Unreal Engine: Control Rig For Cinematics and Game Animation

We create a Control Rig Asset for Asuki "The Included Character"

Learn the very basics of Control Rig Navigation

Creating Controls we can use to manipulate bones

Making Shape and Control Offsets used to offset either the control shape or the control itself

Making the Mesh's Rootbone controllable with a simple "SetTransform" Setup on the forward solve

Backwards solving the control so we can use that control to alter excisting animation data

How the order of selection affects things such as item arrays when we add multiple items into our graphs such as "Item Arrays"

Learn how to create a very basic Transform array solver

Optional: learn why we use the "For Each" What it does, how it works and how it can save us a lot of time and effort

Learn how to create a both Forwards and Backwards solved Function that can take a Control and Bone array and solve that for us.

This function will be used multiple times throughout the course

We are going to create a full body rig setup with controls for the entire body

Adding a Basic IK node, A group for Pole Vectors and the Polevectors themselves plus a brief explanation of Null Groups

We are going to setup and apply our BasicIK node, giving it the cordinates it needs from our controls

Debug lines are commonly used to draw a debug between the bone and control for stuff such as Polevectors and lookat's

Let's create a Function that can draw debuglines when we want them

We can aim bones at controls by using an Aim node and set it up to work with out specific character mesh.
Let's do that and let's use our Draw Debug function to draw a line between the bone and the control

Let's dive into how we can set the Eye rotations using positions and also clean up a bit of our graph to make everything more organized

Let's add Local position controls for the eyes.

We will be offsetting the actual controls since we are going to use them in local space

Let's add our controls into the graph and also explore the difference between Local and Global Spaces

We'll be making a Math Function that allows us to convert a Quad, into a rotator, split it and "Add/Subtract" a value from it using a position control

Let's add a strength multiplier and a negate option to our function!

Let's explore curves/morphs and what they're used for in our example

Let's create float controls for our character's eyes we'll be using to set how closed they are

We should always check that our cuves in our Curve container works.
Let's go over a simple way we can do that

Instead of copy pasing "Set Curve value" for each curve, let's create an array solve function that can solve multiple curves from multiple controls with individual divider values

Cleaning up our function keeps us organized.
Since we don't need our make arrays anymore, we can incorporate all that into the actual function itself that we've added unto our graph

Lets create some more controls, this time for our facial features such as
"Angry, Joy, Sorrow, Surprised" and make them adjustable using our "Morph Control" function we created earlier

It's time to make our facial features controllable

Lets clean up and categorize functions as well as mark logic by commenting.

To Comment
"Mark what you want to comment and click ""C"""

The basics of using Fabrik and CCDIK

We'll add multiple Item arrays that will be used with a single Fabrik or CCDIK ik node

Solve Multiple groups with a single Fabrik node using a "For Loop" Method

Clean up the For Loop function we created by collapsing node graphs

We can easily switch from Fabrik to CCDIK or wise-versa by simply switching out our node

Chain Dynamics is kinda like an interpolated version of CCDIK "Using Spring Interpolate"

Let's also use a branch to add an option to select what we wanna use

Create a basic cinematic scene with a glowing moon and stars

Add Lightrays to your scene that looks really cool and is fully adjustable using the excisting "Directional Light"

Controls:

SpaceBar: Play Sequence
S: Add Keyframe for selected control

You can also use the Play controls located under the Sequencer hierarchy

Add in-between frames to avoid things such as clipping

Let's add facial expressions to make our animation more expressive

Learn how to use Anim layers to furthermore smooth out movement and add additive keyframes

Let's export our animation, take a duplicate and make it play in reverse.

Since we've made a crouch animation, we can play that same animation in reverse to have a "Un-Crouch" animation

Edit excisting Animations using the Control rig's Backwards solve

Easily Create IK Rigs.
Whilst we won't be using the UE5 Mannequin, we can take it's animations to help us a bit with Walking and Running animations we can adjust later using our Control Rig

For users of Unreal Engine 5.6 or later.
Bone auto alignment amongst other features are available to simply the process.

If you're using 5.6 or later, you can use these features

Creating a basic looping idle by keyframing it

Spawnable actors only excist without a level sequence and this is great since we only are using our mesh within the sequence we are working in

Add actors to your level sequence by simply adding them via the add option in the sequence

Layered Control rigs allows us to put a Control rig on top of animations in our sequencer given our rig is backwards solved

Let's adjust our walk cycle and see if we can fix it up to match our character

An optional step:
Let's add some smooth in-between frames to smooth out our animation