Character Control Rig targets a very specific pain point: imported MetaHuman bodies inside Blender look like a rig, feel like a rig, and still do not behave like an animator-friendly rig. The add-on generates a Rigify control rig for an existing MetaHuman skeleton in Blender. The workflow starts with a generated metarig that snaps to the source skeleton using an automatic matching process, then moves to a one-click control rig generation step that binds the controls to the original skeleton and hooks into the existing MetaHuman evaluation stack. In other words, it tries to turn a MetaHuman import into something you can actually pose without getting another carpal tunnel.

Requirements

There are three requirements: Blender 4.5.0 or later (tested through 5.1), the Character DNA add on installed and enabled, and Rigify enabled in Blender preferences. If your studio-standard build is earlier than Blender 4.5, that becomes the first pipeline discussion. If Rigify stays disabled in your templates, the add on does not magically enable it for you.

The UE 5.7 detour is the retargeting trick

The workflow takes motion-capture-style animation from Mixamo, retargets it onto MetaHumans in Unreal Engine 5.7, then moves the results into Blender to animate on top of FK controls. Unreal Engine 5.7 matters here because the workflow uses retargeting features new to 5.7, including templates for popular skeletons. Unreal is basically selecting a Mixamo template for the source skeleton by reading bone names and matching them to the template, then retargeting it to each MetaHuman body.

The tutorial creates two MetaHuman characters with slightly different skeletal proportions, retargets the same animations onto each, and exports per character animation assets. This is the part where you should assume nothing and verify everything, especially if your show already standardized on a different Unreal point release.

Blender side, you get a metarig first and control rig second

Once the MetaHuman DNA files exist, the tutorial imports the characters into Blender via the Character DNA add on, then uses Character Control Rig to generate Rigify rigs per character. The add on exposes view options that let you turn off rig logic evaluation on head and body components and toggle related elements like RBFs, texture masks, shape keys, and bone transforms. It then lets you choose a rig framework. The tutorial states that it currently supports Rigify only, while the design leaves room for other rig frameworks later.

MetaHuman DNA add-on for RBF editor

From there, the add on generates a metarig on the selected rig instance. It is snapped into position and fitted to the bones, with manual adjustment available before committing. After that, generate control rig produces a functioning control rig that updates while RigLogic evaluation runs. That is the core pitch: two clicks and you are ready to animate. Yes, that is a marketing claim, and you should still budget time for checking deformation, constraints, and naming collisions.

The multi-character part matters too. The developer says each rig is namespaced to avoid collisions, and the tutorial demonstrates generating separate rigs for two characters with different proportions using an auto snapping algorithm. Somewhere around here, your anmiation lead will ask if the rig behaves predictably under shot specific scale hacks. The only honest answer is to test your own worst habits.

Getting motion onto the FK controls

The tutorial imports body animations from Unreal into Blender and bakes them onto FK controls for the Rigify rig, using the Rigify tools for FK IK switching and baking from FK to IK in actions.

Animation support includes face board import from Unreal to Blender, face board export from Blender to Unreal, and body FK import and export in both directions. It also lists body FK auto retargeting from animation marketplaces, but that feature does not appear in the material we could find.

The add on also positions face board animation export as a direct path from Blender to the MetaHuman Control Rig in Unreal Engine. If you live in Sequencer, this is the part you will care about: you can keep your final runtime character in Unreal while still doing keyframing and clean-up work in Blender, then round-trip the result.

Pricing

An individual perpetual license is at $29.99 and team licenses starting at $99.99. The Character DNA Addon page does provide specific pricing. Since you also need the Blender Character DNA Addon, you’ll also need an Individual license at $79 one time and an Indie Dev Team license at $259 one time, with platform support for Windows, ARM MacOS, and Linux. The code for the addon is available on GitHub, while separately describing a purchasable build tool workflow and a compiled module related to the bone auto fitting algorithm. Depending on how you want to add all of it to your specific pipeline.

So plan for two purchases if you start from zero, and confirm licensing terms in your legal review before you roll it into a studio wide tools image.

