Using Control Rig in Unreal Engine

Until recently, creating character motion was the domain of expensive third party DCC apps. With the release of 4.26, Unreal Engine introduces further refinements to Control Rig: our suite of in editor rigging and animation tools. Whether you are authoring traditional style animation assets via keyframes or driving characters procedurally at runtime, Control Rig opens the door to easily crafting all manner of complex rigging solutions.
In this video, Unreal Engine Evangelist Andreas Suika, himself a newcomer to the world of rigging and animation, brings to life several characters of dramatically different motion requirements right within the Unreal Engine editor.
Learn more at www.unrealengine.com

[@irjayjay]

Wow, no faffing around, you don't mince your words, every single sentence is informative and explains a concept clearly. This is one of those videos I'm gonna pause a lot and rewatch segments as I figure out my own control rig.

[@maxhuk]

Thank you! This and the beginner series you have on your channel helped me a lot on getting on my feet with control rig! You have a nice skill with these shorter tutorials and I hope you continue making more! 😊🙏

[@VladyVeselinov]

Seing Andreas in the spotlight warms my heart 😍

[@Vulper]

I had to play around with the Primary and secondary axis as my model was little bit weird. Overall EXTREMELY helpful guide! Thank you.

[@danthompson4977]

This is soo good! Thank you for all your research and effort put into this demo. Super handy. I’m rigging a quadrupled for and animated production at the moment and there are many tips in this video that will help me!

[@RickHenderson]

Thank you. I am constantly amazed by the things Unreal can do. Almost don’t need Blender anymore.

[@aufgespielt3768]

One of the best Turorials out there. Very Helpfull, Thank you so much!

[@lucianodaluz4637]

Till minute 10 it was a perfect class, after that "Now that you "know everything", let me speed it up like 100 times" :)

[@Xenthorx]

This is the best video to get started with control rig.

[@MaxJCrider]

really awesome to watch and love how well you documented everything

[@GamedevTeacher]

Excellent! Thanks a lot Andi for sharing the knowledge! :D

[@jessestewart5109]

This video was amazing but so hard for me to follow as a beginner. Unreal Engine Control Rig and procedural animation tutorials are very hard to find right now.

[@Desertpunk1986]

Throw in UE5 bugs if you’re on that. It’s a rough learning curve.

[@24yrukdesigner]

Can you confirm this is now obsolete to more recent versions of unreal? It seems artv1 is only available prior to unreal 5 and on Maya side up to 2016?

[@vexan_twitch]

Unreal Engine has tons of features and you should first see what you wanna build/make/achieve. just like Blender which is for modeling/CGI/movie/paint etc...

[@sunny99179]

@@AlmazovS the thing is: i did this like you sayed but my rig is getting messed doing these steps of cube and normal IK,the leg get all contortioned... so what could be the best practices to rig and export all ''ready'' to control rig?

[@ericfieldman]

​@@sunny99179 could be that you have a cyclic dependency where two bones are parented to eachother, so as one moves, the other does, so the other does, etc. That's what causes jitters. If it's just statically jacked up, it's probably because the bones got rotated too much. I can't say for sure but I think pole targets can fix that by regulating where the knee is aiming and can aim. There's also discrepancies in how the bones affect the mesh depending on whether you're in edit mode, object mode or pose mode so it's tricky. But I think i had that problem and fixed it by just rotating it 560 degrees. Personally I'd probably start over but that's because i can't commit to anything

[@BlackG0lem]

Excellent video! Thanks so much and please keep up the great work!

[@SundayLunch]

Thank you for a very good and straightforward tutorial!!

[@Scionate]

Very helpful. It would be nice if we could get a link to the project or the control rig blueprint.

[@andreiandgames9581]

Great explanation, really easy to understand, Thanks !!

[@KlesierTheSurvivor]

Can we have a tutorial about the procedural animation that you've shown in the end ? there is a severe lack of explanation about creating procedural walking animations

[@youngsoungpark98]

This is amazing. Thank you for the tutorial!

