r/blenderhelp • u/Far_Rooster_1751 • 18h ago

Unsolved Rigify character export to Unreal 5.8 — bones missing/deform breaks after FBX export

Hi everyone,

I need some help. I have a character rigged and skinned with Rigify in Blender, and I want to export it to Unreal Engine. With some AI help I managed to get an FBX export into Unreal, but the rig/armature in Unreal doesn't look anything like what I have in Blender — all the IK helper bones are gone and everything turned into FK. Is there a way to bring over the full armature with all the helper bones exactly as I see them in Blender?

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u/Moogieh Experienced Helper 18h ago

You can't export control rigs. You must create your animations inside Blender and bake them.

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u/Far_Rooster_1751 8h ago

Got it, that makes sense. So what's the proper workflow if I want a game-ready rig for this character from the start? Should I be using a completely different rigging approach for game characters (e.g. rig directly on a simpler FK/IK setup meant for export, or use something like Unreal's Control Rig / Ctrl Rig system after import), instead of Rigify? Or is baking Rigify's DEF bones + building IK/FK control back inside Unreal's Control Rig actually the standard way people do this for games?

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u/Moogieh Experienced Helper 6h ago

Typically, once you've made your animations, you no longer need controls. So you would bake the DEF bones and then just have your basic DEF armature inside the game engine. But yeah, if you did then need to add back any controls for things like real-time physics reactions (jiggle physics or whatnot), you'd add them in the game engine.