Blender to Unreal & unity - Exporting rigged character - Extensive guide

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

🔥🔥Check out my new rigging couse and its new chapter : www.p2design-academy.com/

[@kloa4219]

guide for godot 4? I get that it is a pain

[@thegameplay3859]

ONE REQUEST: Kindly make blender full free course on youtube. In this explain every things exit on blender. THANKS. If you will do that GOD will give you 10 times more in your life as things. As written in Holy books. " If you will give free some thing GOD will give you 10 times more same thing." Of you want to be more better in blender you should make blender full free course on youtube. In this course you will explain every things exit on blender (all the things you know). THANKS.

[@Porplefish]

WOW I just searched "Blender to unreal Pierrick" and it came up with this, amazing timing man!

[@alexbay1911]

I was reading your interview on CG Cookie yesterday, where you said you don't like scripting and don't study it because of that. But today, I see you've released scripts you wrote yourself with your new course.😂 I'm glad you found the strength to overcome it! Great video. I've found many of your videos extremely useful at work. I wanted to say a huge thanks for them! Keep it up.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Well I learned since then and had friends helping me. 😃

[@aeneasfuchskuntz7031]

This is absolute gold! I bought the full new rigging course as soon as it was out: it's amazing! I already bought the first edition: this new upgraded one is far, far better: chapeau! I was talking with a friend of mine about this course two days ago, I sent him this video, with a strong suggestion to make the purchase Disclaimer: I'm not sponsored, but a huge fan 😂😂 Disclaimer #2: if you want to sponsor me, I can spread the word 😂😂😂 (just kidding, this was for the sake of a laugh: keep up the good content, I'm staying tuned! 💪💪)

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Thanks for your support and kind words 😊😊

[@vuankhanhbeo]

Thanks so much for this one! I have been searching all the internet for a whole month to find something like this!

[@RafaelBrum]

14:26 Oh my God, it speaks PTSD by looking at this. Sometimes I'm doing a commission for a game character and after all the animations done I looked at the scene scale and it was 1.0. Had to do everything again

[@ntothemfc08]

Thank you so much! Even after finishing Effective Rigging 1, I struggled with these topics a lot. Those times now seem to be over🙂

[@CosmicComputer]

Pierrick, you are awesome for sharing this with us, thank you! I would love to see from you in the future, a new Alive course that maybe focused on game animations, cycles, interactions etc. That would be awesome! Thanks again!

[@MrLoverofstuff]

I wish you had released this 2 weeks ago! I was trying to figure out exporting to Unreal and my character's eyes and teeth kept wildly rotating during animations! Great work, like always!

[@medmel2160]

Someone stops this guy, he is on fire! Constantly uploading gold content!!

[@frustratedsquirrel]

honestly I was shakey about buying your course at first, but I genuinely believe it's such a good resource to have. It's so in-depth that it not only was a great way for me to check my knowledge about rigging, but also just using Blender in general (taught me shortcuts and selection methods I didn't even know existed, etc) I'd love it if you could make an updated tutorial about how to rig a character's shoulder, especially if that character has large muscular deltoids and biceps. Lately I have been trying to make Anime-style models like the ones found in Guilty Gear Xrd/Strive and those models use muscle-to-muscle topology without any texturing. This causes the loops to be a bit strange and good deformations require some unique weight painting. When I try to use automatic weights with a more standard rig it can sometimes cause the muscles to behave oddly. A lot of shoulder tutorials are outdated or are using characters with slender shoulders, like female models, so many of the weight issues don't happen to models like those. If you did a tutorial on using helper bones to correct muscle deformations in something like say, a Hulk model, that would do the blender community a big service I think.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

I explain how to use helper bones in the course. You can use the method on the model you want.

[@Shalfatk01]

you saved the day again ! :D i saw this video when it came out. from time to time... i came here again to figure out why mi meshes are not behave properly in engines :)

[@CGDive]

Awesome guide! Makes perfect sense, will be referencing it again in the future.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Thanks mate

[@repsejnworb]

Nice video man. I wish I had seen this 4 years ago when I tried sorting the scaling of some of my models, but just gave up when all went to shit. Now I know why and how to fix it in the future ! Cheers!

