How to export & import Skeletal Mesh between Blender and Unreal

Рет қаралды 48,344

Жыл бұрын

Are you frustrated trying to export a Skeletal Mesh from Unreal Engine to Blender and try to bring it back? Did you get that error:
FAILED TO MERGE BONES
This could happen if significant hierarchical change has been made
- i.e inserting bon bteween nodes
Would you like to regenerate Skeleton from this Mesh ?
**WARNING: THIS WILL RECOMPRESS ALL ANIMATION DATA
AND POTENTIALLY INVALIDATE***
Here is my journey to make that work!

Пікірлер: 97

@riotechmod Жыл бұрын

Actual Correct Steps from here 8:30

@BaluZarD 3 ай бұрын

holly you! thanks you so much lol

@mamutcz4 3 ай бұрын

xdd

@MAUREISHON 5 ай бұрын

Now i understand why the last 342 tries to import my own skins to Unreal was not working haha. Thanks you much!

@wolfnaya0 Жыл бұрын

You saved my psyche... I've spent multiple hours trying to understand why did blender add another armature bones... There are no words to describe how greatful I am, thank you so much! 🐺

@tolgasn Жыл бұрын

It's same for me :) Thank you Chrix

@alex-qn5xp Жыл бұрын

I like how you showed yourself finding the solution to problems instead of cutting them out. Good stuff.

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

thanks, I'm glad you find it useful

@alex-qn5xp Жыл бұрын

@Teemo1WildHunt But if people make the same mistakes or run into the same problems he's already solved it for them.

@thsuperelite Жыл бұрын

the big file size is because you used mirror modifier on the whole mesh to the whole model was duplicated. so you exported double the number of polygons.

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

Yes I saw that at the end 😀

@KulTheSwordsman Жыл бұрын

Thank you alot mate, this trick of selecting & exporting really saved me from tons of headache, cheers. Had same problem when importing in Unreal with the Game Rig Tools Addon of Blender.

@AlexParkYT Ай бұрын

Literally telling us what was causing it is 95% of the problem. Thank you and showing the extra issues was very helpful. Now I don't feel stuck :)

@lz4090 Жыл бұрын

Thank you so much. The selecting of the root and not the first hierarchy was the solution. I always get problems when editing my mesh and editing it blender, it was because I was selecting the root made by blender.

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

I'm glad that helped you!

@seanmccabe4653 6 ай бұрын

Worked, thanks for that. It was also helpful showing the problems and fixing them as well.

@lovelettar 10 ай бұрын

I'm CRAZY by this "Failed to merge bone" thing and let me kiss you in the face, Thank you for making this!!!!!!!

@kblargh 5 ай бұрын

Thank you sir, the merge bones thing was driving me up a wall

@Guesswholw 9 ай бұрын

this is a great way of doing tutorials! thank you sir

@tableterns8469 9 ай бұрын

So glad I found this video. Thank you for this!

@Obakenori 24 күн бұрын

This was driving me mad, thank you for making this!

@brentpollard4938 2 ай бұрын

Thank you so much! I've been struggling with this for weeks.

@MrMeen Жыл бұрын

This was helpful. Thank you.

@LoneWolfJ6 Жыл бұрын

Thank you so much. Exactly what i needed

@jacovanvuuren8752 Жыл бұрын

Thank you SO MUCH! This helped me!

@Kappinski Жыл бұрын

Your process of solving the problem teached me more than any fancy edited tutorial video ^^

@maskridercomeback7464 Ай бұрын

when I export the fbx, the texture is not exported, how can I fix it ?

@GetBoros 4 ай бұрын

Life saver, really good video, hope to see more, even if it's not useful, u have cheerful voice

@rob99201 7 ай бұрын

I felt your pain through this entire video and I live in that space! :D Very helpful. I needed to behead my character so I could use an already rigged head in its place. This should accomplish that!

@JayCreationsDev Жыл бұрын

I'm actually blown away at how good this solution is, fixed it perfectly

@b.delacroix7592 4 ай бұрын

Thank you x 100. I had just did this same thing trying to make a mod to an asset and I know 0 about animations but when I imported my modded mesh the bones were all mucked up and animations wouldn't run. It was indeed a nightmare. Your vid helped fix all of that.

@svens3722 8 ай бұрын

bro i have to thank you so much. i have a lowpoly pack but i want elfes and i just wanted to add ears to make more variety and with your video i finaly done it. thaaank you.

@Deck_Dynasty 10 ай бұрын

Zooming in on the error that much gave me ptsd. I'm going to have nightmares now. Thanks, I hate it.

