How to Make Modular Characters with Body Parts in Unreal Engine 5 - Leader Pose Component

[@kenalpha3]

GJ. So remember this tip: 1) If the mesh goes over an animated body part (e.g. Glove wraps around > hand & finger bones) - then use the Set Master/Leader node for that Mesh. 2) But if you are adding a hair mesh that doesnt really need to follow the skeleton animation (the mesh doesnt wrap around any joint bends) - then use the Set Bone anchor method = 6:09.

[@vladtheclad]

It's a very nice way to have a modular character. Or two or three. But it's quite expensive way if you have tens of characters. So then you will have to use Mesh Merge functionality of Unreal Engine's core...

[@kenalpha3]

@@vladtheclad "Mesh Merge functionality" What node is that? And is it in UE4.27? I think theres 3 ways to merge meshes. But some of them are bad for physics or other things. So Ive only done Set Master node and Skinned mesh.

[@benjaminhawklyn]

Most important part -- the change of name of Master Pose Component -- to Set Leader Pose Component. Thank you, this was exactly what I was looking for!

[@MrTsuenami]

I wish I could upvote this more than once. I've searched for days looking for this "unsynced" animation solve. And this explained it in such a concise and clear way. Thank you very much.

[@gut4546]

The last half of this video saved my sanity. Thank you.

[@denioscream1967]

I cannot tell you the value of the information you provide here. It's been 1 week and I encountered this problem. The commands you performed after minute 4.00 caused the added clothing pieces to adapt to the animation. Thank you. I was struggling with this a lot. I hope you will be well rewarded for your work.

[@tejtuladhar2658]

Great video on the basics of having multiple body parts. I searched very long to find the answer to this so I am glad that others can find out how to do it here.

[@GorkaGames]

thank you!! I'm glad you found it helpful!

[@corbin9079]

Oh my god I have been looking EVERYWHERE for this!!! Thank you!!!

[@theoldrsftw]

I always wondered modular characters work and now it makes sense. Also, very easy. Thank you :)

[@GorkaGames]

thank you!! yeah it is a pretty simple process

[@asha_kumari]

@@GorkaGames thanks for video i try but character body automatically is so small how to fix

[@richardparker3273]

Thank you SO MUCH!!! The construction of my character is significantly different from yours, but the process you teach in your tutorial still works great for what I needed to do :)

[@Varomic]

Great work now we just need a tutorial on how to make a customize tab for the characters

[@Faithdrawn]

But HOW do you prepare the pieces for Unreal. Without that part, none of this tutorial matters, as well done as it is... :(

[@starvosxant4348]

You can export it to an external 3D software and separate the parts

[@UnixemDev]

@@starvosxant4348 I’m working on that and the thing exports as static meshes and when converted to skeletal meshes it doesn’t work with the animations any more, very odd

[@privateName419]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f3mtl5tjrLlsmcUsi=ti27SAIOkBYnxTAI

[@WildDonkeyTTV]

​@starvosxant4348 blender for example.

[@allashama]

I didnt know we could Set a Master Pose Component. Thank you for that. I'm on Ue4.26 and it's work. You have to use the node Master Pose Component, because in Ue5 the name of this node has changed for what we have in this viode.

[@darkspy94]

You just putted an end to my struggle of rigging, you legend!

[@wayneadams9102]

you still have to rig any custom meshes you create tho.....

[@jonathanjesus5266]

ty, my unreal master

[@chrum91]

Good stuff man! Been looking for a tutorial like this, are you going to use this method for the RPG tutorial series?

[@wilismatrix9847]

Thank you, your tutorials saved my ass on many occasions !!

[@ageofreakon7940]

would you be able to create a tutorial on implementing this into your rpg series?

[@Vino.S.C]

Very good and easy to follow! Keep up the gr8 work! 👍

[@GorkaGames]

thank you so much!!

[@julioperonerocholl9364]

yes yes yes, just what I was looking for, thank you very much for this video! 😁

[@mists_of_time]

thank you man, exactly what I was looking for.

