Super-easy VR body with Arm IK and thumbstick locomotion - Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial

[@AdrianTabacaru]

Marco, I was scared even when thinking of doing this. Found your tutorial long time ago and saved for later. Now, I got courage to do this and thanks to you this works as a charm. Thank you so much! You are awesome!

[@ShojikiGaming]

Hi Marco, Just wanted to say thankyou for these simple and straightforward tutorials. There aren't enough of these for Unreal VR, so please PLEASE keep making them! It would be great if you covered all of the typical VR interactions such as climbing, interact-able objects (doors, levers etc) and even weapons such as bows and arrows etc. Much love!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Paul Husiw-Aiken thanks Paul. There will definitely be more tutorials.

[@ecs-p3196]

So this is the legendary vr_marco! You are famous to me! I've seen you around everywhere, you have helped me so many times without knowing, maybe one day we will meet in the industry, cheers Marco! Thank you for everything!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Really glad to have helped you. Comments like this totally make my day! 😁

[@ConcreteJungleGames]

Amazing, I'm stunned at how straight forward you've delivered this process, thank you.

[@WarriorMisanthrope]

You're an absolute legend, Marco. Thank you so much for going out of your way and helping folks like us this way. I owe you a beer if I ever see you at an Unreal event. Grazie mille! :)

[@marcoghislanzoni]

I will remember that ;-) Thanks!

[@schoolhomevrtechnologyassi6286]

OH YEAH, LETS SEE WHAT YOU DID WITH IT, This video is useless, the sample DOES NOTHING, No Walking, no Gripping, no Jumping, no anything,

[@ChozoFS]

You, sir, are a hero in my eyes. It took me so freakin long to find a good two arm IK solution until now. Good job!

[@glennog]

Excellent tutorial, absolutely what I've been searching for :-)

[@Deech]

This is incredible... Thanks so much. Can't wait to see what else can be done with this setup.

[@Zoozou72]

Hey ! Just a little tips : If you don't want to have a camera movement, without change the Idle animation => Follow Camera => Camera Setting => Click on "Use Pawn Control Rotation" and it's done :) PS : Sorry for my english, i'm french See you

[@humancodeable4753]

Awesome Content. Keep up the great work. It´s very inspiring to see other developers create Content for Unreal and VR 🤓

[@coffee-coco]

thank you i made a variant of you tuto and now i have vr body and i can pick up things with my Vr player hands, thank you great job

[@Vohaul214]

Marco please accept my apologies, I reinstalled the UE4 editor and now it works. Please keep up the awesome tutorials!!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Vohaul214 Really? What for example?

[@Vohaul214]

@@marcoghislanzoni At the 2:00 mark you parent the FollowCamera to the Head bone. I've tried to do this and it simply doesn't let you. I have reset my UE4 and started over several times but it just simply wont let me type in a bone, it just pops up the little tooltip saying "cannot change socket on inherited components". I did follow this tutorial with version 4.19 and it worked perfect. I really wish I could get it working again. Thanks for the reply, BTW I am a subscriber of yours for over a year, your videos are awesome! EDIT: I should add that I tried to manually position the camera at the head and for some reason the player controls got all wired, pressing "w" would turn me 15° to the right and the "a" and "s" keys became forward and back... strange.

[@ricardorise]

Man, your tutorial is the best that I find, Thanks for shared

[@LeoMKyll]

Very simples and fast...great job on this tutorial!!!

[@BritishConcept]

This is awesome, so much good info in your videos!

[@dbougtab]

thx a lott for your tutorial, i used the Unreal engine 4.25. So that the camera follows the head. I used this option: Camera > Camera Options > uncheck Lock to Hmd

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You are welcome!

[@indieartsmidwest4042]

For anyone looking to setup head rotation with the HMD, here's how it's done. 1. Another transform variable needs to be made for the HMD in the AnimBP. 2. Add all of the necessary nodes need o be setup in the Event Graph. Which means adding the follow camera node connected from the "Cast To" node. 3. Add the necessary nodes in the Anim Graph. 4. For the Fabrik node, the tip bone is "head" and root bone is "neck_01". 5. For the Transform Bone node set the rotation to X= 0.0, Y= 90.0, and Z= -90.0 If everything is set properly, the head should rotate along with the HMD.

[@HakaiKaien]

I've been struggling with this for days. There is no follow camera node in the node list. Can you please help

[@HakaiKaien]

Never mind I got it working :)) But ONLY with the ue4 mannequin. All other skeletal meshes I tried gave horrible results

[@indieartsmidwest4042]

@@HakaiKaien I haven't tried it with any other skeletal meshes as of yet. I have considered parenting the mannequin bone hierarchy to a custom mesh but not much time for that right now. What I've done instead is add custom assets like helmets, tactical vests, etc. Glad you got it working.

