Control Rig

Overview

Control Rig is a relatively new feature in UE4 that lets you manipulate skeletons and create animations.

Control Rig plugin has to be enabled to use this feature.

Control Rig is only available for 4.26+!

Pro Tip: If you don't want to integrate this pack to your project, you can create a separate project to create animations and export those anims from editor as FBX.

Using Control Rig

Beginner Level

This tutorial is for VR Immersive Hands but general idea is the same. Only the Control Rig plugin is needed. You should watch between 0:13-3:17

Advanced Level

Repeat these steps for every animation. Even if the animation is for the same mesh.

1. Open Map_Setup map

2. Delete everything other than BP_Env.

3. Create a Level Sequence.

4. Drag and drop the MannequinHand_Right and the mesh you want into the Level Sequence. Its important that you drop it into the LS. This will turn them to a spawnable. It should look like this.
5. Animation frames could be as long as you want. But if you are creating it for Grab Anim, you should set it to 1 frame. Since it only uses the first frame for grab animation.

6. Add the Control Rig to the hand.
7. Make sure to save the LS. This LS is now self-contained. Meaning, these meshes will be spawned on LS is opened and destroyed on LS is closed. You can now use this LS to edit this anim in the future.

8. Follow next steps to create animation. Keep the object at 0,0,0 0,0,0 1,1,1 but move the hand. (Yes, opposite of what I showed in the tutorial.)

9. Find the most natural transform for hand to hold the object and place the fingers. Turn on auto key in LS so you don’t lose progress. Save your progress.

10. Place the fingers properly, save the animation by right clicking on MannequinHand_Right and clicking Create Anim Seq. Save!

Sometimes the pivot of a control point will jump to 0,0,0 and moving it will move the hand as well. This is an engine bug. Workaround: Reselect the control point from Animation tab.

Bake To Control Rig

This is a new feature that allows you to edit exported animations. If you are coming from earlier versions, you can use this to edit your exported animations.

1. Open any animation.

2. Edit in Sequencer.

3. Bake To Control Rig.

4. CR_MannequinHand_Right.
5. Don't reduce keys!