Where should I start when creating a character and animation for Unreal Engine?

Yuri10k

Hi guys, first post around here.

I have a big project on the side I'm working on (I don't have a deadline or anything) and I needed to start doing animations for character rigs.

I am currently using Blender, Zbrush and Unreal as my softwares and was wondering if any of you could give me some idea of where to start. (I'm really lost.

If you could suggest Tutorials online or any other information regarding how to create and animate my first character I'd be grateful. (I already followed a few but I'm still feeling confused.

From what I gather I first:

-Model

-Sculpt (details if I want)
-Rig (weight map, etc)

-And then I animate

My biggest concerns are the rig and the animation.

Can I create a character by myself (without much professional knowledge) and then just rig it? Can I do so even if it's not in T-Pose? (I'm not a very cautious modeler with measures yet)

I feel I have more questions but after so long without letting out my concerns I just wanted to know if someone could help me clear my head about this. I'm currently following blender tutorials on how to model and "How to create your first two games in Unreal Engine" in Udemy.

pior

Start with what you know : 

There is already a lot of rule in place for characters in UE, the most important one being that any marketplace asset needs to conform to the Epic Male mannequin.

So, what you should start from ... is to see if you can manage to create animations for the Epic Male mannequin. in other words : 

- Install the engine/editor
- Install the thirdperson example
- From there, figure out how to make animations for that. It will take quite some time, since you'll have to understand the specifications of their skeleton, how to work with it in Blender, and so on. It's 100% doable.

- Once you have that figured out you'll have the hardest part out the way. Then move on to learning how to replace the Epic Mannequin model by your own custom test character (do not spend a single minute trying to beautify this - just figure out the tech aspects).

- Once and only once you have these two things figured out, then it'll be time to worry about the art aspects (model/sculpt). If you do the art first I can guarantee you that you will end up being very frustrated because everything than can technically go wrong, will go wrong.

However ...

If you are just starting out, none of the above is really relevant as there is no point trying to learn everything at once from scratch - and there is no link between understanding the tech aspects of it, and being able to create good art for it. In other words if your goal is to make animated characters for UE ... first you should start learning how to make animated characters period. There's no point putting the cart before the wheels.

Good luck !

BoonS

pior is right in that you should make sure the technical aspects function properly before getting into visuals and aesthetics. It's definitely a pain to readjust topology and weights after finding out the you have to redo a rig that isn't compatible with your systems/project. 

With that said, it does seem like Unreal has a pretty convenient .blend file with a UE ready rig for you to adjust: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Character_from_Blender_to_UE4

I haven't tested it, but it seems like you can just go into edit mode for that rig, move and scale the bones to your character (if you have one), and weight paint your character to the rig. From there, the controls and IK's are already set up so you can keyframe the animations in pose-mode easy-peasy. You can put your animations into separate NLA strips and export your rig into fbx.

I don't have any specific tutorials for animation/rigging but you should google search Blenders's:

-NLA strips

-curve editor

-motion paths

-weight painting

-and everything else that you'll probably have to bang your head against along the way

And yeah, character art and animation is as hard as you want to make it to be. If you want to focus on the technical aspects, I don't think anyone's going to judge you for downloading and re-rigging a Mixamo character or creating a low-poly styled character. Simple questions can be answered by anyone in this thread too.

pior

Lots of great points BoonS !

One remark about this Blend file : I personally would be extremely careful with it and would go as far as saying that this file will likely cause more problems in the end.  Two points about that:

- The author of the page mentions that "This step requires use of the UE4 tools to retarget the animation from another source", which actually means that the skeleton/setup presented on this page is not directly compatible with the UE4 specifications. In UE4 terms, "retargeting" actually means : creating a duplicate of a source animation, in order to make it work with a different skeleton. Which means that the skeleton offered in this Blend file will not work directly with animations sets made for the Epic Mannequin, and will require animation retargeting to make it work with any animation set from the marketplace. Such character models sometimes manage to slip through the cracks of the Marketplace curation team and customers end up being pretty disappointed when this happens.

- When comparing the skeleton in this file to that of one that actually is directly compatible with the Epic Male, the bone orientations are different : the author of the wiki page went for the Blender default bone orientation probably for ease of use (left) but this is not what UE4 expects (right) :



In other words : the skeleton on the right seems "wrong" in terms of Blender bone orientation, but it nevertheless is the one that UE4 expects for full model and animation compatibility. Now of course everyone is free to use a setup that is merely loosely based on the Epic Male while not quite being compatible with it, but I personally wouldn't recommend it.

That said, making mistakes like that is part of learning

And again, making things compatible with the Epic Male is not mandatory ; but imho one might as well do it as it then allows to sell the model/animations to the marketplace and that's always a nice bonus.

Yuri10k

pior said:

Start with what you know : 

There is already a lot of rule in place for characters in UE, the most important one being that any marketplace asset needs to conform to the Epic Male mannequin.