[@HakaiKaien]

​@@indieartsmidwest4042 I must be doing something wrong. It should work no matter the skeleton. If you try it with other skeletons, please share the method :)

[@indieartsmidwest4042]

@@HakaiKaien I do agree with you. It should work with any skeleton. But I do know that Unreal Engine is very specific about the bone naming hierarchy so that could possibly be a factor. I also heard that mixamo skeletons work pretty good and ue4. Personally I've stayed away from Custom characters but maybe now would be a good time to look into that.

[@SinanAkkoyun]

Oh my gosh, thats so sweet :O

[@刘琪-k5p]

this can be so useful , thanks a lot! Super Grammer Enginering!

[@cyrus_365]

It works!!!!!!! Really appreciate!

[@bradleykelley6835]

This really is a nice tutorial. I learned a great deal. I would pay for a tutorial about adding the head movement and the animated hands for gripping. Any chance you can do that one soon?

[@RafaelRodrigues-jq6uc]

Dude youre amazing

[@bardseadweller]

Great video Marco, many thanks for the insights given. I have tried to apply your approach to the VRExpansion plugin VRCharacter (another fantastic utility) but Mordentral's approach is to eliminate the Skeletal Mesh (except for hands) and replace with static meshes for head and body. I know this isn't your issue but if any of your followers have succeeded in integrating the two approaches and would be willing to advise how I think a number of people would be eternally grateful. Again, thanks for this and other excellent tutorials.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

I know for sure this technique works with the VR Expansion Plugin as well. The Skeletal Mesh needs to be parented to component which is used to do belt attachments, the rest is the same.

[@xXShowGameXx]

This is amazing thank you so much !

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You are welcome! :-)

[@errtonether5059]

Very useful!! Thank you!

[@greengamerguy623]

this needs a post 4.24 update thanks

[@muhammadabdullah2993]

Great Work Sir! But can we do object interaction with it actually I'm working on a VR shooter so that's why

[@ronniecurtis8157]

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing :)

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You are welcome!

[@CanalDojogames]

Thanks Marco! im developing an RPG game for Oculus QUest,it will be a lot of help!

[@GuillaumeDGNS]

I followed every step with caution head tracking works but no hand controller my hands dont move. im using a HTC Vive and Ue4 4.14.3 any idea what could cause it not work?

[@briangonzalez907]

same here friend i he is was using old version of the engine cuz this was on 2017 and i am having the same problem

[@mihmin]

Smth. like «Access none trying to read property...», yes?))

[@FitGameDeveloper]

@DGNS Designs Figured it out: It is because the normal way the motion controllers are setup is to spawn through the motionControllerPawn. The blueprint for those motionControllers has the actual "motionController" component nested under a scene component, which is nested under the "bp_MotionController" root. The root is what you may be calling when casting from LeftController and RightController of the motionControllerPawn. You need to drag from LeftController > type in "motionController" then connect that component to a "GetWorldTransform". If this comment helped you, please subcribe to my YT channel & check out my app (MOD Haus)!

[@ryangregg1916]

so i seem to have an issue where if I an seated and VR preview my camera sits roughly where it should however if I stand and then start VR preview the camera is above the head of my character I have the VROrigin parented to head and the camera parented to the VROrigin along with the motion controllers.

[@SarangSharma-v7w]

I am also facing same issue if you find solution kindly share it here

[@mattmoberly1590]

Wonderful! Thank you!

[@zaidakram2486]

Amazing work thnk u

[@christopherheck4975]

perfect, thanks for sharing

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You are welcome!

[@christuusgnosis]

excellent

[@b.s.9133]

thank you for effort

[@johanpruys]

Thank you very much!!

[@helensmall7793]

I swear if this still works in 5.3 I will find a way to give you money LOL

[@Video-by6lp]

THE BEST !) Thank YOU !)

[@ExabyteMovies]

really helpfull! thx

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You are welcome!

[@SenEmChannel]

Does anybody know how to pack vr game to play on oculus quest. I cant find any post or video talking about this

[@SubatomicPlanets]

Idk but i think you package as apk, And then you need an oculus developer account to put it onto the quest/quest2. I could be wrong tho...

[@SenEmChannel]

@@SubatomicPlanets i think so. But how can i pack it as apk to install on quest2😅

[@jordant3512]

Thanks!

[@KeepMeReady]

Good tutorial! I am testing with the VR expansion plugin Mordentral to join both and see the body tracking. I'm having some problems with this. I hope to solve them. If I get to fix it, I'll put it here too. Although it would be helpful if someone had already solved it.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

I know of other people having used this technique with Mordentral's plugin and everything worked fine, including replication. What's your problem? If you are trying to do room scale VR it may require some adaptions.