What to test before you trust it on a deadline

Rig generation pipelines fail in predictable ways, and none of them care about your delivery date. Test how the generated Rigify controls behave under layered animation, constraints, and shot specific offsets. Test export and re import with your exact Unreal project settings. Test a multi character scene with your usual naming conventions and collection layout. Test any facial workflow claims with your real range of motion, not a polite demo clip.

https://www.polyhammer.com/character-control-rig-addon

The post Poly Hammer brings MetaHumans to Blender Rigify first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Epic Games has published Automotive Substrate Materials as a free download on Fab. The pack is built entirely on Substrate and is positioned as a production-ready material foundation for automotive visualization, with the explicit goal of delivering consistent results across Lumen and Path Tracing workflows. In practical terms: it is a big, curated library meant to reduce the amount of time artists spend reinventing “car paint, but again” in every new project.

Compatibility is spelled out, too: the materials are compatible with Unreal Engine 5.7.3 and later. If your studio is still emotionally attached to an older engine branch, this pack is not going to negotiate with you.

What is inside the pack

Epic’s own breakdown is specific, which is always a good sign on a Monday (We prefer small words in the Mornings, and even smaller words and easy, short sentences on a Monday Morning.). Automotive Substrate Materials includes 280 automotive-focused materials covering common vehicle material types. It also includes 150 material setup assets and roughly 50 reusable material templates (Fab’s listing calls this 47 templates).

On top of the materials themselves, there are two maps meant to serve as reference and validation spaces: a “zoo-style” overview map organised by material type, plus a calibrated look-development map built for high-quality automotive rendering.

The pack is not just a dump of nodes and textures. Epic frames it as a ground-truth reference for game development as well, meaning you can use it as a baseline for physically plausible values and repeatable results, even if the end product is not a configurator shot of a hyper-polished BMW coupe turning slowly in a void, without any other cars, which is the preferred state of being for BMW drivers. Otherwise, I can’t explain their behaviour on the streets.

Why Substrate matters here

Substrate is Unreal Engine’s newer material framework, designed to support more modular and expressive material authoring than the older fixed shading model approach. In this pack, Epic leans on that flexibility to cover surface and layering behaviour that was described as difficult or impractical with previous material systems. The examples are the usual automotive suspects, but done with the kind of detail that tends to break “generic” shaders: multi-coat car paints (single-, dual-, and triple-coat), waxed leathers, and advanced translucent materials with renderer-specific behaviour. (Indicators, which is useless if you render BMWs, but useful for all other cars.)

Epic also calls out complex surface responses, including glints and coloured glints, thin-film interference, anisotropy, perforation with masking, plus controlled imperfections such as fingerprints and scratches. There are also production-friendly controls for colour (tint and HSV) and map-driven parameters such as roughness and specular, alongside flexible mapping options, including UV and triplanar workflows. That is a long list, but the short version is: the pack is built to survive close-ups and does not assume your camera will politely stay far away. And this time, we are avoiding the BMW-in-the-rearview-mirror-joke.

One detail that will matter for pipeline sanity is that Epic says the materials are built on a shared library of reusable material functions encapsulating common behaviours such as base colour handling, roughness and specular control, triplanar projection, imperfections, anisotropy, emissive behaviour, and perforation. That modular architecture is presented as a way to keep results consistent and reduce duplication, which is the unglamorous kind of promise that actually saves teams money. Money you could spend on a company car, like a BMW.

Measured data, Blueprint lookup, and the “trust me, it’s calibrated” problem

Epic states that material parameters are derived from lab experiments and real-world measurements, providing physically accurate defaults for automotive scenarios. For metals specifically, measured data is exposed through a Blueprint lookup tool intended to help teams select and compare metal presets while keeping values consistent across a project.

The calibration story continues on the environment side: Epic says the lighting in the look development map has been cross-checked using luminance and colour temperature meters, along with photogrammetry-based measurements, and calibrated for both Lumen and the Path Tracer. The stated intent is that you can use the map as a reproducible validation environment for automotive visualisation and game development.

This is the quiet subtext of the whole release: the pack is not only “free materials” but it is also Epic handing you a reference lab in project form. Your future self, debugging why a clear coat looks different between render modes, may send you a thank-you card. Or a passive-aggressive Jira ticket. And I’ve run out of BMW jokes.

Fab listing: Automotive Substrate Materials on Fab (Fab.com)

Additional Notes:

Uses standard texture samplers (Virtual Textures not enabled by default).

Substrate must be enabled with Adaptive GBuffer.

Separate materials provided where Lumen and Path Tracing differ.

Includes calibrated physical camera exposure based environment for validation.

Emissive values support physically accurate luminance (nits).

Decals suggest using Decal Actors.

The post 280 free automotive Substrate materials for UE 5.7 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.