@ChrixB 10 ай бұрын

I was thinking of making merch with it haha

@peterhall4216 Жыл бұрын

Thanks this helped a lot!!

@sethdaigle2284 7 ай бұрын

Life saverrrrrrrr, million thanks brother. You get a sub for this.

@JupiterLIII Жыл бұрын

Super ca fonctionne, merci bien !

@badja3d580 6 ай бұрын

The mirror modificator duplicates the whole mesh that's why it doubles, you should just activate mirror editing on X ^^

@ChrixB 6 ай бұрын

yep, you got it :)

@shanliumoshi7904 7 ай бұрын

Thank you, thank you very much. Solved the problem that after I exported to blender, I imported Unreal again.

@Riseuhh Жыл бұрын

I’m getting this same error but I’m importing from Maya. I have one metahuman I exported/imported with no issues, I did the EXACT same thing with the next one and I got the error

@ManoCraftas3 Жыл бұрын

You're the real MVP

@user-uk9kc2cb2j 2 ай бұрын

exactly what i needed

@shaunramkelawon 11 ай бұрын

lol 😅😅this was driving me insane past few days!! thanks a lot :)

@ChrixB 11 ай бұрын

You are welcome, I am glad that I gave you some help 🙂

@heatwavegames3588 10 ай бұрын

Thank You!

@GameDevAraz 8 ай бұрын

dude your a lightsaber! thanks so much!

@JDARRASVP 7 ай бұрын

ok, it's work, but did you notice that when you want to use animations, the neck is not in the good place ? There are few deformations of the mesh !

@Ba8sbaNybRMAcXCNdKnLTA 9 ай бұрын

I keep having this same issue no matter what I do. When I export my character into Unreal it keeps saying 'Failed to merge bones' I have tried everything in this video... Do you have any idea what else it could be, or would you maybe be able to take a quick look at it? Have tried for so many hours now and I am starting to give up....

@larouguexcs2553 2 ай бұрын

How do you add a character from sketchfab to this bone structure?

@eshwarthegreat Жыл бұрын

thank god, thanks alot bro it worked finally

@ZeGentlemen 10 ай бұрын

For someone starting with blender, this was amazing. Thank you so much!

@Dhieen 11 ай бұрын

9:06 it doesnt work for me, when i import i dont have the sk mannequin by default

@ronioclarenzo6137 Жыл бұрын

Thanks!

@zzxd7720 Жыл бұрын

6:48 The file huge because you are using the mirror modifier, which doubles the mesh when you export. You use mirror when you have half of the model. In this case you are using mirror on a full complete model, so you end you with two models one on top of the other.

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

Yes, you got it!

@nyospike 11 ай бұрын

thank you so much. this was slowly eating on me😂

@ChrixB 11 ай бұрын

yes, I can rely on that feeling when you face a weird bug in a project 🙂

@Alaabale 10 ай бұрын

thanks

@GH-zr4mb 10 ай бұрын

Great tutorial!, I wanted to ask do i need to apply the scale of the Imported Mannequin ? It dosent seem to affect anything but without applying the scale it gave me allot of problems in other Stuff rig related. Edit: I tested out Applying the Scale of the armature it shrinks the Character into A tiny bit

@ChrixB 10 ай бұрын

I think apply Transformation to your model is always a good thing before exporting it.

@devonroyer8044 Ай бұрын

see my issue is the fact that those bones are all jacked, they arent connected in blender, but are in unreal. Surely we are exporting from Unreal and Importing into Unreal incorrectly which is what lead me here but good vid!

@kushnarovanatoli345 10 ай бұрын

Golden!

@lordew9476 4 ай бұрын

yeah im cry when im import it frist time ))) why why why this two good programs dont wanna work each other

@oceankingdom1985 7 ай бұрын

can we get bones of skeletal mesh from UE, then somehow using it as new bones for model in Blender then export to using that model in UE ?

@ChrixB 7 ай бұрын

If you want to rig a custom character mesh to the Unreal Engine Manequin skeleton, I suggest AccuRig. It's free, and that has a good set of tools to do that.

@oceankingdom1985 7 ай бұрын

@@ChrixB Thanks bro, i used ACC too, but i got problem with my model when i using model import from ACC to UE. So i'm wondering how can manual making or fixing bones from blender to using in UE

@ChrixB 7 ай бұрын

@@oceankingdom1985 Have you tried using the new animation toolkit in UE5.3? It might be easier to accomplish this there instead of in Blender.