[@KeepMeReady]

Thanks for your time. Yes, I try to do room scale. I'm working on the mordentral template, I've tried to adapt the Vive_PawnCharacter camera to the bone of the skeleton head as you do in this tutorial. But the component of the camera is inherited. I guess I can not do it like this. Mordentral answered this" His tutorial is for non-roomscale characters, not all of it will apply, attach your mesh to a parent relative component with the bSetToFoot set to true to root it to the camera ". but I do not know what he means ... Maybe he's too new to solve it and find out the necessary adaptations on my own ... Thanks for your time

[@marcoghislanzoni]

What I think he is saying is that you take the skeletal mesh (your VR body) and you parent it to a ParentRelativeAttachmentComponent (included in the plugin). Then you set the boolean property of this component called bSetToFoot to true and that will link the skeletal mesh position to the camera position, so when you go around with the HMD your VR body will follow your position. This should make it work with room scale as well.

[@KeepMeReady]

Thanks for your explanation. I solved it that way and then followed your tutorial. Thank you for your time and for this wonderful help, both in the tutorial and in the question. Great job

[@shuweizhang6986]

Any ideas on how to remove the bopping when running??

[@briangonzalez907]

i ask the same question but no one answer me

[@briangonzalez907]

OKay Bro i think i got it.... if you go in your ThirdPersonPlayer and click on your camera under camera Options Check ....Use Pawn Control Rotation...Try that

[@WalterRDK]

Good job!, next tut crouching :)

[@marcoghislanzoni]

WME Crouching is tricky with just the head position and not much more. Will see. 😉

[@오징어먹물카레]

thx Teacher

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You are welcome! :-)

[@1979nige]

Great tutorial do you have a tutorial where you animate the hands?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

No, I don't have such tutorials because the animation of the hand was part of the standard VR template (before 4.27) and can be copied from there.

[@jon962-g9w]

I followed your tutorial, it works great. But this is now several days that I try to implement it into a multiplayer mode and it doesn't work. The clients see their own hands moving but it's not replicated, only the server successfully replicates the movements. How would you implement it for multiplayer? I already tried to replicate the 2 variables created in the anim blueprint and also to call some server and multicast events on the thirdpersoncharacter blueprint. :(

[@CGBenner]

Marco, thank you for this video again, it is very helpful. Do you have any tutorials, based from this, on how to modify the controllers? I am using Oculus Touch controllers, and the finger movement is tied to the thumb stick, rather than the trigger buttons. I would like to be able to manipulate the fingers with the triggers, and eventually be able to grab things (baby steps). Also, I would like to be able to use the HMD to turn the character, as opposed to the right controller thumb stick. So, if I turn my head the character turns with it. Right now I can look around, but unless I turn the thumb stick the character continues to move forward. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I've also asked this in the forums if you would prefer to answer there. Thank you!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Hi Chris, you are welcome. Regarding your first question, in my tutorial there is no finger movement implemented. That would require something similar to what it is done in the standard VR Template, using a 1D blendspace to blend between 3 poses: open, can grab and closed. I am planning a future tutorial covering this and also grabbing objects. Not sure where your current implementation comes from, but I am not familiar with it. Regarding your second question, moving along the direction of sight, you can modify the Movement Input section in the ThirdPersonCharacter blueprint to use the Rotation (GetWorldRotation) of the HMD (FollowCamera) instead of the one from the Control (Get Control Rotation). Also in this case you need to use only the yaw component of the rotation otherwise you won't move parallel to the ground. In this way, when you press the thumbstick forward, you will move in the direction you are looking with the HMD. Hope this helps, otherwise please ask again on the forum or here.

[@CGBenner]

Thank you, I will give that a try... and I eagerly await your now tutorials. They are great for someone like me who has no game dev experience or really... future. This is all just for a sales gimmick, I'm actually a piping designer.

[@gennaroscalia8213]

Ciao Marco, scusa il disturbo, ti ho chiesto un po' di informazioni qualche giorno fa, sto facendo il mio progetto di tesi in VR, il mio professore mi ha consigliato di creare una sorta di avatar personale come player pawn e pensavo di usare questo tutorial per crearmi un corpo e sostituire la character mesh di UE con una creata da me. È fattibile secondo te? e come farei a eliminare il movimento della testa che "balla" quando ci si muove? Andrebbe bene anche se il personaggio sembrasse fluttuare. Grazie, come sempre :)

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Ciao Gennaro, contattami su Discord - Unreal Slackers. Mi trovi come @vr-marco. Almeno ci parliamo direttamente e ti posso dare più facilmente qualche indicazione.

[@andrew_morev]

Thanks a lot! Learned a ton of new things about Unreal here(i'm a rookie) Unfortunately, the result doesn't work for me on Windows MR:( even after recentering, the hands are weird:shoulders crumbled, elbows don't bend Also if I move my head the camera exits the character, but I believe this is how it should be at this stage It seems like Wondows MR plugin is still in early development because if I enable it everything falls apart completely. So I'm using Steam VR plugin with my Windows MR headset..

[@andrew_morev]

OK after I'v done some research I managed to make it work. Made the spine follow VR camera in a similar fashion. Thanks again.

[@andrew_morev]

@Quest Core gaming Sorry, I can't recall. But I can recommend you to search youtube for UBIK. It's a really good IK system, it's free and easy to use. I used it in my project eventually.

