TIMESTAMPS Speakers: Benoit Gadreau - Senior Animation Programmer - 9:50 Greg Richardson - Senior Technical Product Manager - 10:35 Helge Mathee - Principal Software Engineer - 11:10 Kiaran Ritchie - Principal Animation Prorammer - 12:07 9:15 Stream start, Introductions 12:52 Skeletal Mesh Editing Suite, Kiaran 1:04:42 Modular Rigging to create characters, Helge 1:46:40 Layered Animation with Control Rig, Greg 2:11:02 Animation UX Improvements, New TRS Gizmos, Benoit 2:15:36 Deformer Graph 2:26:34 Q&A 2:27:51 Q: In UE there are 3 ways to do IK, how do I decide which to use? 2:30:00 Q: Is there a way to add a curve float/lookup table inside control rig? 2:30:57 Q: Do you plan to support pens with pressure sensitivity for map/weight painting? 2:31:32 Q: Can you bind hotkeys to all of these modeling/rigging tools? 2:33:11 Q: Does the bone orientation (of a bone) make a difference to modular rig? 2:35:10 Q: Do modular rigs work fine with layered control rigs? 2:36:19 Q: Are there plans to increase the execution stack memory limit of control rig VM? 2:40:50 Q: For chain dynamics, can I bake those animations? 2:41:45 Q: When using a control rig in sequencer is there a way to blend between FK/IK? 2:42:51 Q: How do you recommend we learn to use control rig? 2:46:55 Q: What are you most looking forward to with these tools? Thanks for the stream! Have been working a lot on control rig lately so it came just in time for me.
Its oddly comforting knowing watching these 4 rigging masters still have a hangup during the process even if its a super minor one lol. Jokes aside you guys are awesome thank you for going through the steps instead of just posting a highlight reel or something safe.
Please can you release the control rigs examples for the non-human characters. There are little examples for non-human, so those sharks/dragon/scooter ones are really important for us to understand them more.
The tools you guys are making and have already made towards a professional production-ready skinning system is really impressive! Are you guys currently planning any layer systems like the ngskintools plugin for Maya? I know for me at least, a layer system has completely upgraded my skinning experience, not just for creating new assets, but for debugging purposes when a 3D bug comes down the pipeline. It's incredibly helpful to be able to leave the main skinning untouched with a nondestructive workflow. I can create a layer with rigid skinning one or more parts of the body and test different animations with it to pin-point the cause of certain errors, and then easily hide that layer again afterwards. Alternatively, having multiple layers has also massively increased my control over where skinning will go if I reduce influence on one joint. If I have a leg layer where I have maximum influence on the entire leg to the toes, I can have a layer above the leg with max influence on the knee and below, and so on, so on. That way, when I decrease skinning on parts of the leg, there's no way skinning will automatically move to the chest or spine joint, since the leg layer underneath it already has max influence. These might not be relevant though to the workflow experience you guys are trying to design for, but I'm definitely curious
Great demo! Is it possible to get a clickable ‘mirroring’ button for the control rigs. Right now there’s only mirroring by going into the pose library and creating a pose. There should be a way to have a one click solution. This would help animators out so much, especially when it comes to animating walk cycles and quadrupeds.
The portion on aligning local rotation reminds me why using cartesian coordinates (as opposed to another coordinate system appropriate to the task) in these engines as default, in many cases, leads us down a more difficult path. In this specific case (starting approximately 22:55) we see the technical artist considering major orientations for those pivot points (very specifically not calling them bones). Those angles are rarely exact multiples of 90 degrees. Yet our reliance on Cartesian leads us in that direction. IMO, this is one of the primary factors leading to flaws with animations that result from our work. We should be able to set those major rotational axes in any direction and have less or more than three of them. A simple set of spherical coordinate vectors for instance. We might create tools around this, but then the engine ends up needing conversion back to Cartesian, and real-time work becomes constrained. Note: I absolutely have no claim to better global solutions! Just noting something i'm constantly smashing my forehead into.
For the layered control rigs, rather than right clicking and setting priority, why not have priority set based on the position in the layer stack? What's on top gets applied first, etc.
Ok, kinda came late. I recently managed to set up UE on PC .......coming from long years Max nd Maya rigging , this so new to me .good talk , i think i will need to check all those things rigging in UE ..thanks for sharing .