So, what you should start from ... is to see if you can manage to create animations for the Epic Male mannequin. in other words : 

- Install the engine/editor
- Install the thirdperson example
- From there, figure out how to make animations for that. It will take quite some time, since you'll have to understand the specifications of their skeleton, how to work with it in Blender, and so on. It's 100% doable.

- Once you have that figured out you'll have the hardest part out the way. Then move on to learning how to replace the Epic Mannequin model by your own custom test character (do not spend a single minute trying to beautify this - just figure out the tech aspects).

- Once and only once you have these two things figured out, then it'll be time to worry about the art aspects (model/sculpt). If you do the art first I can guarantee you that you will end up being very frustrated because everything than can technically go wrong, will go wrong.

However ...

If you are just starting out, none of the above is really relevant as there is no point trying to learn everything at once from scratch - and there is no link between understanding the tech aspects of it, and being able to create good art for it. In other words if your goal is to make animated characters for UE ... first you should start learning how to make animated characters period. There's no point putting the cart before the wheels.

Good luck !

Thank you so much for your comment Pior! It was extremely helpful and it removed so much clutter and fear (the art aspect out of the way!) I feel much more at ease now and capable of searching a way to animate the male mannequin of UE4.

I'll search if there's a way to import the mannequin to blender and animated from there! If I could... Wow... I would have started doing so much of what I already wanted to so I'd be extremely happy.

Thanks again for the comment. Very very helpful.

Yuri10k

pior said:

Start with what you know : 

There is already a lot of rule in place for characters in UE, the most important one being that any marketplace asset needs to conform to the Epic Male mannequin.

So, what you should start from ... is to see if you can manage to create animations for the Epic Male mannequin. in other words : 

- Install the engine/editor
- Install the thirdperson example
- From there, figure out how to make animations for that. It will take quite some time, since you'll have to understand the specifications of their skeleton, how to work with it in Blender, and so on. It's 100% doable.

- Once you have that figured out you'll have the hardest part out the way. Then move on to learning how to replace the Epic Mannequin model by your own custom test character (do not spend a single minute trying to beautify this - just figure out the tech aspects).

- Once and only once you have these two things figured out, then it'll be time to worry about the art aspects (model/sculpt). If you do the art first I can guarantee you that you will end up being very frustrated because everything than can technically go wrong, will go wrong.

However ...

If you are just starting out, none of the above is really relevant as there is no point trying to learn everything at once from scratch - and there is no link between understanding the tech aspects of it, and being able to create good art for it. In other words if your goal is to make animated characters for UE ... first you should start learning how to make animated characters period. There's no point putting the cart before the wheels.

Good luck !

(Made a mistake in the first reply)

Thank you so much for your comment Pior! It was extremely helpful and it removed so much clutter and fear (the art aspect) out of the way! I feel much more at ease now and capable of searching a way to animate the male mannequin of UE4.

I'll search if there's a way to import the mannequin to blender and animated from there! If I could... Wow... I would have started doing so much of what I already wanted to so I'd be extremely happy.

Thanks again for the comment. Very very helpful.

Yuri10k

pior said:

Lots of great points BoonS !

One remark about this Blend file : I personally would be extremely careful with it and would go as far as saying that this file will likely cause more problems in the end.  Two points about that:

- The author of the page mentions that "This step requires use of the UE4 tools to retarget the animation from another source", which actually means that the skeleton/setup presented on this page is not directly compatible with the UE4 specifications. In UE4 terms, "retargeting" actually means : creating a duplicate of a source animation, in order to make it work with a different skeleton. Which means that the skeleton offered in this Blend file will not work directly with animations sets made for the Epic Mannequin, and will require animation retargeting to make it work with any animation set from the marketplace. Such character models sometimes manage to slip through the cracks of the Marketplace curation team and customers end up being pretty disappointed when this happens.

- When comparing the skeleton in this file to that of one that actually is directly compatible with the Epic Male, the bone orientations are different : the author of the wiki page went for the Blender default bone orientation probably for ease of use (left) but this is not what UE4 expects (right) :



In other words : the skeleton on the right seems "wrong" in terms of Blender bone orientation, but it nevertheless is the one that UE4 expects for full model and animation compatibility. Now of course everyone is free to use a setup that is merely loosely based on the Epic Male while not quite being compatible with it, but I personally wouldn't recommend it.

That said, making mistakes like that is part of learning

And again, making things compatible with the Epic Male is not mandatory ; but imho one might as well do it as it then allows to sell the model/animations to the marketplace and that's always a nice bonus.

Ah. I see... It's a bit of a shame if that's the case. But it probably spared me quite a few hours ruminating on how to get the bones to properly function. And yes! I had had the same problem with a model before. The UE4 animations didn't work on it.

So maybe it's just better (and I hope I understood, please tell me if I'm wrong) to just create a model in blender and animate it there and then import both the character and animations to UE4? Or to adjust the bones in this UE4 Male Mannequin model and start animating from there in blender?