[@Veranze]

Thank you for making this, it came out at just the right time! I've always used the Blender to Unreal official add-on to do all the exporting, but there's no support for blender 4.0 at the moment. I may have been leaning on the add-on a bit too much so this might be for the best haha. Cheers!

[@metaljesus5334]

38:55 notice how you can click on the individual meshes and disable them at will? How come Unreal doesn't support something that simple?

[@nextos]

Thanks, Looking forward to buying your rigging course in a few months when i have time to start it

[@HomAxz]

I think your approach to show how it's done without any addon is really great. Thank you for making this episode free for all of us. One minor complaint, during your "recap" screen, sometimes the text is hard to read (grey on grey) (6:37). I'm wondering, does your update course chapter cover UE control rig? I would love to learn this from you as you are by far the best animation / rigging teacher. Thank you!

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

No, I won't be covering rigging in UE or unity. IT's all Blender. Thanks for your support

[@BlackMantisRed]

This video seems like exactly what I need, I spent too long trying to fix additive animations that where not working only to find out it is due to the different axes between blender and Unreal, I always have annoying little troubles exporting from Blender to Unreal. I wish Unreal would add a setting for importing blender FBX models.

[@jojo2267]

Hey Pierrick did you check out the new PureRef 2.0 Update? We can add gifs to it now and it has the function to view the gif frame by frame. It will work well for animations along with syncsketch

[@diomiziofattorelli6609]

Thank you! Amazing content and amazing teacher! It could be such a pain the scale mismatch. Maybe centimeters should be the default unit also in blender?

[@minati-illu7565]

Alright, been looking for this solution for months, hope it works, will keep you updated

[@starder6676]

When I import an FBX file into UE5 from blender , UE5 crashes. I'm not sure why

[@usercontent2112]

Thank you Pierrick. The unity part was incredibly helpful!

[@activemotionpictures]

Based on the 19:03 rig, you directly control all other bones using a main bone(i.e: the leg), and that's all? no other control rig driving the regular bones? Also, thank you for sharing this video. This is my third day watching it slowly by bits. Great content.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Hi Pierre, I'm not sure I get your point. This is the deformation chain I guess, so you will have your main limb bone that will "control" the twist bones by a simple parenting. But all these bones are constrained tot he control rig with all the usual bells and whistles (IK, FK etc...)

[@activemotionpictures]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN ok, thanks!

[@merp2962]

Love the content and got a lot of mileage out of Art of Effective Rigging I. My question, do you have any plans to develop a series on integrating these rigs with the Animation Rigging Package in Unity? I'm curious to see how you would approach handling additive/ procedural animation mixes.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

I don't plan on publishing any Untiy related content. Not a big fan, I prefer Unreal.

[@SIARSEDIG]

Amazingly detailed tutorial. Thank you for sharing!

[@IamJustMeAndCrazy]

This is pure gold, thanks a lot for this video 🙏

[@TheBlackbirdii]

everything you did in this video is perfect but just as note unity doesn't favor models with too many bones it could affect the performance it's always recommended to be less than 21

[@abysskun9518]

As someone who'd been getting into game dev and wants to create their own animations instead of relying of the store, is his course a good resource for learning animation that can be used in games?

[@pelakalion]

Thanks Pierrick, a phenomenal guide. But isn't the scale solved by simply changing meters to centimeters in Blender? Regards

[@TsahaProduction]

So professional! Love you man!

[@gmangarth]

Excellent video, you are the master!

[@3DArtisanal]

i am waiting for your next animation course... will you be uploading the Animation process of the trailer you made for the AOER 2 ???

[@merdoVFX]

omg finally someone did this

[@countcroak]

Hey Pierrick, does your course cover how to make the custom UI for the rig in Blender? The UI I'm referring to is the P2DBOT Rig UI. I also really enjoyed going through the previous rigging course, thanks for taking the time to make the videos and share your learnings!