There's really not a reason to use the resource heavy IK/FK solver during gameplay: with the exception of blend spaces and a few others, common animation pose sequences should be cached via LSTM or transformers models to provide the best performance while supporting natural movement in complex game environments. I'll try to put together a demo for you and open a pull request.
This is so amazing. Are there videos on how the UE5 skeleton is structured? For example, why is the root on the ground, and why should there be a connection from the root to the left thigh Kiaran added?
This is neat and all but. . . .Why? How would this be a better work flow than just using something like Maya or Blender? Its not worth watching for almost 3 hours for an answer.
skeletal mesh editing tool = for example if you need some tweaks you don't have to leave unreal control rig = you can create animations and bone behavior in unreal, it can be good to see it right in engine if you can do all that on good level in blender / maya you don;t have some extra benefits...modular rig can be useful...afaik
@@kiaranr You guys are making an amazing work in those U5 modules! I am working in a compatible rigify rig for the mannequin u5.4 bone and name requirement. Plase let me know how to submit it to you or U 5.4 devs for review to include it in the Retargeter dictionary (Make Rigify bones compatible in hierarchy and names in the Retargeter for "Auto rig" "auto chains"). Thanks!
@@kiaranr Is it possible to add to the IK Retargeter bone definitions (names) and the hierarchy that Rigify rigs create in Blender? IK (auto chains/ ik goals) automatically recognize Mixamo, Fortnite, and Unreal Mannequin's bone rig definitions. I am working in a rigify compatible IK rig for retargeting in Unreal. How can I include those bone definitions into the IK autoretargeter?
Been strugelling to find an answer on how I can control the IK targets on the modules from animation BP Im not able to figure out how to expose the Modules IK values TO THE CONTROL RIG NODE IN ABP through the Modular rig
If I wanted to start animating a car or spaceship, should I start using control rigs instead of something like a scene controller controlled in a blueprint?
Thanks so much. I have short question. I have small mesh 10 x 6 cm in size (not a character) . But when I create the bones they are to big :-( I can't seem to scale the,m down. Is there a workaround? just wondering.
It would be easier to just scale up the mesh itself instead of scaling down bones. Then you could scale the mesh back down after it's been animated and attached to an actor.
Also I forgot, there is a bone draw size if you're looking to shrink the lines themselves. In the top left of the view port under character hover or click on bones. Within this expanded menu you should see a setting for bone draw size.
I don't like how you just switched to a pre-made rigged model. This plugin says it "creates skeletons" but I tried with a pretty straight forward human character and it only managed to create "root" bone and nothing else. If I am supposed to rig it in Maya etc then what is the point of this plugin? (16:15)
Everything is welcome, seriously... but... still seriously speaking... why our characters' feet do not adapt to slopes and irregular surfaces *_by default_* yet? Why has that to be still so hard to achieve? Why has to be more complicate than just checking and unckecking a box!?? Just saying. Seriously!
Very primitive tools(( Many action need doing by hand - reparent bones, renaming bones, naming left/right, changing bone orientatioon, no hide polygons/mesh parts, no paint through mesh, no mask for weight paint, no gradient weight paint, no smooth/relax weight tools for selection bones and many other. Now almost 2025 year, cmon guys need much more comfort work and without any big spagetty nodes and python knowlage. BUT very Thank for developing in this direction (skinning/rigging/animation) and for color ramp weights)). Unreal Engine must be universal soft for full process making of CG - modelling, texturing, animating, game dev, production, compositing, render
TIMESTAMPS
Speakers:
Benoit Gadreau - Senior Animation Programmer - 9:50
Greg Richardson - Senior Technical Product Manager - 10:35
Helge Mathee - Principal Software Engineer - 11:10
Kiaran Ritchie - Principal Animation Prorammer - 12:07
9:15 Stream start, Introductions
12:52 Skeletal Mesh Editing Suite, Kiaran
1:04:42 Modular Rigging to create characters, Helge
1:46:40 Layered Animation with Control Rig, Greg
2:11:02 Animation UX Improvements, New TRS Gizmos, Benoit
2:15:36 Deformer Graph
2:26:34 Q&A
2:27:51 Q: In UE there are 3 ways to do IK, how do I decide which to use?
2:30:00 Q: Is there a way to add a curve float/lookup table inside control rig?