[@TylerClarkTech]

Congrats Andi!!!

[@williamlacrosse9389]

This is a serious tool! Thx epic. All in real time. Amazing!

[@hotsauce7124]

Figured it out. THANKYOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@alekjwrgnwekfgn]

Videos like this with the project would make a great edition to Unreal Learning.

[@StrayVertex]

Super straight forward and to the point, thx :)

[@adamodimattia]

Teaching a little bit rushed and some key parts were gracefully omitted :)

[@sqwert654]

Nice I need this, having large multilegged creatures with feet on mid air is rather immersion killing in VR. Rigging inside the engine seems the natural way to go moving forward.

[@Cusey]

nice pun

[@bhaumikpatel4959]

So useful and concise! Thank you

[@DennisIdzikowsky]

Great tutorial that gave me a starting point. thanx :)

[@jetspalt9550]

For the reverse foot in UE5 I had to make the Get Transform for the heel_Ctrl_L set to "initial" as I had some rotation already on that heel control so it span when the reverse foot rotated negatively because on each update it was adding the reverse foot rotation to it. I don't understand why it works for you without that as I think you had rotation on the heel control as well but all good now I think

[@blakearndt3771]

Ayy it's AndiDev! I recognize your voice and in-game model! Just about to dive into the rest of the video, I'm sure it'll be good :D

[@R34L17Y]

Super Epic !!. Also, would you consider a providing a playlist exclusively for VR projects. If you have one already please disregard this. Again, Epic work here!

[@PIPOXO]

Thank you very much for this. Very helpful.

[@InvasiveAlienPlants]

This is amazing! Thank you

[@ArtVandelayInc]

This video is damn beautiful!

[@nli2work]

could you clarify runtime IK a bit more? How does Speed variable get used in the control rig graph? what are the trailing bits under the leg IK section and Hip adjustment section?

[@nanas9105]

Is it possible to partially retarget a character with the mannequin animations and additionally use the control rig for additional bones like tail/extra limbs?

[@CGRB]

thank you...very much needed

[@hotsauce7124]

How did you set up the eye expressions for the robot? Some of the material nodes at time Index 16:16 are too blurry. Is there a UE project with the material set up in the Marketplace or a high rez video? And where do the wire to the left side of the graph go to?

[@robbie_]

Fantastic tutorial, thanks for sharing. More please :p. One minor gripe, you started simple and then suddenly cut to advanced, not really explaining what was going on!

[@seanlake7404]

Did you export your meshes from Blender to UE via the Epic Games' addon for Blender?

[@catermencer1236]

Really helps , thank you

[@DezorianGuy]

Can you tell me how I can select "Start Bone" and "Effector Bone" within the Basic FABRIK node? There had been a change from your build I guess. I only get those 2 options within the MultiEffectorFABRIK node. :(

[@REBakerX]

Is the Project file available anywhere? This is an excellent video for building an understanding on how to set-up a control rig (esp for something mechanical). I'd love to see more on how you did the feet and other parts. Thank you!

[@alekjwrgnwekfgn]

Yeah I don’t know why they don’t do that. Maybe they should only showcase projects they can share. This is really interesting, but of limited use.

[@samhein321]

Yeah most of the tutorial is useless now, a lot of it is too zoomed out too to even make out what's happening...

[@TheCobasmira]

Yep, pretty useless telling on a video "i did this" and "i did that". Things like control rig require every node to be visible, cuz one thing messed up - nothing is working.

[@Arthur-oy6kd]

kzbin.info/aero/PLwNmoyWCxgGxNnIutI75kyI4mbA_Ku6xb

[@lachlanvanderdrift7013]

@@Arthur-oy6kd legend

[@Punisher1992]

could you please publish the content from the 2 legged one? would be so helpful.

[@philippecoenen]

Very nice tutorial. Thank you very much. Is there a way to mirror a pose?

