Rigging a vehicle/car in Blender for Unreal Engine 5 animations

Learn how to setup a basic rig for a car or vehicle in Blender that you can animate either directly in Blender or export it as a FBX file and import it as a skeletal mesh in Unreal Engine 5 where you can use it to create a control rig to be able to animate the car movements directly in UE5 with the sequencer.
In this first part we'll have a look at setting up the model correctly, making sure all scales match and the origin points are located where they need to be in order to rotate and turn the way it should. I'll also share a secret tip of adding suspension movement to your car animations by using the default cube.
For the rig itself we're using a FREE addon called UE4 Vehicle Rigging which you can download here: continuebreak.gumroad.com/l/u...
💡 00:00 Intro to video
💡 00:15 tiedtke.
💡 00:20 Overview
💡 00:35 Measurements and scale
💡 01:00 Layer structure
💡 01:44 Origins
💡 02:23 Rigging using UE4 Vehicle Rigging addon
💡 04:40 Skinning weights
💡 05:35 Export
💡 06:22 Outro
Meshes used in the video:
🔸 Porsche 911 993 GT2 by tiedtke - skfb.ly/osBA7
Thanks for watching, if you like the video feel free to like and subscribe for more tutorials on #unrealengine #blender3d and #rigging
Follow my journey to become a Layout, Modeler and Lighting 3D artist working in the industry.
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I've worked 8+ years as a Director of Photography in Sweden, working on projects ranging from feature films to commercials and music videos. Currently studying at Visual Magic in Skellefteå, Sweden. Years active in the 3D industry is about 1 year. Focusing on 3D modeling, layout and lighting which is my passion.
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[@tiedtkeio]

Let me know if you've got any questions! 🙂

[@riotechmod]

5:23, when I select mesh in edit mode.. it not showing body in list :( , i did the process 3 times but didn't see body in the list

[@riotechmod]

still i m stuck on that place, scratching my head, how a bone can itself generate vertex Group just by duplicating it.

[@tiedtkeio]

@@riotechmod Sorry for not clarifying that you can also just create the group by hitting the plus icon and naming it "Body". :)

[@riotechmod]

@@tiedtkeio Thank god, you replied 😅, so I go in edit mode, select whole mesh and pressed + icon and name it BODY. is it fine ?

[@DavidConstance]

totally a newbie here. I have a delorean (Back to the Future) that I downloaded, but it has tons of parts. Your tutorial has 4 wheels, body, and center. What do i do?

[@willnattrass7139]

For anyone struggling with VERTEX GROUPS and BODY not showing up. Parent your body to the armature and select automatic weights. This will create the Vertex groups for you to then assign mesh data to.

[@tiedtkeio]

Perfect! Thank you Will for helping out! 😀👌

[@waterintheamp]

It didn't help... BODY not showing up in vertex grup...

[@favasmanikkoth4486]

@@waterintheamp YES..any update??

[@waterintheamp]

@@favasmanikkoth4486 just add new group, and rename it to “Body”, then select all faces in edit mode, and assing them to vertex group

[@benharrison2779]

@@waterintheampthankyou, your a life saver!

[@shrimperator6190]

Thank you so, so much for the tip of using the UE Vehicle Rigging Addon! It finally helped me figure out how the rig for the wheels was supposed to look like.

[@tiedtkeio]

Yay! I'm so happy to hear that! Thank you for watching my videos! 🙂🙏

[@Captainpanda2080]

Is there a way to rig and animate the springs like the new offroad vehicle in the vehicle sample content?

[@bernkbestgirl]

I like how you added to what the plugin did by inserting a bone for suspension. Very instructive

[@tiedtkeio]

Very late reply haha. But thank you! ❤🙏

[@user-qe3hi2kp9u]

hi, i have some question, i had try import the sk fbx to ue5, in viewport the car shadow cast on ground and everything's normal, but if i render movie, the cast shadow mesh to ground is missing only self shadow, do you have that problem?

[@TheSlash389]

I used rigacar a lot previously in blender, can this also be used somehow? Because i cant get the skeletal mesh out of it yet?