2:30:57 Q: Do you plan to support pens with pressure sensitivity for map/weight painting?
2:31:32 Q: Can you bind hotkeys to all of these modeling/rigging tools?
2:33:11 Q: Does the bone orientation (of a bone) make a difference to modular rig?
2:35:10 Q: Do modular rigs work fine with layered control rigs?
2:36:19 Q: Are there plans to increase the execution stack memory limit of control rig VM?
2:40:50 Q: For chain dynamics, can I bake those animations?
2:41:45 Q: When using a control rig in sequencer is there a way to blend between FK/IK?
2:42:51 Q: How do you recommend we learn to use control rig?
2:46:55 Q: What are you most looking forward to with these tools?
Thanks for the stream! Have been working a lot on control rig lately so it came just in time for me.
Its oddly comforting knowing watching these 4 rigging masters still have a hangup during the process even if its a super minor one lol. Jokes aside you guys are awesome thank you for going through the steps instead of just posting a highlight reel or something safe.
thank you for the five of you for being amazing..
Those proxies on the bike and coin are incredible!
1:50 Boom! The power to combine programming with animation with control rig in the easy way
Please can you release the control rigs examples for the non-human characters. There are little examples for non-human, so those sharks/dragon/scooter ones are really important for us to understand them more.
Would love to see this too!!!
The tools you guys are making and have already made towards a professional production-ready skinning system is really impressive!
Are you guys currently planning any layer systems like the ngskintools plugin for Maya? I know for me at least, a layer system has completely upgraded my skinning experience, not just for creating new assets, but for debugging purposes when a 3D bug comes down the pipeline. It's incredibly helpful to be able to leave the main skinning untouched with a nondestructive workflow. I can create a layer with rigid skinning one or more parts of the body and test different animations with it to pin-point the cause of certain errors, and then easily hide that layer again afterwards.
Alternatively, having multiple layers has also massively increased my control over where skinning will go if I reduce influence on one joint. If I have a leg layer where I have maximum influence on the entire leg to the toes, I can have a layer above the leg with max influence on the knee and below, and so on, so on. That way, when I decrease skinning on parts of the leg, there's no way skinning will automatically move to the chest or spine joint, since the leg layer underneath it already has max influence.
These might not be relevant though to the workflow experience you guys are trying to design for, but I'm definitely curious
Great demo!
Is it possible to get a clickable ‘mirroring’ button for the control rigs. Right now there’s only mirroring by going into the pose library and creating a pose. There should be a way to have a one click solution. This would help animators out so much, especially when it comes to animating walk cycles and quadrupeds.
The portion on aligning local rotation reminds me why using cartesian coordinates (as opposed to another coordinate system appropriate to the task) in these engines as default, in many cases, leads us down a more difficult path.
In this specific case (starting approximately 22:55) we see the technical artist considering major orientations for those pivot points (very specifically not calling them bones). Those angles are rarely exact multiples of 90 degrees. Yet our reliance on Cartesian leads us in that direction. IMO, this is one of the primary factors leading to flaws with animations that result from our work. We should be able to set those major rotational axes in any direction and have less or more than three of them. A simple set of spherical coordinate vectors for instance. We might create tools around this, but then the engine ends up needing conversion back to Cartesian, and real-time work becomes constrained.
Note: I absolutely have no claim to better global solutions! Just noting something i'm constantly smashing my forehead into.
cool looks almost like adobe after effects but in 3d. i love it. this video incouraged me to start learning animations in UE. :)
1:30:17 - Is this file available to download (for studying purposes). What an interesting concept: modular driven springs.
For the layered control rigs, rather than right clicking and setting priority, why not have priority set based on the position in the layer stack? What's on top gets applied first, etc.
No clue about Unreal Engine.. but i was here!
Ok, kinda came late. I recently managed to set up UE on PC .......coming from long years Max nd Maya rigging , this so new to me .good talk , i think i will need to check all those things rigging in UE ..thanks for sharing .
There's really not a reason to use the resource heavy IK/FK solver during gameplay: with the exception of blend spaces and a few others, common animation pose sequences should be cached via LSTM or transformers models to provide the best performance while supporting natural movement in complex game environments. I'll try to put together a demo for you and open a pull request.