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Yes ! There is an introduction to scripting using templates :)

[@countcroak]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN Great to hear! It's one of the things I've been struggling with in Blender

[@spartanj1045]

Merci pour tout ça. Juste une chose que je ne comprends pas à propos de l'échelle entre Blender et UE5.5, de mon côté le modèle apparaît tout petit. J'ai pourtant bien suivit les étapes, je ne comprends pas.

[@roadtoenviromentartist]

In unreal it's better to use the new advanced retarget bones system when your are exporting rigs of external programs, in your case from Blender. Epic has worked lot in this one in the last two versions.. I understand that you don't follow the last tools of unreal.. this is very normal when you are focused animating every day out of other engines like Unreal . Review the new advanced contents about rigging in Unreal like procedural rig system using nodes like in houdini or other interesant things for animation control. Nowday is very normal develope in AAA Unreal games develop inside the engine the rigg. You have more control in your skeletal mesh. Nice your content!!!

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Thanks, I need to catch up with all this :)

[@AlexiosLair]

I think you are talking about Control Rig, as much as retargeting system in UE5 is really got to an amazing point I'm not exactly sure it is related to the topic of the video. But I also concur that it is very interesting to see if Blender Control Rig can be applied with the same principles to UE5 Control Rig! Especially with such things like simulation and deformation friendly rig nodes being added in the recent UE5 version :)

[@xbgt4022]

So if we're making a rig that we know for certain will be later used in a game engine, it makes sense to use correct scale beforehand instead of scaling it up later on?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Absolutely

[@lairdsummers5315]

8 MINUTES AND FEEL MORE LOST AND OVERWHELMED THAN BEFORE FREE GUIDE? Men cut the shit bro! Even at x1:25 i was sleeping u kill my TDAH BRO, thanks for the video, u are the best, but that shit kill me jajajaja

[@ОлександрВасильєв-б5д]

Great the best instruction I've ever seen, but what about using USD instead of fbx?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

I never studied that but will definitely

[@3DChautari]

sir, I am thinking to purchase your course but I have one question. Is there a way to contact you if I am stuck in any steps or could not understand something inside of course to clarify ? And how much average time it might take for you to get back with responses ?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

I don't offer direct support but you'll get access to our community and can get help from other student along with lesson commentary. I answer often there.

[@twistedjourney]

Thank you, Exactly what i needed integration of Unreal. What about the face portion?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

It applies to everything. Just leanr the method.

[@NNgon]

i have a question, do you have to animate inside of blender ? and bake them and export to a game engine Or you rig in blender then animate in the engine, i am cofused

[@IsabellaFrancoo]

Perfect! ❤👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@merdoVFX]

will u make a video about to export textures with rigged character ?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

You don’t have to export the textures. Create a material and add your textures as in blender

[@nicolaibrushansen205]

Great video. Thanks for sharing :)

[@TwoFahOfficial]

Why have none drivers in my armature???

[@DeJayAnimation]

Big thanks Pierrick!

[@Shalfatk01]

Amazing tutorial!

[@Dhieen]

Can you teach us how to import animationbs fror the unreal mannequin using blender? like you create your animation in blender and export one, or multiple animations to unreal, without having to recreate a new skeleton etc, its so awful and hard to do imo

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

You just enable the animations you want to export in the NLA and just export the rig. Drag and drop in unreal. It should ask you. Skeletal mesh you want to use, pick the one you suggest created. It will only import the new animations.

[@Dhieen]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN Yeah but the hard part is setting up the skeleton in bledner that will be compatible with the one from unreal!

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

@@Dhieen you can import the skeletal mesh from unreal in blender. This way you have the correct skeleton to work with. Then you build your control rig on top of it.