[@lonelysorrowknight]

I know this is kinda weird place to ask, but does Unity or Godot have a similar feature? Being able to deal with the IKs of Models and animate them procedurally in-engine instead of a third-party software?

[@phloxie]

awesome video thanks alot!

[@MrSiasman]

Great tutorial thanks:)

[@joe84222]

Hey Andreas, your clear way of teaching is really great. I recently found your channel, you're doing a great job! I'm having a problem to transition from the first part of this video to the advanced foot-ctrl with ball correction. I don't know what bone to connect to the heel_ctrl and ankle_ctrl and if I just position them by hand at the outer borders of the foot, the position is always getting reset.

[@stormer268]

Thanks! Nice tutor~It's better that if the project is downloadable. I'm making a robot model in Blender.

[@wyattparks4151]

I am still very new to UE so I did not understand a lot of what was said, but am working on it. Could you theoretically rig non-character items. Like say I wanted to show a character taking off a piece of armor/clothing, could I rig the clothing to interact with the hands and arms taking it off?

[@andywei1713]

So how do I get the project file?

[@sunny99179]

Hello, i need a little help, i would like to know what type of rig initially this model has? i mean was it rigged on blender,maya or any other software? Another question is: if i rig using mgear from maya (metahuman template) do i need to do these steps again or it is ready to animate using control rig? its not like i want to avoid these steps,its because im having issues with an rig i did on blender...i use metarig from blender (humanoid normal metarig)

[@epicg_zrealtime6186]

Awesome !!

[@Donfouf2]

Amazing

[@clifftonicstudios7469]

Good stuff

[@giannis077]

Now i can make my own animations nice

[@hariomarts7750]

Please make a tutorial on how to pause behaviour tree and play function and after performing function the behaviour tree will start from where it is paused

[@georgekostoglou9492]

Thankyou for the tutorial !... I initially was looking for a tutorial to help me with foot ik placement .... however @ 23:53, you show how to do this but you are too zoomed out and the script isn't visible. Perhaps if you upload a screenshot or show us step by step like in the beginning of the video , it would be more helpful....

[@RDD87z]

can you animate it using VR? i mean. can you record and play, and record at the same time its playing on loop? like TVORI does?

[@MR3DDev]

Ok don't want to be the negative guy because this looks cool, but geez that is super complex compared to just rigging and animating in a 3D package like Blender.

[@ljrnet9542]

In Blender, you still need to use constraints and drivers to get a nice rig. I think the Control Rig is trying to replicate that.

[@m1sterv1sual]

Well yea, it is more “complicated” or advanced per say but this kind of rig has more capability then the one in Blender.

[@ljrnet9542]

@@m1sterv1sual Blender can do the same but you need to use drivers and that can be a bit of a pain.

[@MR3DDev]

@@ljrnet9542 maybe is because I am not a blueprint person but I can do constrains pretty easy in blender.

[@Jerhevon]

@@MR3DDev Blender's constraints don't transfer into Unreal. You can make sweet fixed animations, but in Unreal you may wish to tweak them for multiple sized bodies or for the environment. That's where control rig shines.

[@ljrnet9542]

I feel like UE5 is getting very close. I can not wait!

[@nazake69]

learn on the current version first, and wait till probably October 2021 for UE5

[@ljrnet9542]

@@nazake69 I am learning UE4 right now and they say UE5 beta will come in this quarter.

[@nazake69]

​@@ljrnet9542 they answered that question in one of their live streams and they said it will be at late 2021 Idk who confirmed this quarter is the release..

[@ljrnet9542]

@@nazake69 Is that the beta or full release?

[@sebastiaanvanderaar9894]

@@ljrnet9542 beta this month!!

[@MrSensei1231]

My rig looks and behaves fine in the editor, but when I put it in the world all the bones are distorted, what am I missing???

[@romulino]

Can you animate morph targets too?

[@RprtBak]

Any chance we can get an update to this? It's changed a lot.

