and secondary axis in the ik settings and it will be fine.
unreal is more complicated than blender and may be better for team settings as a result som its not for everyone.