[@RuhollahKashfi]

Thanks for the informative and very well presented tutorials! Keep up the good work!

[@tiedtkeio]

Thank you so much my friend! 🙂

[@vivektyagi6848]

Awesome Series. Many Thanks,

[@ThadeousM]

Excellent fella thank you!

[@tiedtkeio]

Happy to help! Thanks for watching! 😌

[@user-fu8gq5xg5u1]

When I scale the body my left symmetry changes its position and becomes to the right of the right wing. What to do?

[@senjiryakketsu]

What if we have an object with non turnable wheels to right and left like train bogies ? How we should rig it for UE ?

[@saintracer2083]

How to do this process in 3dsmax ? It will be very helpful if you share,Thank you.

[@DavidConstance]

So I tried to group the parts but when I rigged it, it all ungrouped. So frustrating

[@haywirehalo]

Upscaling Objects is moving the object and not increasing the size, a few clicks will shrink it to almost nothing. Please help!!!!!

[@beyondcinema]

hey there I was wondering if this add on rig only works for going to Unreal 4 or does it work for Unreal 5.4 as well?

[@MrShroombot]

Can this be replicated in UE4? Thanks!

[@mihailhamanovich]

Hi, I have watched your video, it’s very cool, but I can’t figure out how to make a control rig for a car so that it can be moved as a blender and the wheels spin. And is it possible to run this setup along a spline. Thanks in advance

[@kellyvill9413]

Unreal is a different beast to Blender. You'll have to watch a few UE5 tutorials for that

[@prraneth-skyop1374]

idk y iam not able to see body in object data

[@evolutionaer2161]

Thx!

[@diogoferreiramariano6105]

Obrigado, voce me ajudo muito com esse vidio.

[@surgetank9473]

thanks for your video. I tried to import rigged vehicle to unreal but it didn't work with crash error. what can I do to resolve it?

[@tiedtkeio]

Thank you for watching! Hmm, the problem may be many things. Is your vehicle very high in poly count? That's probably the first thing I would look into.

[@zdog0336]

Apparently the upscale function is not compatible with blender 4.1. I'm unsure on how crucial; that is current time. :(

[@DesignsbyDonBrown]

How could I apply this to rigging a person in a wheelchair in Blender for Unreal? I've been trying to figure this out for a long time.

[@Metalwrath2]

unit scale not clickable for some reason

[@shisui5650]

Thx bro!

[@tiedtkeio]

Thank you for watching!!

[@cihanelibol7314]

huge thanks body 🙏

[@tiedtkeio]

Happy to help! Thanks for watching my videos! ☺️🙏

[@krakenoner]

I dont know why but my new Body bone does not appear in the Vertex groups. Bro, pls help me!

[@tiedtkeio]

Then you can just create a new vertex group and name it the same as your bone i.e. "Body" :)

[@djtc2093]

Hey man when I import to UE it's giving me an error

[@96ubme]

This is really a great tutorial. Thank you. I have seemed to do something wrong. When I import my fbx into UE5 everything shows up except the body of my car. The center, and 4 wheels show up but not the body? Any idea why that would be?

[@tiedtkeio]

Thank you! You probably just missed to include the body in the export from Blender. Select everything including the body and select "export selected" in export settings or deselect everything and remove any cameras, lights etc and deselect the "export selected". 😄👌🏼

[@96ubme]

@@tiedtkeio user end problem... I got it. thanks again

[@96ubme]

@@tiedtkeio Another question for you. How would you go about adding a Niagara Dust system to each wheel, in a Blueprint? What I am trying to do is animate the body of the car moving forwad and have the wheels automically rotate and the NS go on. When the car comes to a stop then the wheels would stop rotating and the NS would turn off. Any ideas on how to approach that?

[@federicogardin5313]

great tutorial! one question, when I bring the fbx in Unreal the wheels are separated from the body, do you know what could it be?