@oceankingdom1985 7 ай бұрын

i'm not yet, thanks for suggest bro

@MrMustachio43 9 ай бұрын

So this solved the error and the skeleton binds (thank you so much) but I'm running into another issue. Trying to do a custom head mesh but the bones for the head (smiling, blinking, eyebrows etc) don't work, but the morphs do. so it wont move the eyelid, for example, but it will do the morphs (the morphs just smooth things out so it doesn't look silly). I'm using the pre made "mh_arkit_mapping_anim" to see if things work, but it just wont. Any thoughts?

@MrMustachio43 9 ай бұрын

So I found a fix: - Find "import settings" on ORIGINAL metahuman face skeletal mesh - Change file path to new morphed .fbx file (I had to change this because it didn't give me two steps from nows option, which is weird) - Click the three dots next to "reimport base mesh" (located at the top) - Click "reimport base mesh with new file" (select the morphed .fbx file again) - You'll be asked to match up the materials needed, right click the yellow highlighted ones and select the correct material Should be it.

@ChrixB 9 ай бұрын

@@MrMustachio43 thanks for sharing the solution you find!

@evolutionaer2161 2 ай бұрын

Thx

@Chareidos Жыл бұрын

Thanks for that tutorial. You did not use any pricey tool nor made any fancy BS to it. Why on earth is there not a "free" in-house solution from any of those two companies? I guess there is a way to use your own model mesh and replace the mannequin mesh, like use your mesh with that mannequin skeleton?

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the comment. There is a free in-house solution that you can check in a video a made: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gdqZitCbtazUmWQ.html You can also check more up-to-date info about this open-source plugin made by Epic Games: epicgames.github.io/BlenderTools/send2ue/

@levi83 2 ай бұрын

UE 5.4 Blender 4.01... not working

@DavoMora 8 ай бұрын

Thaks!!!

@nemesiser89 3 ай бұрын

Oof followed the steps and I still get the same error. Imported the skeleton and did not have any changes. Racking my brain over here.... It really is SM Hell!

@MorRobots Жыл бұрын

You need to do this video again but without you messing up 5 times in a row because between the start of this video and when you get it to work you fix the issue. This is because it's unclear where you fix the issue, took me a bunch of watching and reproducing your steps to find what you did to fix it.

@XxbennythebeastxX Жыл бұрын

can you also do animations there with that SK Mesh?

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

I did not try that yet but I don't see why it would not be possible.

@DariusYoung Жыл бұрын

Afternoon Sir! I'm a character artist and I am having a bit of trouble duplicating your success in the video. I'm trying to do the exact same thing you are doing but with a metahuman. I've followed your steps exactly and I still am getting this error. Is there a different procedure for metahumans or is there something else? Would you be willing to do like a zoom call or something if you have the time. I can pay you for your trouble (we can schedule something for the week of the 30th). Thanks in advance if you get this

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

That a good question; MetaHumans are a bit specials in Unreal Engine. I need to check what is going on with them for that process, I will let you know if I found something.

@ChrixB Жыл бұрын

Ok doing a quick test; you have to be careful of what you select in Blender when you export. It can skip the root and armature if you do not check properly. But from that said, the main issue is the Materials. Unreal seem not exporting the Material to Blender. So when you bring it back into Unreal, from Blender, that is something to be aware of; your materials slots will be empty. I'm not sure how can it be fixed without re-creating manually all the material in Blender and associating the right vertices to it... looks like a very tedious process...

@DariusYoung Жыл бұрын

@@ChrixB word. Thanks a bunch for the help, I’ll be sure to see about that next time I try it for work

@annalevina4245 Жыл бұрын

Hi, I had the same situation as you. And what I've found: When I import a metahuman skeleton TO blender some bones disappear for some reason, some the bone count doesn't match with unreals version after I put it back. So the solution for me was to use the blender addon Better FBX Importer&Exporter while IMPORTING metahuman to blender (u should change some default import settings there) . For export I used the standart blender exporter. Maybe this helps

@DariusYoung Жыл бұрын

@@annalevina4245 thanks a bunch

@slastrasdev6711 Жыл бұрын

Sorry, still doesnt work. The weights are messed up and animations look bad.

@slastrasdev6711 Жыл бұрын

Ok I fixed it. I mistakenly picked "automatic bone rotation" do NOT enablethis in the import setting.

@migueldumaraos1750 Жыл бұрын

Bro my guy only export rootbone and bellow dont export the group silly cause if you do what happens is the root bone ain't the root anymore its the SKM_Quinn_Simple not the "Root" the hierarchy system will get ruined if that happens winkkkk your welcome