[@KyleGlackin]

Any advice on applying this technique to a different character model / skeletal mesh - specifically how to determine the correct rotation settings needed for a new bone system? I tried to get it implemented but my arms are pointed in the wrong places and when I move the motion controllers the translations and rotations are not correct on the character. I'm guessing they all just use different coordinate systems, but having trouble finding accurate information on fixing.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

It largely depends on how your skeletal mesh body is rigged and what orientations the bones have. If you are unsure about how to derive the proper transforms, you can also identify them with a bit of trial and error. Start with 0,0,0 then try 90,0,0 then 90,90,0 and so on, until you find the one that rotates the hands in the proper way.

[@FPChris]

For me using FABRIK with world space causes jittery when I move or rotate.

[@notadhdeveloper4994]

Could you give me a list of all your axis mappings for the VR? I don’t have them.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

They are in the standard VR template.

[@notadhdeveloper4994]

@@marcoghislanzoni okay sorry about that. I’m new to the whole VR side of UE4

[@marcoghislanzoni]

@@notadhdeveloper4994 No worries at all.

[@kangrupabsi8649]

Thank you very much for the tutorial. I got it all working but I'm trying to figure out how to stop the camera from bobbing up and down when I run. I'm guessing the easiest way is to create another socket that floats some how? I'm not sure I'm very new. If you have any ideas would love a bit more help. Thanks again mate.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Create another scene component parented to the root capsule and attach the camera to it. The root capsule slides on the floor so it will not bob up and down.

[@kangrupabsi8649]

Thank you so much for the quick response. Worked perfectly )

[@KnowItsTrue]

An amazing tutorial! One question. What would the body do if the player simply walked in any given direction rather than moved with the thumbstick? Would the body follow the head? Would the legs simulate walking?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Brian Colon thanks! This is a simple setup and does not include room scale handling, which means of you would move in real life your virtual body will not follow you nor its legs would walk with you. These are both possible enhancements but they would require some more work.

[@chrisreay8141]

From the perspective of a beginner is there a reason why you chose hand_r for the bones at 9:50 rather than the IK joints? Love the tutorial and got it working.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Honestly I didn't try to use those IK bones, I just used the chain of bones you see in the tutorial and it worked as expected. You can try to use those IK bones instead and see what happens. Curious to know if it works.

[@chrisreay8141]

Idk either but I do know your system works very well and I can use my traditional dev process with it which is a far cry from the other sources Iv found. Thanks so much man.

[@noavr1308]

My two hands are stuck together help and my camera isn’t always on the character I want it to be always followed by the mesh

[@marcoghislanzoni]

This technique is not suitable for room-scale movements as there is nothing which makes the the body follow the camera if you move in real life. Look into the VR Expansion Plugin if you quickly need room scale movement.

[@NickCrist]

You also need to change the motion controller_R into the right hand, it should be in details, and motion controller this happend to me

[@caesaruwu]

Hello , i have export the blueprints and the mannequin from the thirdperson poject to my original vr project but i dont know how to replace the Vr hands with the character

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Sorry I can't understand what you are asking. Did you follow the tutorial as is?

[@caesaruwu]

Marco Ghislanzoni yes i have follow the tutorial but you make the characher for Vr in an other project , i have export all the Blueprints in the video in my original project but i dont know how to replace the basics hands on the vr template by this character .

[@vrdongen8666]

This looks really nice, I downloaded the finished project but it doesn't seem to work with 4.24 onwards as I have read in some of the comments. However, I haven't found real solution for this. Could you explain how to make this work with newer versions of Unreal? Or maybe edit your 4.18 to make it work with 4.24 onwards so I can just download it? (and maybe many more people) Problem is that I could just use an older version but I'd lose all compatibility with newer versions. Thank you in advance!

[@vrdongen8666]

@@katierant1537 Thanks! Indeed it works now. The example project however does not work anymore.

[@AngelaLaLa22]

in unreal 5 here, at 2:00 you go over sockets and i cannot add a socket to my scene at all. help plz

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Make sure your VROrigin is parented to the Skeletal Mesh (Mesh) otherwise you won't be able to select the socket to attach it to.

[@AngelaLaLa22]

@@marcoghislanzoni ahhh i see i wasnt sure bc the cut was so sudden ! i just picked regular scene

[@ryansaper]

I have an issue where I am using a VR character blueprint specifically made for interaction that I got from someone else. It works great but unfortunately it does not come with an inherited mesh like the default third person character is. So I can't get camera parented to it. The best I can do is parent the mesh beneath the camera instead, but when I do that it throws the camera very far away and I tried to offset it back but it's not working

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Hi Ryan, it is difficult to offer a solution not having seen how your pawn is setup. Probably that will require a re-work of the pawn structure in the C++ code. It is possible that when you parent the skeletal mesh to the camera, it collides with other parts of your pawn and that causes a collision related force that throws the camera away. Try to remove all collisions from your skeletal mesh and see if that gets you one step forward.