[@GG-TP]

Hello Pierrick Picaut Committee Members, I would like to purchase the Rigging and Animation course, but I am facing an issue. Your courses are only available with English subtitles, and my language is Arabic. Therefore, I kindly request your assistance in adding Arabic language support. I am very interested in buying your courses, but the translation being only in English is a problem for me as my language is Arabic. Could you please add Arabic so that I can purchase the Rigging and Animation course? I am in great need of these courses and would appreciate your help. Thank you very much.

[@Вершитель_судеб]

what is the difference between the second part of the rigging course and the first?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

What do you mean ?

[@Thiagz]

C’est parfait! Merci!

[@MsKotikovna]

You are the best!

[@chew917]

The default unit in Unity is meter.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

But not the scale. Unit is a thing, scale another. What you want is working animations, with proper scale factor.

[@chew917]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN The concept of scale is associated with a default unit. For example, inside blender the variable is called "scale_length", and logically it means meter multiplier. As for Unity, no matter how much you claim in this video that the default unit is centimeter, it is misleading. But I don't blame you, this is a technical implementation detail, and there is a reason for this misunderstanding. Let's imagine a game, you say "one", Unreal Engine will answer: centimeter, Blender will answer: meter, Unity will say: "meter", and... fbx file format say: centimeter (like Maya too). In the case of Unity, when exporting from blender, it is not necessary to change the blender unit scale and rescale rig, just select "FBX All" instead of "FBX Units scale", this will change the "UnitScaleFactor" inside the fbx file. Technically speaking, in the case of "FBX Units scale" you leave fbx UnitScaleFactor equal to 1(cm), and fbx exporter will first multiply all matrices of each transform with the scale exposed in the exporter settings and after that, if you set "Apply Unit" will apply 100 (hidden multiplier) * unit scale from scene properties. In the case of Unity, all the work with rescaling the rig, dealing with broken constraints and so on is simply to make 100 * 0.01 = 1 and fbx unit scale 1(cm). At the same time, in the case of "FBX All" we will simply make fbx say 100cm -> 1m, if we refer to the game I tried to joke about earlier, i.e. scene property 1m (blender happy) -> fbx unit scale 1m -> Unity 1m, voila, everyone is happy. I don't know if this will work the same in Unreal Engine, because some outdated or just junk software doesn't take UnitScaleFactor into account and always treats any values as centimeters. BUT, everything that I describe here is only because you said that in the case of unity, too, you “should” set scene property unit scale to 0.01. Still, thanks for all your videos. By the way, what do you think about the works of Pavel Barnev?

[@chew917]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN The concept of scale is associated with a default unit. For example, inside blender the variable is called "scale_length", and logically it means meter multiplier. As for Unity, no matter how much you claim in this video that the default unit is centimeter, it is misleading. But I don't blame you, this is a technical implementation detail, and there is a reason for this misunderstanding. Let's imagine a game, you say "one", Unreal Engine will answer: centimeter, Blender will answer: meter, Unity will say: "meter", and... fbx file format say: centimeter (like Maya too). In the case of Unity, when exporting from blender, it is not necessary to change the blender unit scale and rescale rig, just select "FBX All" instead of "FBX Units scale", this will change the "UnitScaleFactor" inside the fbx file. Technically speaking, in the case of "FBX Units scale" you leave fbx UnitScaleFactor equal to 1(cm), and fbx exporter will first multiply all matrices of each transform with the scale exposed in the exporter settings and after that, if you set "Apply Unit" will apply 100 (hidden multiplier) * unit scale from scene properties. In the case of Unity, all the work with rescaling the rig, dealing with broken constraints and so on is simply to make 100 * 0.01 = 1 and fbx unit scale 1(cm). At the same time, in the case of "FBX All" we will simply force fbx to answer 100cm -> 1m, if we refer to the game I tried to joke about earlier, i.e. scene property 1(m, and blender happy) -> fbx unit scale 1(m) -> Unity 1(m), voila, everyone is happy. I don't know if this will work the same in Unreal Engine, because some outdated or just junk software doesn't take UnitScaleFactor into account and always treats any values as centimeters. BUT, everything that I describe here is only because you said that in the case of unity, too, you “should” set scene property unit scale to 0.01. Still, thanks for all your videos. By the way, what do you think about the works of Pavel Barnev?

