I decided to take the AZRI rig from Maya and try to recreate it using the Control Rig plugin in Unreal 4.25

I wanted to see the full capabilities and see if there can be a true conversion between the two. I'll be posting my progress on this thread

#UE4 #rigtip #gamedev

First off - some complaints:

Copying and pasting transforms from Bones to Controls does not work too well - had to do turn off auto compile and force the controls to adopt the bone's transform

This allowed me to do the right click Set the Initial Transform.

Doing it this way was a bit tedious but definitely better than copying and pasting raw numbers. Not sure if this is a bug or user error...

Either way, I never got it to update properly, so I had to brute force a workaround.

Starting off with a Maya Y-up rig and then have the FBX do the conversion and working with it in Control Rig has actually been more of a pain in the ass than I thought it would be.

Setting up some space switching for neck and head. Having a control with custom parameters is annoying as it has to be 1 control per parameter...

But, another thing I was looking at. Looks like True and False nodes causes errors - not too sure what they would do exactly though

Another side note - the C hotkey does not work when commenting anything in CR. However other Blueprint shortcuts, such as Q works. Minor annoyance if you have one Execute node.

Technically you can have more than one Execute node, but haven't touched that yet

A nice thing is the ControlRigGizmoLibrary asset

Basically this allows a library of custom built static mesh objects as custom controllers. You can also change the material that is uses.

Today was figuring out local/world space switching for the neck/head. I also added clavicles and did some initial source control setup for the project.

Took me awhile to figure out how to properly do it, but it worked! Gonna remove the single attribute controls - too annoying

I wanted to add the simple arm and leg setups, however I wanted to see what barriers there were first with space switching and transform interference. I'm very curious if there may actually be a way to do IK/FK auto matching.

Also with digging into the ControlRigGizmoLibrary, at some point I want toconvert the initial Maya controllers to static mesh objects.

I’m not quite sure how far this will go - but if I can do a full conversion of the rig - including the controls, man that would be sweet

Note to self - do not reimport Skeletal Mesh with Control Rig editor open

Causes an immediate crash each time. Actually I'd recommend that if you are doing any skeletal mesh edits in engine or out, close the CR editor.

I had noticed an issue earlier on my skeletal mesh integration - I think there was something wrong with the bone scale of the spine.

Something that was cool with CR is that I could bring a new raw import in with the same skeleton and immediately had what I wanted

I had to do a new raw import due to some fbx skinning output errors. However I was able to remove the old and rename and everything is working out just fine.

But this makes me very curious on how 1 CR asset could be used for all characters... perhaps something to play with later

That being said - I can't really say anything about initial transforms just yet. I thought that I would have to edit the spine controls initial transforms after fixing the FBX error.

That wasn't the case, so it could have just been related to skinning

But that makes me wonder on different proportioned characters and how CR would translate. Wondering if it would be wise to eventually refactor a bit where spaces grabs initial transform of bones and fits the controls immediately

Also curious on how this works with the Skeleton Retargetting system and any additional Anim Blueprint functionalities.

Something to test later on differently scaled characters

I've had CR crash Unreal on me at least 5 times today - most of the crashes are related to the following:

1. Changing the Parent controls/spaces
2. Visual bug of parents and then quickly trying to fix that
3. Reordering layout of hierarchy

TL;DR - The hierarchy setup and how to manipulate it is very finicky. The UI slows down to a halt at times when editing those.

This problem really only exists in the Rig Hierarchy section of the UI. Overall, that part feels clunky.

Something positive - I love this stack method compared to DG. I like what the space nodes are in CR, even though I feel like the phrase of isn't too consistent.

However... this means that we may or may not use spaces as organizational nodes as we do with group nodes in Maya

Honestly something simple as folders or something would just be enough. Just to visually house them within the UI.

While having an empty space transform isn't hurting - its still a transform - someone could use it accidentally when it should not be moved...

But if folders were the route, then that means it would be tough to think about parent scale and scaling over all.

I haven't even began working on it on AZRI, but with the amount of controls, I'm trying to plan for it.

Alright here is what I got so far tonight:

IK/FK dynamic matching (might try auto later)
Arm twist controllers following matching
Fixed controllers to fit better

(Oh god... look at that execution stack and node graph....)

S/o to @tbwrightartist for the IK/FK setup on his stream! Works like a charm!

Check his VOD here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/624137633