[@tiedtkeio]

Thank you!! Yes, if they're not in the right place you probably forgot to apply the scale, rotation and location on all objects in Blender. Go back to part 1 video of this tutorial and have a look. If they're two separate objects in Unreal i.e. two skeletal meshes you probably did something wrong with the skinning/rigging in Blender/Maya. Once again, have a look at the other video. :)

[@LmTrn]

I'm having the same problem. Did you fix it?

[@Stever4545]

Hey, so I did all of the steps right, just that the bones face towards the back of the vehicle rather than facing towards the side of the car, Did I do something wrong?

[@tiedtkeio]

Hi! If you haven't solved it yet, that's probably just because your car was oriented/rotated towards the wrong axis. Making sure the axis match the entire way through is really important. Is your car facing positive X axis?

[@Stever4545]

@@tiedtkeio alr thanks man!

[@Brand.on18]

Am I able to parent multiple body parts to an empty named "body" like with Launch Control? The vehicles I want to use are made up of many body parts.

[@Reflective-Matter]

Did you find an answer to this? I have the same problem, a car model with the body made of dozens of separate parts

[@erti3d354]

can we separate the breaks and the wheels in the rig?

[@tiedtkeio]

Absolutely :)

[@KevOXO]

Why use Blender? Is this not available in Unreal 5?

[@joshuadexter9273]

Followed all the steps but the "Body Bone" doesn't show up in Vertex Groups. Any help is much appreciated!!

[@tiedtkeio]

Hi yes, someone else had the same problem in the comments, just create a new group and make sure it's the same name as the bone i.e. "Body". :)

[@gameswownow7213]

hi, if i have a mesh already textured of a car. how can i rig it? i need to separate the wheels from the mesh? (the mesh include the wheels as a piece)

[@cedricgovaerts3279]

Try to select a vertex, and hit ctrl+L. If it selected what you need, just hit P and choose Selection. Do that for all 4 wheels and you can rig the model.

[@gameswownow7213]

@@cedricgovaerts3279 thanks milions man

[@yeohjo]

when i created the new bone for the car body but it doesnt appear below in the menu for me to assign, am i missing something?

[@tiedtkeio]

You can create a new vertex group named the same name as the bone. ☺️

[@yeohjo]

@@tiedtkeio i am having another issue, when i press upscale and set units my rig pivot point just move to the center

[@wayne9954]

Keep coming back to this when needed! Great tutorial not to fast and very clear. One question: Whenever I upscale my car using the UE4 Vehicle plugin it creates massive body/panel gaps. Any tip how to solve this?

[@tiedtkeio]

Happy to hear that, thanks for watching! Honestly I do too sometimes when I forget haha. That issue sounds like the panels aren't applied scale. Before rigging the vehicle, very important to select ALL individual parts and Ctrl+A to apply scale. Also be aware of any modifiers you might've used that may be using incorrect values if the scale was incorrect when modelling the car. :)

[@wayne9954]

@@tiedtkeio thank you for your comment! I fixed it by hand and can’t remember if I selected all individual parts before upscaling, I do remember my model having panel gaps before upscaling as well but hard to see due its scale. I’ll keep it in mind for next time! Btw instead of adding a bone for suspension is it possible to add a bone for opening or closing a door? Not sure if it works that way.

[@kenomy2160]

Loved this. I'm a bit late, but is there any chance that you could do a tutorial to rig a truck with a trailer ? :)

[@william6758]

how can you skip over parenting the body to the armature????/ thanks fothe vid but geez too big a piece to just leave out

[@VFxArk]

can we rig more than 4 wheels cars

[@tiedtkeio]

Of course! You can do as many wheels as you want. Simply duplicate the bones and rename them. 🙂

[@nathankrone3363]

This may be an easy fix but it looks like my tires deform the body of my vehicle when I rotate them. I've tried removing the weight paint and it makes no difference as far as I can tell. Rigging my vehicle how they do it in the addon's instructional video solves this issue but I feel I'm missing out on the scalability your setup offers. Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong?

