How to bake animations into the IK Bones using Control Rig in UE5

00:00 Intro
01:06 The Solution
06:00 The Result

This video talks about how to bake the animations on the hand and foot bones back into the IK bones using FK control rig in Unreal Engine 5. This is the type of issue that developers come across while developing and retargeting animations with no access to the ARTV1/V2 - and it's a free and easy solution.

[tuatec]

I'm working on a similar series currently where I also show how to fix a lot of issues when it comes to character integration into Advenced Locomotion System. Even if you don't use ALS it might be helpful to you,

ALS Secrets - UE5 Manny Integration

In case you want to learn how to use Git with the workflow, start watching this playlist that comes with extra Git sessions.
ALS Secrets - UE5 Manny Integration + Git Workflow

[sgtbooz]

Wow dude, finally I found your video. I mean, wth, none of the "huge" channels mention that stupidly simple thing that literally solves everything.

[CinematographyDatabase]

Thank you so much for showing this workflow. I’m going to use it to help clean up MOCAP for two handed weapons.

[kyleb]

TRUE LIFE SAVER. so concise and clear!

[genbosc]

This video is perfect. Answered the EXACT question I had. thank you so much.

[markoleptic]

I was editing animations using control rig with the IK switches under the "global_ctrl" section checked, but they still weren't getting baked to the sequence. But this fixed it! Thanks.

[PandemonicHypercube]

There's also an alternative way to do this.
There's an Animation Modifier that comes with Unreal now that allows you to copy the pose of one bone to another. It's very easy to create a derived version that defaults to copying over all the IK bones.

If you're on an older version it should be reasonably straightforward to write one. I had one that worked with some specific 4.x versions. I stopped maintaining it though because it was a pain to update it every time I updated to a new version that significantly changed the animation code.

[mihaiwilson]

Thanks! I didn't realize UE5 had that functionality. Looks like this would be a good way to fix retargeted ALS animations that have the typical incorrect IK bone placement.

[MartenZander]

connecting the ik_hand_gun to the right hand works for animations where the chracter is not holding any gun, but How would you retarget an animation that is supposed to hold a gun with a certain offset to hand_r for example.

[gartd]

So IK bones repeat the action of FK right? but can I animate actual IK hand?

[ConsolePCGaming]

would really help if you set up the project from scratch so people can see where you got the animations from, how you loaded them in etc. So many tutorials on UE5 just assume that people already know how to do this and miss the most fundamental parts of the tutorial out

[stfirefly]

Great tutorial! Just one thing. When snapping your Ik bones to parent I found that Snap Rotation needs to be checked in order for it to work correctly.

[maahisingh]

This is an Awesome trick !!! to fix IK bones. The problem I am facing is whenever I Edit with the Fk Control rig its shoulders of Manny become weird any solution for that?

[illyay]

Shouldn't you also snap rotation?

[williamtolliver]

So I think i found the answer to my question but I wansted to ask it just to be sure:
Can you BAKE animations sequences that are retargeted for example FROM MIXAMO, TO the Metahuman or Manny CONTROL RIG? Everytime i try to, the animations never show up in the menu.
And when i watch tutorials, its ALWAYS animations that came with the Metahumans. No one has detailed about this issue so far, at least that ive found.

[forge]

Hey chares i Love you have a great summer, i was just thinking how i coud use the rig to "fIX" some animations but i have no idea how to set it up :) +1 sub

[Sebastian-keu]

Yea but you cant do it at baked control ring

[DawnBriarDev]

I hate to say "just".. But just make a python script to do this in one click in blender, for every animation, including preserving offsets when a weapon is weilded.
Look, I'm a solo developer, and I'm self taught. I spent the time to learn many languages just for applications like this. Because, if you put things into perspective: How many times across a title are you going to have to do this? How many animations will you be doing this to each time?
You're going to spend 400 hours breaking your fingers this way.
Or.. Spend 30 hours to learn how to make a Python script, and in the process, make 60 other addons you needed now that you know how.
This works if you're just retargeting the Mannequinn or one Mixamo character one time. It doesn't work in a broader context.

If you read this far, I'll even share my own python script for snapping bones. You just gotta either: A- Have the same bone names. or B- Change the bone names at the top of my script to your own.

I wonder if youtube will actually let me post a python script as a comment. I'll find out if someone asks.