Which approach appears to be the best?

pior

To import it in Blender : 

- Open any UE4 project that has the third person mannequin in it. Then right-click the asset in the Content Browser and export as FBX with the default settings.
- Then import that in Blender.

The issue you'll run into is that once you export that out of Blender (animations or models) you will get a problem in UE4 because Blender does a few things to top of the hierarchy of skeletons that results in exported FBX files that UE will (rightfully) treat as incompatible with the mannequin. To visualize the issue you simply need to look at the skeleton structure of the default mannequin in UE, and compare that to what you get when you import yours. You'll see the structural difference easily, so from there all you have to do is to edit the names of a few bones in Blender to make it all fully compatible for export (if I remember correctly it's just a matter of renaming the root, or something similar). Once you have that, everything will work.

Yuri10k

BoonS said:

pior is right in that you should make sure the technical aspects function properly before getting into visuals and aesthetics. It's definitely a pain to readjust topology and weights after finding out the you have to redo a rig that isn't compatible with your systems/project. 

With that said, it does seem like Unreal has a pretty convenient .blend file with a UE ready rig for you to adjust: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Character_from_Blender_to_UE4

I haven't tested it, but it seems like you can just go into edit mode for that rig, move and scale the bones to your character (if you have one), and weight paint your character to the rig. From there, the controls and IK's are already set up so you can keyframe the animations in pose-mode easy-peasy. You can put your animations into separate NLA strips and export your rig into fbx.

I don't have any specific tutorials for animation/rigging but you should google search Blenders's:

-NLA strips

-curve editor

-motion paths

-weight painting

-and everything else that you'll probably have to bang your head against along the way

And yeah, character art and animation is as hard as you want to make it to be. If you want to focus on the technical aspects, I don't think anyone's going to judge you for downloading and re-rigging a Mixamo character or creating a low-poly styled character. Simple questions can be answered by anyone in this thread too.

Again, I'm very happy to have joined the community. Thank you BoonS! I will look into the .blend file they provided. I can barely believe how much simpler a complex maze in my mind became with the help from other members.

As for the Blender, I will search up the things you spoke of and I might try, later on, giving Mixamo a go if I find myself struggling with animations.

Also, thanks for saying that last part. I was somewhat afraid that my question would be confusing or far too simple. Having that said, both Pior and you helped a lot. I'll be finishing something up soon and posting it in my sketchbook here in polycount and after finishing up a level I'm working on I'll be getting my hands on the nice bits of blender animation

Un

pior said:

To import it in Blender : 

- Open any UE4 project that has the third person mannequin in it. Then right-click the asset in the Content Browser and export as FBX with the default settings.
- Then import that in Blender.

The issue you'll run into is that once you export that out of Blender (animations or models) you will get a problem in UE4 because Blender does a few things to top of the hierarchy of skeletons that results in exported FBX files that UE will (rightfully) treat as incompatible with the mannequin. To visualize the issue you simply need to look at the skeleton structure of the default mannequin in UE, and compare that to what you get when you import yours. You'll see the structural difference easily, so from there all you have to do is to edit the names of a few bones in Blender to make it all fully compatible for export (if I remember correctly it's just a matter of renaming the root, or something similar). Once you have that, everything will work.

Thank you I will refer to this post when I start working on it some days from now. I'd love to let you know later on how it went. And big thanks again!

Yuri10k

BoonS said:

pior is right in that you should make sure the technical aspects function properly before getting into visuals and aesthetics. It's definitely a pain to readjust topology and weights after finding out the you have to redo a rig that isn't compatible with your systems/project. 

With that said, it does seem like Unreal has a pretty convenient .blend file with a UE ready rig for you to adjust: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Character_from_Blender_to_UE4

I haven't tested it, but it seems like you can just go into edit mode for that rig, move and scale the bones to your character (if you have one), and weight paint your character to the rig. From there, the controls and IK's are already set up so you can keyframe the animations in pose-mode easy-peasy. You can put your animations into separate NLA strips and export your rig into fbx.

I don't have any specific tutorials for animation/rigging but you should google search Blenders's:

-NLA strips

-curve editor

-motion paths

-weight painting

-and everything else that you'll probably have to bang your head against along the way

And yeah, character art and animation is as hard as you want to make it to be. If you want to focus on the technical aspects, I don't think anyone's going to judge you for downloading and re-rigging a Mixamo character or creating a low-poly styled character. Simple questions can be answered by anyone in this thread too.

Again, I'm very happy to have joined the community. Thank you BoonS! I will look into the .blend file they provided. I can barely believe how much simpler a complex maze in my mind became with the help from other members.

As for the Blender, I will search up the things you spoke of and I might try, later on, giving Mixamo a go if I find myself struggling with animations.

Also, thanks for saying that last part. I was somewhat afraid that my question would be confusing or far too simple. Having that said, both Pior and you helped a lot. I'll be finishing something up soon and posting it in my sketchbook here in polycount and after finishing up a level I'm working on I'll be getting my hands on the nice bits of blender animation

Until then