[@pwizzle5984]

In Unreal 5.3.2 my view is always like a meter above the head bone. Idk why can u help me? Or as i look through the comments: may u be so nice and update this tutorial for ue 5? I appreciate in any way your work

[@moseechevowo]

Marco, I, uh, I didn't understand pretty much anything what you did at "this is where the magic happens" segment. Is this fine? I've been understanding all the code I've seen before this, now this tutorial made me question about I actually should quit developing.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Even if this technique looks simple it includes some advanced concepts, plus doing it in VR makes everything more complicated anyway. Unreal Engine has a steep learning curve so just hang in there and everything will become clearer over time. Also join the Unreal Slackers community on Discord, you can ask questions in the various channels and get help when stuck.

[@BornStellar-yp5st]

Does this tutorial have room-scale support?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

As specified in the video description, no, it doesn’t.

[@tmmckillip]

Any way you'd be willing to make a tutorial that would follow up this using this IK body on how to add Gripping functions with animation blends? :)

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Yes, I think it would be a great follow up to this one.

[@aprcuulestdude9076]

Marco Ghislanzoni would be very helpful. I had a question. When I click VR preview my camera is stuck 10 feet above the character and I don’t know why. I followed the tutorial exactly and it still happens. Am I doing something wrong?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

APR CuulestDude try this. Drag the VR Origin at the bottom of the capsule and make sure the camera has 0 relative location respect to it. Does this fix your height?

[@aprcuulestdude9076]

Marco Ghislanzoni I just figured it out, on my controller the button to reset the camera was different and I somehow didn’t press it the first time. Thanks anyways. I also saw on one of your responses you said that this will not work with room scale. I was just wondering why not. And if it doesn’t how would I go about making a room scale body in vr.

[@aprcuulestdude9076]

Marco Ghislanzoni also for some reason the game doesn’t pick up my input from my valve index controllers and the character doesn’t move when I move my thumbsticks.

[@shaolung5342]

Hey Marco, This is really amazing. You are so good at this. I have an error . Blueprint Runtime Error: "Accessed None trying to read property MotionControllerR". Blueprint: ThirdPerson_AnimBP Function: Execute Ubergraph Third Person Anim BP Graph: EventGraph Node: Set MC_Transform_R One for each left and right. It moves around, and all that good stuff. I noticed you didn't get the error. I am using 4.26, and unsure if that makes a difference.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Check the name of your motion controller components. Better to drag them out of the hierarchy on the left and do a get.

[@shaolung5342]

@@marcoghislanzoni Thank you for such a prompt response. I will give this a go and let you know.

[@shaolung5342]

Ya that worked. Thanks. Did you set up motion controller in the input mapping previously , or is that already in 4.18? I am using 4.25

[@GamesUKStudios]

hi @Marco Ghislanzoni can you make a video of the VR body with Arm IK and thumbstick locomotion to pick up and object please can you tell us when it be ready to watch

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Yes, I plan to do that in one of my next tutorials. Stay tuned.

[@CastleDoes]

Ok so this was super helpful! I feel like this logic can be applied to full body as well. How is the quality overall vs VRChats system?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Quality of what?

[@doggo206]

A few peoblems, main one being tracking the head to your headset but I may find out how to do that by doing the same as the hand thing

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You can use the same technique for the head as for hands. Add another FABRIK node and feed it with the Head transform. You may need an additional Bone Tranform node too to synch the HMD angle with the head bone angle.

[@doggo206]

Marco Ghislanzoni Hello and thanks for the quick reply, I can’t seem to find the main head mount display thing in the add component section. Any idea what it’s called? The only things under the group HeadMountedDisplay are VRNotifications and stereo layer

[@doggo206]

I am using the camera atm

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Eksnoverse That's correct. The VR Camera is your HMD as long has it has the Lock to HMD option checked.

[@jordant3512]

This is a great video. Any thoughts on replicating it. I have tried lots of things and nothing works

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You can apply the exact same technique to the VR Pawn which comes with Mordentral's VR Expansion Plugin. That one has network replication out of the box.

[@SenEmChannel]

I will follow your advice. And see what happened. I will response after couple of hours. Thabjyou for answer my questions

[@BaseRealityVR]

Thanks a lot for this . My only issue is that The motioncontollers are dead center of the wrists and my hands don't feel where they should be.. Ive tried many things to offset the motion controllers forwards a bit to get my VR hands to align with my real life hands without affecting the wrist control ... any suggestions to this problem

[@marcoghislanzoni]

In the AnimBP EventGraph, try to offset the Motion Controller position before it is being passed to the FABRIK node in the AnimGraph. Try to add an offset in the X direction and see if that makes it better. Another thing you can try is to make the IK chain longer by linking the controllers to one of the finger bones (say the middle finger) instead that to the hand (aka wrist) bone like it is done now.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Just posted a solution for you here: forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/vr-ar-development/1425253-motioncontroller-offset-on-hand-joint-for?p=1430131#post1430131

[@bob28418]

im having the same issue buy the offset did not work for me. did anyone else have where you hands in RL are farther above the ones in VR

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Bob Jones Post your issue in the forum, will try to help.