[@ONIscrooge]

Control rig constantly screws up the rig I've made for the entity by shuffling the bones back a position to it's parent's position. I've tried re-rigging and weighting it multiple times to get it to function properly, but it refuses. I have no idea what to do about it, and even when I decided to go ahead and work with that rig the gizmos wouldn't move the model so it was all pointless.

[@Polytricity]

I bring my control rig into the scene but sequence doesn't populate now. It worked before, I removed some old linked animations so could it be that? - Sovled : I also had to remove the old take generated by the initial drag / drop into the scene of the ControlRig Asset. Hope this helps anyone.

[@SeanLake3D]

Does the static mesh have to have a rigged skeletal mesh in order to create a control rig or can you create a completely new bone structure with control rig in UE?

[@thoeme]

As far as I'm aware you will need to have the bone structure and skin weighting already in place. But anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[@GameDevAraz]

hi, what to do if your character has like mutiple leg parts, thigh, calf, horselink, then foot, etc.? thanks

[@sunny99179]

Hello,how do i make it autokey? i have to do it all by hand,each bone and that is very weird.... This is so amazing,i could make an fluid animation on 1st time. I want to know if its possible to open on sequencer an retargeted animation? because i tried it but the character doesn't move inside sequencer,the bones moving appear in pink but the body doesn't move along. Thank you for all,im loving to animate inside unreal,it will boost so much and make me avoid import/export issues.

[@analogupstudiosltd784]

Great tut. However there was one major point that was not addessed; how you created your Foot_main which controls the entire reversefoot_ctrl. The video at 12:46 passes it too quickly to pause to see how it was set. Updating the video description or adding a caption at the time stamp would be exponentially helpful in replicating your results.

[@TheMightyPunion]

how do you stop the legs from elongating across the screen whenever i follow this tutorial

[@ks11451]

would you publish the original project file or asset?

[@demonkey6997]

Anyone having issues when setting reverse_foot transform from the foot bone? when I set it up like that it always seems to revert the rotation of the reverse_foot and move the control on where the bone was. It's like the rotations try to move the controls but the set transform reverts them. UPDATE: Must use set translation node , for some reason if I put set transform and only use the translation it won't work.

[@Kinos141]

Personally, coming into this as a programmer, Control Rig seems like a lot of work to setup an IK rig that can be done a little easier in Blender or in Maya HumanIK. I'd prefer an auto IK setup that can be tweaked.

[@Adriiell]

i was questioning this aswell, at my work we have to deal with dcc tools to create our human animations, but when we have to create these animations in bulk it becomes tedious. i wish there was a way to use blended animations + and IK system that i could activate with a single switch.

[@stas_lu]

How can I constrain a bone's rotation in Control Rig?

[@ArifPribadistuffs]

hi , thanks for showing this. could you show again how to rig the antenna? the video went too quickly and actually hides some of the graph unfortunately. thanks again :)

[@ArifPribadistuffs]

but I think , I just figured out something on my own by playing around with verlet vector :)

[@robertbowen2075]

Can't follow the procedural bit I came here for as the node "Add Mapped Skeletal Mesh" doesn't seem to exist any more. Not sure what the new alternative is.

[@aknittel1]

I just found out rhough experimentation that control rig (UE 5 EA) does NOT like bone names that have underscores in them, like "DEF_neck". When I rename this to DEFneck, or just neck, control rig works fine. Anyone having this issue?

[@VIDEOIMAGINE]

Where can I download the files for the project?

[@bertani6134]

This is the first thing i try do find...strange a tutorial without provide this assets....

[@blainexi83]

@@bertani6134 It's presentation, not an actual tutorial, for what it's worth :P

[@damagedtalent]

Maybe a simple artist question but is this heavier on the computer rather than just importing animations?

