How to make a Control Rig FAST & Animate a Skeletal Mesh in Unreal Engine — EASY & SIMPLE TUTORIAL

hey guys boaty the movie maker here how to animate a character in Unreal Engine made easy and simple first off real quick I am using animation in my short film that I'm making in Unreal Engine for anything that moves in my short film but animation is also used in games of course from the most complex animations to the simplest ones you could imagine for example when your character is just standing in place and you're not touching the controller you're not moving them around at all there is an animation playing on repeat it's called the idle animation it shows them breathing just standing maybe looking around maybe checking their watch every once in a while that is a repeating animation and I'm going to show you how to make that animation today this is a video about making simple how to start animating in Unreal Engine so the absolute simplest way if you're using an Unreal Engine mannequin the default character within Unreal Engine it makes it easier because it comes with a pre-built control rig a control rig basically allows you to control each part of the mannequin's posable body it turns the mannequin into an action figure that you can maneuver and pose control rig is basically just a series of controls throughout your mannequin's body that you can click on and manipulate but what if you want to use other characters other than the default Unreal Engine mannequins such as this hazmat suit guy I bought on Unreal Engine Marketplace or this zombie monster well you will have to make your own control rig before we continue please do me a favor drop a like drop a comment don't forget to subscribe hit the Bell icon so you'll be notified when my next video comes out so let's show you how to animate using the Unreal Engine mannequin so you bring your Unreal Engine mannequin into your level your level is your map it's the editable area you are in by default or in this case the custom level you created if you want to see how I created this spooky Forest watch this video link in the description or click right here so then open a new level sequence add level sequence name the sequence and put it wherever you want to I have a folder called sequences that opens up a new level sequence a sequence is like a timeline you'll be familiar with this if you're a video editor it's a lot like video editing it's a linear timeline from left to right now click track actor to sequence and find the mannequin character if it was selected it'll be right at the top here skm underscore Manny so once you click that it brings it into your sequencer and by default it opens up the animation mode and boom now we see the Unreal Engine default mannequin and you can see the different controls and when you click them it brings up the control functions and we change it to rotate and we've rotated his head now let's rotate his shoulder so now you can see it turns them into an action figure that we can pose it's all right but again now we want to do that with the Hazmat character or possibly or Monster before we bring our Hazmat character into the sequencer let's show you how to make a control rig so that we can control him first you right click on the HazMat character's skeletal mesh under create go down to the bottom control rig boom creates a new control rig let's open that up now over on the left side of this window you can see rig hierarchy open that up and it shows you a list of the bones in their hierarchical order certain bones are parented to other bones so now we are going to select just the bones that I want right now we're going to leave out some bones because we're going to keep this as simple as possible pelvis spine one spine two spine three clavicle left upper arm left lower arm left hand left we're skipping all the left hand fingers then we're going down and selecting clavicle right upper arm right lower arm right right hand then we're skipping all the fingers on the right hand and we're going to neck and head then we are going to select thigh left calf left skipping calf twist we're going to select left foot and left ball get your mind out of the gutter the ball of his foot come on and we're skipping thigh twist and we're going right to right thigh right calf right foot right Ball come on and we're going that's all of the bones we're selecting right click on all the bones you selected and go to new add controls for selected this will automatically generate a series of controls which are uh properly nested under the right so bones will be in the same hierarchical order meaning the bones that were parented to certain bones now the controls that match those bones will be parented to the same does that just look at it I don't know how to explain it just look at it okay God damn it I'm expanding all of these bones so you can see the hierarchy is the same now we're going to select all of these controls drag it over to the blueprint create from array that's going to create an item array let's go back and reselect all of the bones we selected now click and drag all of the bones and create from item array drop them into the blueprint and now you review the two of them and make sure they both have the same amount of items and that they're in the same exact order they need to match up so go from the top to the bottom checking that they all match up if they don't match up delete the node and reselect all of the bones or all of the controls and bring them back over so now we're pulling out from the bone array and we're going to get for each type in four each now from the control array drag that out and type at then from for each pull out from the element and type in set transform now from element the at element drag out and do get transform we're going to connect the index from four each to at we're going to connect the transform from get transform to the value spot on set transform drag out from execute on forward solve to execute on for each now click compile and you'll see we have controls and we can control our Hazmat guide but our controls look funky they're not very easy to click we will fix that later now let's get a backwards solve onto our blueprint now let's copy all of these nodes here everything except for forward solve copy and paste now this is going to the the backward solve is going to be the exact same as the forward solve with one key difference let's disconnect the connections between the bone array and the control array and let's switch them now the bone array is going to be connected to the at and the control array is going to be connected to the four each and then from backwards solve drag out execute to for each execute and compile okay now it's time to adjust our controls so one by one you can click the controls and choose the shape you want the control to be again the control is just the thing you click to be able to adjust that joint you can adjust the size the color the placement you can play around with