[@BaseRealityVR]

forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/vr-ar-development/1425253-motioncontroller-offset-on-hand-joint-for

[@I-MM-O-R-T-A-L]

Do you know how i can disable physical movement for my character while im playing? I mean, when i move in the physical world, the player in game also moves. How i can disable that? Im using the default VRPawn (You are my last hope)

[@oliverscousin9756]

This is amazing. But the motion controllers seem to be at the wrist of the IK skeleton. Is there anyway to fix this.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You can easily correct the MC transform to "slide" the controller forward or, better, to "slide" the wrist backward. Just take the forward axis of the MC, multiply it by a negative float, make a translation only transform out of it and compose it with the MC transform, then apply to the skeleton.

[@psalm702]

I have the same problem with HMD (instead between the eyes, it's on the head bone, which makes the player see throught the flesh). Where do I apply this method? In BP or ABP or CR? I can't quite understand how to do it...

[@jacenshawn]

Thx for this great tutorial! I've got a quit question: Using the camer setting of yours, my "virtual shoulders" are right next to my eyes. Moving the camera in the Blueprint doesnt change a thing. Ingame I can recalibrate as often I like, won't change a thing. Do you have any tip for me? I would like to have the camera a bit higher than that. Thx in advance :)

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Which HMD are you using? If you don't parent the camera to a bone, you can offset it vertically (Z axis) respect to the VROrigin and once you re-calibrate (reset orientation and position) it should fall in the right position.

[@jacenshawn]

Marco Ghislanzoni wow! Thanks for that ultra fast response! I'm using the Oculus with Touch Control. VROrigin is attached to the head. I now moved the VROrigin instead of the camera, it's better now :-)

[@Matthew.1994]

cold you do a tutorial where we can pick a object up and then use the body as the inventory? so we can attach them to a location on the body like in many vr games where you have like transparent boxes on the body to put objects in?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Yes, I will think about it.

[@Matthew.1994]

@@marcoghislanzoni that would be awesome, im trying hard to get something like that to work but i cant get it to work

[@Roughpaws_Studio]

Hello Marco, thanks for this tutorial! I was wondering if you could please do one doing the same thing with a Mixamo Fuse character instead of the default UE Third Person Character? Many thanks in advance for any help because I don't know where to start with importing a Fuse character to do the same thing.

[@OniMikeVision85]

After importing character and animations set everything up then just change the character mesh and animation just make sure you make your animation blueprint how the other one is. If unsure how to get mixamo character setup their plenty of tutorials on that.

[@DP-nc8yu]

This is great tutorial @Marco, but will this work for non locomotion? I mean if i make few steps forward by foot, does the body follow the camera like in the default template VRPawn?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Thanks! In short no. This technique only works properly in a seating/standing in place situation. If you move in real life you will find yourself "displaced" respect to your virtual body. In the default VR template the MotionControllerPawn doesn't have a body and doesn't generate any collisions, so the problem does not even arise. The hands simply move with the motion controllers since they are parented to them. Having your full VR body follow you when you move in real-life requires using a secondary linked actor to hold/update the body position (this is how Jonas Mølgaard does it) or the use of a plugin like Mordentral's VR Expansion.

[@DP-nc8yu]

Thanks for your time :)

[@hyperrhydra7743]

great but one problem. The camera is fine and you can walk around but if you move in real life it goes outside of the body, is there a way of maybe locking the body to the cam?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Hyperr Hydra As explained in the description, this technique is not for room scale VR. The body will not "follow" you if you move in IRL. There are few options to fix that. One is to use the VR Expansion plugin by Mordentral.

[@devdawg5235]

Is there any way to do this with the VR template? Ive already started a project there

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You can use the Import button (bottom left, above the folder structure) to import the third person template and build it from there.

[@devdawg5235]

@@marcoghislanzoni, ok, but how do I do it to the default VR pawn, that way, teleporting and picking up stuff still works

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Dev Dawg that would be a completely new and different tutorial.

[@devdawg5235]

@@marcoghislanzoni oh ok thank you. I subbed!

[@Seandragon123]

@@marcoghislanzoni Is there anyway we could get that tutorial? I want to combine this tutorial with some of your others, but I'm not sure how to get it working within the the VR template.

[@LittleBlue42]

This definitely got me started, but I am not using the default UE4 character mesh. I now need to get the hand roll to look natural with my human character, as when the hand twists, it does so right at the wrist and makes it look terrible. It works fine with the default UE4 character, because his hands are "separate" from his arms and look ok when rotated. I wish FABRIK allowed rotation to be passed up the IK chain too. Any tips or pointers would be much appreciated!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Ryan Evans you can add a displacement vector to the position of the MC before passing the Transform to FABRIK. That allows you to fine tune how the Motion Controller position maps to the hand mesh position and where the center of rotation is.