[@toffotin]

Thank you. Now I got it working for the most part, but for some reason when I play an animation montage, the bodyparts won't get animated. EDIT: Got it working properly. Here's what happened, in case someone has a similar problem. Disconnecting and reconnecting the mesh node in the blueprint got the animation to start playing, although it looked buggy. I'm making an FPS and I have the arms and shirt as separate objects. The shirt obviously goes out of view sometimes, so it would get clipped. "Use Attach Parent Bound" in the rendering section of the shirts details fixed this.

[@Зритель-ш6у]

Thank you SO MUCH!!!

[@StevenDiLeo]

great info to know about the set leader node, thanks for making this :)

[@mucod2605]

Bro pls a tutorial on how to make city buildings with night light windows and some parallax

[@davidkiss7217]

its almost pure level design, what you cant do?

[@legenderry25]

Can you do a tutorial on how to do a wardrobe system in a sense where we can equip different pieces of the outfit meshes from inventory. right click to equip/ drag and drop. All the information I can find is attaching the mesh to sockets that are covering rendered polygons.

[@kenalpha3]

+1 if he does it without CastTo, and use better methods like BPI. (I have a CastTo method and it is annoying when I watch to exchange backupassets - the Cast makes a hard link and I have to redo pin lines.)

[@FactSlash]

This is great thanks

[@GorkaGames]

thank you!!

[@deyvek]

When will you finish making the equipment?

[@mathieuvart]

Easy to follow

[@chelo111]

dope video bro

[@BooneyTune]

Thanks for this one!

[@macxike]

Can you still add and animate this character inside the Sequencer with multiple parts?

[@juniorthompson5245]

Really Great video...... Another one!!!

[@tomeberhard74]

Super useful, thanks Bro!

[@AJAthlete]

Subbed. Just found your channel keep it up! 🎉

[@felixs6115]

what if i have a part that has additional bones? like a rope with bones and physics? i used the same method but the additional bones all get frozen

[@studiobaxter1242]

Very cool! Would this system also be able to be used for the player customizing their character? Be great to see a tutorial on that too.

[@loopyslop]

So each modular piece has its own UVs, Materials, and textures right? Ive heard its not very good practice to have more that 3 materials on a character

[@istealpixel7371]

big thx for this!

[@dwansullivan00]

Great Video Thank you!!!

[@Master_Poizan]

Hi, really well done video for beginners quite easy to grasp what needs to be done and later be built upon. I have a request if you will, Could you make a item pick and throw system with physics (With arc prediction) that would be great. Thank you for your great content :D

[@betraid]

If i have modular parts with their own skeletal meshes and skeleton parts, should i use Leader pose component or better attach them to the body skeleton bones?

[@FPChris]

Good info. Thx.

[@HJones0]

curious if each piece brings in another version of the rig or if it combines them? As I've had this issue in the past in unity where 1 character had 5 skeletons overlapping and it became extremely unoptimised

[@jundakong4515]

May I ask how to separate different body parts into different skeletal meshes? I tried to import head-only fbx, it always breaks during importing into unreal...

[@pilgrimidleandwalkon8192]

Hi Gorka. Again a real nice video. Could you now show us in an other video, how to build a character creation system from scretch. Begining with building the menu for character creation by using tiles, as you used it for your inventory system. Showing how to change folk, transform body parts with sliders and so on. Also real imported give us, perhaps at a second Part, an inspiration, how to futher expand the character creation System. Again thank you for the content you are giving to us.

[@TacGames]

I was just watching the enemy Ai tut And decided to add a character in as the enemy instead of mannequin. So I open another tab and and searched for this kit. clicked this video and was like hmm this person sounds familiar. You have tutorials for everything Keep It Up!👍

[@IsabellaFrancoo]

Nice Video!

[@gevorghambardzumyan2375]

so is this the method that they use for example in dark souls?

[@anthonywynn5616]

This seems to break collisions for me. How do you still get collisions/hits on characters while using this?

[@ThePavilionWeb]

With the launch of FAB they have removed access to this character pack :(

[@oscoorpgames]

bro make some video about world design 😃

[@GorkaGames]

I will soon!!