[@chew917]

The concept of scale is associated with a default unit. For example, inside blender the variable is called "scale_length", and logically it means meter multiplier. As for Unity, no matter how much you claim in this video that the default unit is centimeter, it is misleading. But I don't blame you, this is a technical implementation detail, and there is a reason for this misunderstanding. Let's imagine a game, you say "one", Unreal Engine will answer: centimeter, Blender will answer: meter, Unity will say: "meter", and... fbx file format say: centimeter (like Maya too). In the case of Unity, when exporting from blender, it is not necessary to change the blender unit scale and rescale rig, just select "FBX All" instead of "FBX Units scale", this will change the "UnitScaleFactor" inside the fbx file. Technically speaking, in the case of "FBX Units scale" you leave fbx UnitScaleFactor equal to 1(cm), and fbx exporter will first multiply all matrices of each transform with the scale exposed in the exporter settings and after that, if you set "Apply Unit" will apply 100 (hidden multiplier) * unit scale from scene properties. In the case of Unity, all the work with rescaling the rig, dealing with broken constraints and so on is simply to make 100 * 0.01 = 1 and fbx unit scale 1(cm). At the same time, in the case of "FBX All" we will simply force fbx to answer 100cm -> 1m, if we refer to the game I tried to joke about earlier, i.e. scene property 1(m, and blender happy) -> fbx unit scale 1(m) -> Unity 1(m), voila, everyone is happy. I don't know if this will work the same in Unreal Engine, because some outdated or just junk software doesn't take UnitScaleFactor into account and always treats any values as centimeters. BUT, everything that I describe here is only because you said that in the case of unity, too, you “should” set scene property unit scale to 0.01. Still, thanks for all your videos. By the way, what do you think about the works of Pavel Barnev?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

@@chew917 Thanks for your detailed answer. Very much appreciated. I follow Pavel on twitter. He does so many incredible things even tho I'm not familiar with Maya at all.

[@nosirve9458]

this is sooo good

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Thanks

[@SHADOWJAGO-mb8kn]

pierrick please be fast with a new animation course, i really need it.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Won't happen soon at all.

[@SHADOWJAGO-mb8kn]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN 😒

[@rodrigobarbosa5803]

Great content

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Thanks

[@XINN1X]

this is great! could you make a version thats Blender to Godot?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Nope, I never used Godo But you can use gltf

[@santiagoshang]

Thannnnnnkssss.

[@user-cn9jy9hw6z]

I like your "Crimson Ronin" course...but I'd rather you finish it all in the blender. 😂

[@RyanLykos]

Alive! hoodies? are there AOER2 hoodies 👀👀 XD

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Nope, just one and it’s mine 😆

[@RyanLykos]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN awh! 😂

[@iriaizanami86]

I love you

[@playlist3542]

Pierrick elle est ou la version FR ? j'ai griller ton accent :p

[@torrellwright6144]

And more anime vfx please

[@ithappystore]

Amazing video as always! We reached out via email about a potential collaboration. Let us know what you think!

[@BriceKoua-11-11]

Are you french? because of yoour accent ✨

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Yes

[@yvanvan3729]

It could have been nice to have Godot too... Have a wonderful day.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

I don’t use Godo but I’m pretty sure the sale rules will apply. Use gltf

[@yvanvan3729]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN You should ;)

[@WaliullahSheikh-kz9xq]

Ai is getting better and better i am saying that is ai is good for us in animation iam saying that ai is getting better in animation it doesn't Hart us i want a answer 😢

[@Im_Ninooo]

I'm honestly disappointed to see you using FBX. It's such a dated and bad format. I know it's the "industry standard" but glTF is SO much better, especially for Blender to UE workflows, since it can handle the material conversion properly.

[@sadx_x6727]

Great video thanks you!!!