Skeleton Structures Relations between CC HD and UE Characters

Character Creator 5 and HD characters resolves incompatibility issues, including skeleton structure differences and bind pose mismatches during retargeting and Auto Setup. It offers full compatibility with Unreal Mannequin, Metahuman, and UEFN characters.

Compatibility between CC3+ and UE4 but not UE5 Skeletons

The CC3+ character rig consists of 108 bones, which is more than the 68 bones of the UE4 Mannequin character, allowing for full compatibility without animation errors because they share the same key bones.

Compatibility between CC5 and UE5 Skeletons

Unreal Engine introduces three distinct skeleton types, including Metahuman (342 bones), UE5 Mannequin (89 bones) and UEFN (88 bones).

Two additional spine bones (a total of five spine bones.)

Additional finger bones at the palm

This change causes issues with CC3 Plus characters, resulting in incorrect retargeting of body and hand movements.

Character floating, spine misplacing, shoulders shrugging and wrong hand movements issue

Fingers twisting issues.

To solve the issues, Character Creator 5 provides upgraded HD characters designed for full compatibility with Unreal Engine 5. Ten additional bones have been added to the spine and head, aligning CC bones with UE 5's key structures. The result is seamless bone mapping between CC 5 and Unreal characters.

Bind Poses

Another key factor for perfect retargeting is the bind pose. Both the imported character and Unreal characters are placed into a bind pose to compare their skeleton structures for accurate retargeting.

UE characters with different skeleton types and binding poses.

The binding poses are different from skeleton to skeleton.

Each of these character has its own unique pose, featuring subtle differences in the shoulders , hands, and fingers. Therefore, different bind poses are needed to match these characters.

Different positions of the shoulders and hands

Differences of the fingers

Character Creator provides dedicated bind poses, enabling highly precise retargeting for the best possible results.

Conclusion

With matching skeleton structures and bind poses in place, you can begin exporting from Character Creator to Unreal Engine.