Week 25: Rabbit Rig

I figured out how to get my rig working!

I realised that the issue I had with my rig was due to an error in re-targeting the skeleton. The Unreal engine skeleton  and my Biped featured "twist" bones. When originally re-targeting my biped to the unreal skeleton I matched the twist bones of both skeletons together (ex. my bipeds upper_arm twist linked to the Ue4 upper_arm twist) When in fact they needed to be linked to regular (non twist) bones. No idea why though.

Here's a quick guide on the process, to help anyone who might be stuck on this, and so I don't forget how to do this:

1. fully rig and skin your model. (Optional rename the bones in your model so they match the ue4 skeleton as bones of the same name automatically re-target to each other.)
2. Export your model as an fbx with animation baked.
3. Open up  your Unreal engine project, for this I'm using the default 3rd person view project.
4. import the mesh into ue4 as a skeletal mesh with these settings:

4. Double click the 3rd person skeleton (or "Hero TTP" skeleton), then in the re-target manager, target it to a humanoid rig.

Double Click

5.Still in the re-target manager edit the unreal mesh to match your  custom mesh's default pose (or the other way round, both work fine.) Once the mesh has been moved to the desired pose click "save pose" in the re targeting manager.

The desired A pose

6. Re-target your custom skeletal mesh to a humanoid rig in the re-target manager, match the skeletal mesh to the ue4 mesh, make sure the twist bones if you have them are matched to the body parts eg. upper arm twist is linked to the upper arm. NOT the meshes upper arm twist. This is what caused the T-rex arms on my mesh when I was testing my rig.

Note: Make sure to click the "show advanced" option to get everything.

7. in the skeleton tree tab with the re-targeting options selected. change the translation re targeting to skeleton rather than animation.

8. Select the 3rd person animation blueprint, right click, the select duplicate and re-target the blueprint. Now select your mesh from the list. You should now find the duplicated blueprint and animations in the folder containing your custom mesh

Your mesh now has the Unreal Engines animations rigged to it!

If you want to replace the default Playable character with you own follow these steps:

Select the character blueprint in the "blueprints" folder. In the mesh tab replace the default animation blueprint with the one linked to your custom character. Finally replace the mesh with your custom character

And you're done! =)

UPDATE: Your mesh might have shrunk after setting it to the playable character. I have no idea what causes this. You just need to rescale the mesh in the character blueprint viewport.