[@oscoorpgames]

@@GorkaGames ok Man✓

[@soulonire]

How can you change the rig of specific parts, for example, in a character part swapper? Like, I want a ant with different antennae rigs and animation, like shorter antennae and larger ones, but I want it to be swappable in the same model.

[@sriman1]

can u make video on gun skin or shit skin for example game like pubg ,call of duty and free fire

[@GorkaGames]

like customization?

[@Amonlith]

I am trying to do so with the metahuman, but their had has a different skeleton so it uses a different animation blueprint any solutions to that? if I use the master/leader component node the head moves with the body as it should but can't use face animations, if I dont use the node I can use animations but the head is misplaced compared to the body, eyeballing it's position didn't help, I tried using the node and playing animation /montage on the head but it doesn't work :(

[@Harry-v4t2g]

My character is still glitchy it won't stay put I followed every step the second part won't show up when I click on mainbody in viewport

[@samy7342]

But wait how do you know which is the animator of the models?

[@theicebergofonepunchman6074]

3:17 skibi toilet xd

[@iKange]

I follow the steps in the video but when I press play the character is invisible, Why is this happening?

[@TolisPiperas82]

How to make it work with the rog char? I tried it but its not work

[@mylifehomeisrael7633]

where to get the skill there is no set Master pose Component?

[@maxdemax2655]

My upperbody doesnt work, arms are in a very weird position. Anyone got a clue to fix it?

[@maxdemax2655]

DId just realised the pack I used is also UE4 skel, any way to make it UE5 skel?

[@Ready-Assets]

Would same principals work with car parts

[@GorkaGames]

hmm not really, unless they use the same skeleton and are build to be modular, then yeah, but for cars this really wont be suitable

[@Ready-Assets]

@@GorkaGames thanks man!

[@Ready-Assets]

@@GorkaGames much appreciate your work !

[@kenalpha3]

Are your parts SK (meshes with Skeletons assigned) or SM (pure Static Meshes without a skeleton)? If the first, then you need the SK car parts to share the same car skeleton. If the second, then in BP you can just overlap meshes / use Construct/Events to switch the meshes = change parts.

[@Ready-Assets]

@@kenalpha3 thank bud. I will look up. Currently I use armature as generate in Blender but want to change it all to parenting.

[@AI_CG]

This doesn't work for custom character that was imported as fbx rather than using from Unreal marketplace. How to make it work with custom character, I am able to import the character into the blueprint, but the animation does not work. What did u do after animation retargeting?? since when I did it created a bunch of animation sequences, so I did it after duplicating the original blueprint. but it doesn't work. In the video when he added the animation to the head, started moving, but it didn't for my character, I am not sure what the issue is, can anyone help me with this issue.

[@Disgruntled_Old_Man]

Anyone know where a tutorial is that teaches people how to make a character creation menu? I want players to be able to create their own characters in a project I'm working on.

[@demonmcfly1579]

I think Dr hippo maybe?

[@medmel2160]

You're having shadows artifacts when the character walk. This is due to Virtual Shadow Map. I don't know how to get rid of these so if anyone knows...

[@a1zombieslayer148]

go into project settings and change the virtual shadow maps to shadow maps should fix it :)

[@Kirmm]

Thanks for the tutorial. I've got some unreal marketplace characters with separate body meshes, I just want to use them, mix and combine their body parts, but there's no tutorials on how to do it. Yours is for third person character BP. Would love to see a tutorial how to do a simple character instead with mixamo animations :)

[@told-u]

Can someone help me? I can't open construction because I accidentally closed it. Can you tell me how to open it

[@merry6671]

On the left in the "My Blueprint" located below the "Components tab" you should see a part where it says "Functions" and you can find the constructionscript there

[@told-u]

@@merry6671 thanks

[@itsMBWAAA]

Once I duplicate the CharacterMesh Component, rename it UpperBody and make it a child of CharacterMesh, it rotates 90 degrees and is unable to be rotated on any axis in any way. I can't figure out why the heck it is happening, especially when nothing out of the ordinary is being changed. Is anyone else having this issue?