this but basically you just want it to be big enough that your mouse can click it you know some people make the all of the controls on the left side of the meshes body one color and the right a different color so they're easy to distinguish some people use different shapes for different parts of the body that's up to you to decide what works best for you but I pretty much went through every single shape one by one and adjusted them manually and it takes a few minutes now that we've got our control rig set up let's bring our Hazmat skeletal mesh into the level let's add a new level sequencer starting from fresh name it whatever you want save it wherever you want again I keep it in a folder called sequences let's open up the sequencer let's click on our skeletal mesh to make the next part easier let's click track add to sequence and by default it already knows I've selected the Hazmat so that's the first option up at the top choose actor add SK Hazmat 2. so now you can see we've added the Hazmat skeletal mesh to the sequencer there are three tracks that automatically pop up the one on the top is the skeletal mesh underneath that there's an animation track underneath that there's a transform track on the top track click the track button then under control rig go down to asset based control rig and let's select the one we just made I've made multiple as you can see but you'll have just made your first one so the one that I just made is SK Hazmat control rig 2 so select the one you just created boom now it automatically changes you into animation mode and that's why you can see the control rig and now these different shapes that we've made you simply go click on the lines of the shape that you that are correspond to the Joint that you want to manipulate first so the first thing we're going to do is make an idle animation so I've got to take him out of his sort of t-pose and put him into a more regular human just standing there pose with his arms down by his sides so that's why I'm clicking the wrists the elbows the clavicles the shoulders I'm dropping his arms to his sides one joint at a time so now that I've got him properly positioned I'm going to bring my mouse back down to the sequencer and you can see all of these different tracks under the control rig those so there's a track for every single controllable bone in this control rig now what we're going to do is we're going to keyframe this position I just created he's I've dropped his arms to his side and now I want to save that on this timeline so the scrubber is already placed on frame zero zero zero zero so at the beginning of the sequence the scrubber is the tool that allows you to move through the timeline and select a specific frame just like in video editing or when you're watching a YouTube video it's the linear tool that allows you to move forward on the timeline whatever frame that scrubber is on is the frame you are looking at right now we're looking at the first frame of this sequence deframing is how you save these changes that we just made we're gonna by keyframing it on frame zero we're telling the sequence that we want our Hazmat guy to look exactly like this on frame zero just click this keyframe button here next to his control rig and it will make a keyframe for every single one of his joints so add keyframe so now we've added a keyframe to the first frame of this sequence now let's scrub forward to frame 30. and let's now adjust his arms we're making him breathe out his chest is going to Puff out so his arms are going out to his sides I'm actually going to have his wrists come in even though his upper arms are going to go out his head is going to come down a little bit his neck too and his chest is going to Puff out by going up vertically now we're going to keyframe every joint in his body it's simpler than keyframing just the ones that I adjusted and we did that at frame 30. so now let's press play and we can see it goes from the first keyframe to the second now we're going to copy the first keyframes that I did and we're going to scrub over to frame 60. paste so now we have three sets of keyframes and when we press play his chest Puffs out and then goes back in I forgot to record this part this red line here is the end of the sequence you can move that to adjust where you want your sequence to end how long you want it to be and the green line over here is where your sequence starts you can also adjust that so we're going to bring this red line the end of the sequence over to frame 60 so that it ends with the last set of keyframes his arms rise and then go back to a lowered position that is the basis of the breathing animation that's a two second animation now let's export this animation hover the mouse over your skeletal mesh track on the sequencer right click and select bake animation sequence choose a folder I have a folder called animations and name your animation Hazmat idle test B for both of the movie maker okay export animation boom now that animation is saved in your animation folder now let's use it let's close the sequencer let's go back to selection mode and with my skeletal mesh selected let's go into the details panel and under animation animation change the animation mode to use animation asset you'll see anim to play none that's because no animation has yet been selected so we're going to go to our content drawer we're gonna navigate to the animation folder we're going to find the animation that I just created there it is and we're going to drag it into that spot boom now let's press play so he's breathing it's it's subtle but he's breathing now keep in mind it's pretty dark On My Level because it's a short horror film so he's illuminated by a flashlight and you can see I applied the same process to this uh zombie monster I made the rig and I made him a simple breathing animation very subtle and here it is in action so that's that showed you how to make a idle animation you can easily use these same steps now that you have a control rig to make whatever animation you want hey if you enjoyed this video please don't forget to drop a like And subscribe it really helps and also we are we got merch this is some of the handmade limited edition merch that's going to be coming to the store links in the description to check it out bye bye thank you for watching

Channel: Bodhi the Movie Maker

Views: 14,190

Keywords: Retro gaming, game collection, Spawn toys, N64, Goldeneye 64, Super Mario 64, Cod, Call of duty, GTA, GTA San Andreas, Ps1, PS2, Ps1 games, PS2 games, Game cube games, Nintendo games, Games collection, Game room, Funny, Humor, Silly, Bodie, Bohdi werner, TLOU, The Last Of Us, hitchcock, pedro pascal, IGN, Epic Games, Unreal Engine, UE5.2, State of Unreal, Metahuman, Fortnite, Gameplay Tech Demo, UEFN, Unreal Editor Fortnite, Substrate, Chaos Engine, UE5, Nvidia RTX 4090, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

Id: XM-qarSZ7ms

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2023