[@tiedtkeio]

This sounds like exactly what you mentioned. If your tires deform the body mesh then those skin weights affect the body too. Without having seen your car/mesh, make sure to remove ANY vertex groups assigned to everything on the car. Make sure it's only one body mesh and that everything is connected to it by moving it around with G. Make sure the objects in the outliner is named in a logical way i.e. "Car_Body, Car_FR, Car_FL, Car_RL and Car_RR". The main isssue is probably the weights mentioned above. If all else fails, let me know again in the comments and you could email me the Blend file so I can have a look at it. :)

[@nathankrone3363]

@@tiedtkeio Hey that was it. For some reason when I rigged the car all the wheels and the body had all of the vertex groups under it. Thank you for your quick reply. 😅

[@tiedtkeio]

Great! Good luck with your project. 😊@@nathankrone3363

[@dzeeriq]

Can we add Doors RIg using the Addon UE Vehicle Rig?

[@tiedtkeio]

Yes! Trunks, doors, etc :)

[@dzeeriq]

@@tiedtkeio Awsome Thanks, It's awsome videos

[@peterjoslyn1]

Great tutorial - presumably this same method works if I add in extra bones for doors to open?

[@tiedtkeio]

Thank you! It does, I forgot to mention it. You add a new bone for a door, spoiler, trunk etc, add a new vertex group with the same name as the bone and assign that group to the verticies. ☺️

[@peterjoslyn1]

@@tiedtkeio and presumably in UE5 you then do the same process but add more nodes to include doors etc?

[@tiedtkeio]

@@peterjoslyn1 Correct!

[@DavidConstance]

Failed to import to unreal

[@aminjony1]

can i use it for UE5

[@tiedtkeio]

Hi Amin, yes you can! Works for UE5.0 to UE5.3.1 😊

[@scotchtwo]

After applying the scale i have wierd texture flickering... ist here a way to fix this

[@tiedtkeio]

This has to do with the Blender viewport and view distance. I get this too, but you can just ignore it. It doesn't affect the model. 😊

[@scotchtwo]

@@tiedtkeio Thanks for the Fast Response :)

[@crypt_exe8709]

What about brake discs and pads

[@kemetstudio2502]

Can we rig car for D5?

[@tiedtkeio]

What's D5?

[@kemetstudio2502]

a render software@@tiedtkeio

[@lmeier48]

help me, i cant duplicate the bone, what am i doing wrong?

[@tiedtkeio]

Are you in Pose Mode (blue bones)? Change instead to Edit Mode (grey bones) and hit "Shift + D" :)

[@lmeier48]

@@tiedtkeio thank u!! I will try that!

[@TheChrisNong]

who would've thought that such a straightforward task will end up so confusing

[@eff7666]

i want to see second part

[@TheArtofme]

My bones are coming in facing the wrong direction, any ideas?

[@tiedtkeio]

That's most likely because the entire scene/car was facing the wrong way in Blender. Or you didn't apply the transforms and rotation before you started rigging. ☺️

[@TheArtofme]

@@tiedtkeio thanks man, will give it a try!

[@TheArtofme]

@@tiedtkeio Car rotation was wrong on import, thanks man!!

[@marcapouli7805]

The impossible part is to make the car. I'm currently trying to make a car (1 year of work) and I'm still far away from having finished modelisation, not mentioning high poly/low poly setup, uvs etc.... I hope I finish it before I die but I have very big doubts. Rigging a car? Use it Unreal? Make a game or profit with it? lol

[@destroyer1959]

You could have just downloaded a model of car from the internet 🤔

[@marcapouli7805]

@@destroyer1959 That is what I have done recently, but it still requires weeks of work to adapt/optimize. And my options are low since I can download only free models

[@tylermalic]

More nfs high stakes unreal 9 videos plese

[@HYPERGIRLAI]

TYTYTYTYTY!!!!!!!!!

[@tiedtkeio]

Happy to help! Thanks for watching!

[@BOSSposes]

this is why UE5 is garbage seriously that was such a long fkn process no fkn way

[@tiedtkeio]

Haha, it does take some time, but hey - at least you don't need to code anything. ☺