[@justindavis2711]

i'd say so

[@LoserHands]

Realtime control rigs are! otherwise from my understanding, it doesn't have to be heavier than your controllers in Blender/Maya/etc are on the final product You can have a control rig for wysiwyg animating. animate in ue4 -> bake into animsequence. I dont think animations made this way, have to be more costly in-game than similar, imported animations. But maybe I dont know enough. Also artist

[@damagedtalent]

Thank you!

[@thoeme]

Yes LoserHands is right. Basically real-time adjustment is the thing that would cost you more. But to what degree I can't tell.

[@nixsnake]

why i cant find it on forum annouced events list? like others "inside unreal" or "live stream"?

[@MakotoIchinose]

It's a pre-recorded presentation.

[@maxime330]

Hello everyone ! Is control rigs only a rigging system designed for characters ? As that is say in the intro. Maybe I may Control rig complex doors and stuff like that ? worth or not ?

[@yaxuliu3683]

Where is the project?

[@goshawk_fly]

I think, it's more comfortable to animate directly in UE4, then in Blender!

[@die-a-tone]

What if i wanted to attach something to my character like a weapon or item.

[@techno2776]

I tried this with UE-Mannequin, but the leg is twisted and separated. Is this because of the twist-bones? With the arms it´s the same:(

[@tortswaristalker5472]

super!

[@mmmuck]

Can you keyframe with control rig?

[@Kinos141]

This is a great tutorial. Personally, coming into this as a programmer, Control Rig seems like a lot of work to setup an IK rig that can be done a little easier in Blender or in Maya HumanIK. I'd prefer an auto IK setup that can be tweaked.

[@patrickcoan3139]

Coming in as a programmer and you are asking for an automated setup? Why not script Control Rig to your liking in that case?

[@Cusey]

@@patrickcoan3139 Probably because they understand that this could be a much more automated system. A programmers job is to save time with tools, perfectly understandable request too. He didn't say "It can't do what I want" he clearly wants to do less work to set this up, so why would he want to dive into scripting in control rig?

[@patrickcoan3139]

@@Cusey A programmers job is to automate with the tools available, if not invent their own. Here, Unreal presents new tools, which don't really exist anywhere else, and this programmer is asking for the tools to be more automated... Automated systems are what programmers create for higher level users like technical directors and artists... not the other way around.

[@patrickcoan3139]

@@Cusey A much more automated system... script it then, the tools are all there. What programmer asks for automation to be handed to them? Get real.

[@SuperMontana2008]

how do you setup a horse back leg for example?

[@srod8509]

Please a Step by Step tutorial for the 2D Eye expressions with Control Rig?

[@andrinSky]

Where can i download this Content?

[@LEGIT134]

horrible:( at 4:22 in your video I am at the part where I tell Basic IK the three different types of bones I want to work with. thigh_L goes into item A and shin_L goes into item B and Effector item is foot_L and everything on those three bones stretch way down below. When I turn Propagate to Children on nothing changes.

[@LEGIT134]

I think my model inside Unreal engine 4 is too large.

[@tsechihhuang]

Correct me If I am wrong, "Suika" means "Watermelon" in Japanese.. Thanks for your tutorials.

[@erox3197]

I would like to know how to attach a Mesh ( Like a Sword ) to animate with.

[@stephenslack3892]

If you just want it for a visual representation you can attach static meshes to the skeleton asset. So for a sword example if you have your skeleton and it has a joint for attaching things to the hand. find that joint and right click. in the menu youll see on the bottom "add preview asset". This will attach the item to this location. Note that it will be attaching at the objects zero location and you will be unable to move it, so I suggest adding a socket so you can move it around to the desired location.

[@perfectionist724]

I watched and listened. But im still confused. I have to go step by step following along to really understand it

[@bertani6134]

Please, can you provide the assets?

[@igorcosta6097]

When I try to package my project using control rig, the package gets failed. How to fix it?

[@goldennboy1989]

Where are the project files? o.O

[@cerealgudforu5624]

Can you show us how to make the bone hierarchy in blender?