Simple IK Pole Issues

[Hardwire]

The Knee and Elbow pole targets in the Simple IK are parented to the hip. This causes any animation of the center of gravity to move them. Not sure if this is intended for some reason but typically this is not the desired/expected behavior of a vector target. Simply removing the parent in the relations section of the bone tab fixes this.

Also if the if the rig is added after changing world unit size, scaling and then applying scale it causes the pole targets and root to be created at size. So for example if you set the Blender Units to 0.01, then scale the armature by 100 on xyz, and then apply scale. The Poles and Root are created extremely small. Can be avoided by creating the rig before applying scale. But could confuse people if they are not clear as to what is happening.

Set this to Enhancement and minor as both are easily avoidable or corrected.

[Thomas Larsson]

The pole targets are now parented to the root bone, if that exists, otherwise they are unparented.

If you want the figure to be 100 times bigger than the default, you should change the Unit Scale to 1.0. Then the figure is imported with the default daz units (centimeters). Or you could use the Advanced Setup > Rigging > Scale Object tool.

[Hardwire]

The import is done at a scale of 1.0. The process I described above is done so that the armature imports into Unreal properly. Otherwise when retargeting things go wrong. As well the physics assets are also created with improper scale. Doing as I stated above prevents this. I tried using the suggestions you stated above and this is the result.

This is done on a base G9 character. The units are the Blender default of 1.0 and using the “Scale Objects” tool.
The long bone is the Armature Unreal picks up as the “root” bone. The blue dot at the top is the actual skelton. The sphere is the geometry the engine uses for the background/lighting. Alternatively you can rename the Skeleton to “Armature” in Blender and Unreal will omit it on import. But this also yields erratic results. Using the “Sale Objects” tool.

Skelton named to “Genesis9”

Skeleton named to “Armature” Both used Scale Objects Tool

Imported at 1.0, units Changed to 0.01. Armature scaled to 100 and Renamed From Genesis 9 to Armature

I will not pretend to know exactly what is going on. All I know is that it works, and it works repeatedly. Allowing me to use the auto-retargeting stuff that comes with the Daz to Unreal Bridge to easily retarget to the UE5 Manny or Quinn Skeleton with little to no problem, if at all. As well it allows me to export with the Blender FBX exporter and no other addons to complicate things. Just import from daz, merge rigs, scale, apply scale, rename, export, import to Unreal.

Also sorry for the long Post. Not that any of this is exactly a problem just explaining why I’m going what I am doing. I came across the Simple IK rig stuff by accident while creating animations so that I could easily export using the base G9 Armature as I am still ironing out some of my pipeline. The whole idea is that I can use the same Skeletal mesh for Animations, Player Character, or an NPC. Lots of birds, one stone so to speak.

I fully acknowledge I could be doing things completely backwards and wrong while accidentally landing where I intended to. lol

[Thomas Larsson]

I tried to learn Unreal half a year ago, but I didn’t get very far, so I cannot tell what is going on. If both DS and UE use centimeters as units, the natural idea is to set the unit scale to 1.0 so 1 Blender Unit = 1 cm. That should work because Blender doesn’t have a preferred scale at the core. However, I have done almost all of the testing with unit scale = 0.01, so there might be bugs related to scale that I haven’t seen. I don’t see anything unusual when staying in Blender though.

Simulations do use meters, so if you use simulations there might be problems.

[Hardwire]

There has just always been issues with exporting from Blender to Unreal. For example the scale issue only effects armatures but no meshes. Just how it is sometimes.