[@LittleBlue42]

Ah yes I should have clarified that I have the motion controllers where I want already. The problem is just that rotation does not pass through the IK chain, and UE4 only supports linear blend skinning, and not dual quat. When I roll my hand from palm down to palm up, the wrist gets crushed. I have tried adding twist bones to the forearm and upper arm to try and offset the amount of distortion at the wrist when I am palm-up, but it is going to need a lot of fine tuning.

[@SonicTemples]

Hi Marco, thanks for taking the time to produce the tutorial. I was wondering if you could help, I'm stuck at around the 3 minutes mark. When I preview in VR mode after parenting the VR Origin scene to the mesh head bone I seem to be about 3 feet above the characters head with a slight but random offset on XY too. I've tried 0 value on base eye height, unparenting from the headbone, disabling spawn collision and finding camera component and moving both the VR origin scene and the camera but can't get consistent results. I'm using oculus and followed the tutorial to the letter many times using just the standard 3rd person template. It's doing my head in, any ideas?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You should get a proper positioning respect to the body by re-centering yourself in VR (left grip button) as shown at 2:54. This calls Reset Orientation and Position, which basically brings your HMD to coincide with the position of the VR camera. You may still need some vertical adjustment though. This can be obtained by moving the VR camera up/down (Z axis) respect to the VR Origin.

[@SonicTemples]

Thanks Marco you've set me on the right path, I wasn't doing the reset everytime which explains the random xy offset. The height problem was me going into VR mode rather than going into VR preview! Still having a few other issues but making progress. Thanks again.

[@lacouture3]

Marco, great tutorial! Thank you very much. Would you know by any chance why my view in VR appears separated from the head? In your downloadable project it appears to be at least a meter or two above of the character ( even the arms stretch out to reach me when I use the motion controllers.) When I follow your steps the character also appears below me but with his arm being my "ground". Anyway, Thankyou! Amazing development.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Alvaro J Lacouture Did you recenter yourself in VR after pressing the play button? Press the left grip or press R on the keyboard if I remember correctly.

[@lacouture3]

@Marco Ghislanzoni Thank you, "R" does work! thank you!

[@BaseRealityVR]

Do what I have done and from a begin play exe line, add a do once node and connect it to reset orientation and position. Should start every time with cam as head

[@keli6323]

Hi Marco, I completely built a project, according to your video step by step, why do I play my camera view in VR mode is at the top of the character, and your effect in the video is completely different, is there any solution?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

ke li which version of UE4 are you using? Which HMD? Did you recenter in VR with the left grip button?

[@keli6323]

@@marcoghislanzoni Thank you very much for your reply, yes, re-entering the VR mode with the left grip button on the left handle solves my problem. Thank you very much, happy day..

[@VoiditionOfficial]

This is great, but could you make a tutorial on how to use the right thumbstick to actually turn the character? It would be useful for people who don't have 4 sensors for tracking. I've been trying everything, but nothing actually worked properly in the HMD Locomotion example map.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

I have two tutorials on my channel covering thumbstick locomotion, check them out.

[@jaxsun7391]

Amazing work. In 6:23, how did you split a single link into 2 ends?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You just double click anywhere on an existing connection to create a reroute node (split it at the point).

[@combinepotatogaming7154]

I'm having some problems with the first 3 minutes of the tutorial. 1. When I Use VR preview The camera floats above the character. 2. If I turn off lock to Hmd. It goes to the body but I can't turn my camera and it just stays locked staring forward. I'm using the latest version of unreal. So you have to excuse me.

[@hasansiddiqi93]

On Begin Play in the character, use Set Tracking Origin BP node and use Eye Level

[@sayonaradesu1087]

what should I do if I want finger tracked too in VR? I have Valve controller.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You need to get the finger information from the controllers and use them to animate each finger. Use Modify Transform Bone inside the AnimBP.

[@StyleProV]

cant see my legs walking or doing anything, any chance to know whats happening? my charecter parent is a pawn, not a character, so it do not have the movement component

[@marcoghislanzoni]

The legs move because of the walking animation which is part of the mannequin AnimBP and lis inked to its movement inputs. If you took something out you may need to recreate the AnimBP and drive the leg animation in some other ways from your pawn.

[@StyleProV]

@@marcoghislanzoni im using a Character from marketplace

[@marcoghislanzoni]

@@StyleProV does it have animations?

[@StyleProV]

@@marcoghislanzoni no, my initial VR Character does not have them as its invisible, just the headset and the attached motion controllers. To follow your tut i added a skeletal mesh component to my character, thats the mesh which os getting the anims

[@digitaldruglord6888]

how are you moving the third person in VR, are you using the thumbsticks of the vive?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

The movements are those originally provided by the Third Person Character template. There have been changes to the way the VR input is handled since I made this tutorial. For the Vive you may need to map a specific input under Project Settings --> Input.