This is so amazing. Are there videos on how the UE5 skeleton is structured? For example, why is the root on the ground, and why should there be a connection from the root to the left thigh Kiaran added?
01:57:19 UE5.6 👀
This is neat and all but. . . .Why? How would this be a better work flow than just using something like Maya or Blender? Its not worth watching for almost 3 hours for an answer.
skeletal mesh editing tool = for example if you need some tweaks you don't have to leave unreal
control rig = you can create animations and bone behavior in unreal, it can be good to see it right in engine
if you can do all that on good level in blender / maya you don;t have some extra benefits...modular rig can be useful...afaik
The issue with Mixamo animations is a lack of a true root. What do you plan on doing in 5.5 to address that?
Have you tried Mixamo converter? I'm not skilled enough to know if it's 'true root' but it seems to work for me.
42:00 - Please a LASSO selection. Is it available?
YES!
I totally agree. I'm working on it!
@@kiaranr You guys are making an amazing work in those U5 modules!
I am working in a compatible rigify rig for the mannequin u5.4 bone and name requirement.
Plase let me know how to submit it to you or U 5.4 devs for review to include it in the Retargeter dictionary (Make Rigify bones compatible in hierarchy and names in the Retargeter for "Auto rig" "auto chains"). Thanks!
@@kiaranr Is it possible to add to the IK Retargeter bone definitions (names) and the hierarchy that Rigify rigs create in Blender?
IK (auto chains/ ik goals) automatically recognize Mixamo, Fortnite, and Unreal Mannequin's bone rig definitions.
I am working in a rigify compatible IK rig for retargeting in Unreal. How can I include those bone definitions into the IK autoretargeter?
Ya can layer control rigs!?!?! Swish!! 🎉🤘
Been strugelling to find an answer on how I can control the IK targets on the modules from animation BP Im not able to figure out how to expose the Modules IK values TO THE CONTROL RIG NODE IN ABP through the Modular rig
Knew the bone name off the cuff. wow. Def did done hard time in unreal engine.
Thank you
1:51:48. Jaw. Dropped.
If I wanted to start animating a car or spaceship, should I start using control rigs instead of something like a scene controller controlled in a blueprint?
Does that work for a solid mesh that isn't subdivided?
Could we get a link to that plug-in that converts a static mesh into a skeletal mesh?
From blender to UE5 course
❤❤❤
Thanks so much. I have short question. I have small mesh 10 x 6 cm in size (not a character) . But when I create the bones they are to big :-( I can't seem to scale the,m down. Is there a workaround? just wondering.
It would be easier to just scale up the mesh itself instead of scaling down bones. Then you could scale the mesh back down after it's been animated and attached to an actor.
Also I forgot, there is a bone draw size if you're looking to shrink the lines themselves. In the top left of the view port under character hover or click on bones. Within this expanded menu you should see a setting for bone draw size.
@@CallHalla Thanks so much for the info/tip. How many bones needed for open /close book you think? thanks
I don't like how you just switched to a pre-made rigged model. This plugin says it "creates skeletons" but I tried with a pretty straight forward human character and it only managed to create "root" bone and nothing else. If I am supposed to rig it in Maya etc then what is the point of this plugin? (16:15)
Everything is welcome, seriously... but... still seriously speaking... why our characters' feet do not adapt to slopes and irregular surfaces *_by default_* yet? Why has that to be still so hard to achieve? Why has to be more complicate than just checking and unckecking a box!??
Just saying. Seriously!
the question is how to get that motorbike Rig?
Whished they always share the project files under the video
Very primitive tools(( Many action need doing by hand - reparent bones, renaming bones, naming left/right, changing bone orientatioon, no hide polygons/mesh parts, no paint through mesh, no mask for weight paint, no gradient weight paint, no smooth/relax weight tools for selection bones and many other.
Now almost 2025 year, cmon guys need much more comfort work and without any big spagetty nodes and python knowlage. BUT very Thank for developing in this direction (skinning/rigging/animation) and for color ramp weights)). Unreal Engine must be universal soft for full process making of CG - modelling, texturing, animating, game dev, production, compositing, render
ue 5.4.4 i can't convert a static mesh as as skeleton
u need to enable plugin - skeletal mesh editing tool
2:51:45 - LMAO
hi
@martinkasman style
visuals
❤❤❤