[@peterjohnson8570]

Why use a modular character though? 🤔 I feel like non-modular would be more flexible. Actually, I'd like to see a short tutorial series on non-modular characters with customizable overlapping clothing items... including the process of creating those clothing items. Would love to see how to mix and match different clothing assets at runtime and add cloth physics that can, for example, make a jacket or scarf fly up while the character is falling.

[@GameDragon2k]

This doesn't make sense. The entire point of modularity *is* flexibility.

[@peterjohnson8570]

@@GameDragon2k I mean, I'm new to all of this... but, how is having a single upper body mesh flexible? What if the character wants remove the coat? What if they want to put on a vest? Or any other combination of clothing. Would you have to create a mesh for every possible combination? What if you then have multiple characters, have different body types (skinny, muscular, average, obese), or even just different breast sizes. Seems like some sort of layering system would be much more flexible and "modular"... the difference being that each item of clothing is a module rather than each part of the character.

[@GameDragon2k]

​@@peterjohnson8570 You would use blendshapes/morph targets for body types and breast sizes, regardless of which method you use. If you were modeling a jacket or vest to wrap over a base mesh, you'd still have to use blendshapes to fit different sizes. "Wrapping" or "layering" clothing is extremely amateurish and extremely poor on performance. This is very dependent on the poly count of your characters, but you have to remember, the engine needs to render and calculate polygons underneath the clothing, even if it's not visible. The primary benefit of a modular workflow is optimization. You can pretty much guarantee that each piece of clothing has an optimized polygon count, without losing any quality because you do not need to worry about any polygons underneath any clothing. This is also more flexible because you can choose to specifically render the parts that you need and save on resources. Head/face meshes for example, tend to be very detailed and high in polygon count. But if your can wear a helmet or mask over their entire head, you wouldn't want to constantly calculate everything behind it, right? The only negative really is Time. The way layered/wrapping method you're explaining is definitely faster. But it is not a good way to do it. Especially if your game has a tight polygon budget. Not a single AAA game does it that way. Sorry for the long reply, but hopefully that made sense.

[@peterjohnson8570]

​@@GameDragon2k Don't apologize for a lengthy comment... it shows time and thought into what was said and is far more insightful than merely saying "X doesn't make sense". I appreciate the detailed response. That does kinda explain why GTAV's clothing is the way it is... though, seems less than ideal. I guess I assumed modern hardware and technologies like Nanite would handle layering well enough for there to be a less static approach than what was used 10 years ago.

[@GameDragon2k]

@@peterjohnson8570 Unfortunately, Nanite only works with static meshes. Things like mountains, trees, or buildings. Clothing would be a skinned mesh and cannot use Nanite. And yep, if you check out models for some of your favorite games with any kind of character customization, you'll find that a large majority of them do not have polygons underneath clothing. It's an industry standard practice. The only time I'd say a layering method would be apt is if your character is extremely low poly ( ~500-2500). But characters nowadays are closer to 30-50k poly. You just can't afford to waste performance budget on something like that. Especially if you have NPCs that are also customizable. Modular workflow takes more time to get rolling, but it's much more worth it.

[@samrittenhouse2534]

super annoying that when I finally get a PC and decide to learn Unreal the marketplace is now Fab.. Granted i dont really have any experience with the old setup but the free modular character pack isnt on fab. And overall the layout of the older one seemed less like a crappy app.

[@pivotcom]

you are 100% my fav unreal youtuber its pretty basic ways of doing things but very clear and enough to make clear how it works so i can do whatever i want with it.

[@unrealopenworld]

Unfortunately, the character leaves footprints on the ground and cannot be used. No indication of fixing this.🤨

[@АндрейКислов-б4з]

👍👍👍

[@AllahomAnsorGaza]

you are hindi ?

[@connorjade5460]

no he's not

[@PhilipPetrunak]

Lazy copy of a much better tutorial.

[@sergeibargamotov8931]

Cool tutorials,,, enjoying watching you. But for God of sake please stop saying “basically “ every second.

[@slumsnake1303]

That very usefull, thanks!