[@SenEmChannel]

i done it, and it doesnt work. I can see in VR but i cant move around with thumbstick and body in vr is invisible. i checked again to see what i doing wrong, and it still doesnt work.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Did you try with the downloadable project? Did you recenter yourself in VR after you start playing?

[@SenEmChannel]

@@marcoghislanzoni after 2 more day. Repeat your tutorial 3 times. I finally move 1 hand. Other hand cant moved. Yet still not moving around with thumbstick😅

[@marcoghislanzoni]

@@SenEmChannel well that is already a step forward. Which VR headset are you using? If one hand works the other should also work. Did you set the proper tracking source in the motion controller component? Left for the left hand and Right for the right hand?

[@SenEmChannel]

@@marcoghislanzoni i use oculus quest 2 and unreal 4.26. i set left controller for lefthand center, and right controller for right hand center. everything is correct, but it still doesnt work. i already try another tutorial, short, long, everything. but none of them work. i get 4.26 no longer compatible to older unreal version

[@marcoghislanzoni]

@@SenEmChannel Get in touch on Discord - Unreal Slackers. You find me as vr_marco#8894. We can have a look together via screen sharing.

[@IO_Interactive]

Will you be doing this in 5.1? It’s completely broken now

[@BR14Nx]

I am getting an "Accessed None trying to read property MotionCintroller_R/L" on the Set MC_Transform_R/L function, though my Vive controllers are being tracked correctly. What could be the cause? I also have the issue that the camera has a 180° and transformation offset. I am using the UE4.24.3. Furthermore I wondered why you are having these motion controller inputs already. Because I have to add them manually..they are not there yet :/

[@marcoghislanzoni]

This tutorial is based on UE 4.18 so quite some things have changed in the meantime. It still works, but you can expect to need some adaptions. Did you try if re-centering in VR (R on the keyboard) fixes your rotation problem? The MotionController_R and L transforms are created inside the Animation BP and they take the values (world transforms) from the respective motion controllers. Are you sure you created/connected them properly? Maybe double check that.

[@BR14Nx]

@@marcoghislanzoni Yeah the graph is correct, the motion controllers are also being captured correctly. Could it be possible that it tries to receive the transfromation data before the controllers are activated? Maybe a delay could work... Okay, so the camera is in the right place after re-centering it, thanks. But now I have the problem that only the camera is re-centered and the motion controllers are still at the wrong spot. Thanks for helping out.

[@isaiahotis9707]

Could you make an update using UE5.2

[@0grilo0]

Question is it possible to put the camera in the right position and make the head invisible for the player? My aim is to make a vr mmorpg... im just a noob but im gona see what i can cram togheter...

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Try to move the VROrigin to the side, that should do it.

[@ethi_music]

Hey! Thank you so much for this. I have a question, and it may be a pretty dumb one, but my hands on the model are not where my hands are with the controller. My hands are in basically where the wrists are for the character. Any idea what I can do to fix this? Also, is there a way to fix the camera glitching out when moving backwards/strafing? Thanks in advance!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

This is because the IK is driving the hand bone and the hand bone is basically at the wrist. One solution is to take the position of the controllers and subtract a scaled forward vector from them, so the IK thinks the two wrists are offset back from the controller positions.

[@BearJ3w1776]

@@marcoghislanzoni why doesnt anyone inlude this in their body IK tutorials? who wants hands where your wrists are?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

@@BearJ3w1776 because different controllers and VR systems have different orientations, so coming up with a solution which works on all of them isn't straightforward. OpenVR should solve this so we can all work with one model.

[@djeaseback6466]

Is there a simple and fast way to add the VR hand animations and functionality to this VR body?

[@ahmetozturk7416]

Does it work only with mannequin character? Does it also work with mixamo characters for example?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Yes, it should be the same setup with the latest Mannequin while with the Mixamo characters you may need to play a bit with the rotation offsets since the bones may have a different orientation. The rest stays the same.

[@digitalillusioncalo]

Ciao Marco, grazie per il tutorial, avrei solo una domanda: E' possibile sostituire la mesh standard di unreal con un character(riggato) differente? Ho provato a inserirlo ma non riesco a sostituirlo perché viene deformato a causa di uno scheletro diverso da quello predefinito

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Ciao Paolo, prego! In generale questa tecnica funziona con qualsiasi armatura sulla quale si puo' applicare della cinematica inversa (IK). Le ossa devono essere impostate per deformare la mesh (skinning). Dovrei vedere il tuo character per capire se c'e' qualche problema.

[@digitalillusioncalo]

Grazie Marco credo di aver capito

[@Guinamo]

How to make camera stop shaking while run?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

It shakes because it is parented to a bone and moving with the character. To keep it stable you need to handle it differently and link it to a code which, for example, keeps it at a fixed height from the floor.