Overview
This guide provides best practices for creating optimized base rigs for Unreal Engine 5 and Unity using Auto-Rig Pro (ARP). We’ll cover bone hierarchy, export settings, and key considerations for facial animations to ensure compatibility and efficiency across platforms.
Base Rigging
This is an example generated from AUTO RIG PRO for an Unreal Engine 5 Humanoid bone system, using the CoolCat Rig as an example. Super Important to look at the TOP LEFT of the image, the number of deformation bones is super optimized making the rig extremely light, without losing the animation data in the process.
This is an example generated from AUTO RIG PRO for a Unity Humanoid bone system. There are some changes between the two rigs but generally speaking, both are a bit similar except for the bone naming.
Limbs Option ARP Settings
If exporting assets with facial animations, make sure to include these options before proceeding to the Advance Tab.
Export Settings ARP
These are our ARP export settings, disable and enable animation on preference and requirements. Important: Each Animation would be exported as its individual animation keyframe).
IMPORTANT
When exporting the assets to Unity, Unreal or Godot is important that you attach a Rig + at least 1 mesh combined, the reason for this is to prevent the rigging generation tool ARP, to dont change hierarchy of the bone structure, if rig is only selected the armature of the rig will be as follows:
---root.x
----|__spine.x1
---|__spine.x2
---|_etc…
but if rig+mesh selected and exported together:
---nameOfArmature (default called “Rig”)
---|__root.x
----|__spine.x1
---|__spine.x2
---|_etc…
Since the hierarchy changes it also changes how the retarting humanoid systems work, to prevent unknown issues please add at least 1 element when exporting the assets, it also helps to preview the animations in engine doing it this way.
Examples
If you don’t own (Auto-Rig Pro) ARP, you can download and use the below Bone Hierarchy to generate the necessary skin weights on your meshes, so weights are compatible with other asset collections previously made by Futureverse.
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