Create a Custom Playermodel for Mod&Play

This guide will help you import a rigged playermodel into Mod&Play

Project Setup

To make a playermodel, you only need 3 things:

• A 3d modeling software, in this case Blender
  
• A rigged model
  
• The default playermodel for Mod&Play

To access the default playermodel, you'll need to download the Mod&Play SDK[github.com], however in order to have access to it you'll need to link your Github account to your Epic Games account[www.unrealengine.com]

Once that's done and you have successfully downloaded the sdk, open its editor:
ModandPlayEngine-4.25.1\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UE4Editor.exe

and export the default playermodel into an fbx. We'll later reimport this model into Blender.

Part 1: Align the Rigs

Import the default playermodel into Blender:
It's okay if it doesn't look right. After all we only need its rig, not its mesh.

Now import the model you want to import:(Make sure to make the model create its own armature) and scale it properly to fit the rig. A good practice is to scale your rig to 0.01 and then adjust the scale from there.

You will notice right away that they don't align properly, so we're gonna have to move our model's rig to match the positions of the UE rig. Delete the default playermodel's mesh, but do not move/rotate its rig in any way, or the playermodel will end up messed up in-game.


To move your character's rig, go into pose mode and then rotate its bones until its matching with the bones of the UE rig. You can also move the bones but you might risk deforming the mesh, so do it with caution.

Once the model is properly aligned, you need to apply the armature modifier in its mesh. This way the character's rig will apply its default position to always be like that.
Once you have done that, delete the model's rig and only leave its mesh. (you might need to scale it again)

Part 2: Rename the Vertex Groups

Now we have our model aligned with the rig, but that's not enough. We need to tell each part of the model which bone will affect it from now on. To do this we need to rename all of the model's vertex groups to the names of the UE rig's bones.To know its bone names, you can just open it up in the SDK editor and it'll show all of them to you
To help us see which vertex group affects what part of the body, let's go into "Weight Paint" mode in Blender. Be careful not to click on the mesh while on this mode, or you will apply some weight paint yourself to the group, and that's not what we want.
This model uses the ValveBiped rig which luckily it's very similar to the Mod&Play rig. However there are some vertex groups that might be separated into multiple ones, while in M&P there's only one vertex group to control that. For example, while the ValveBiped rigs supports up to 4 spine VGs, M&P only supports 3. So we need to merge 2 of those spine VGs to adapt them for M&P support.
The "Weight Paint Mix" modifier in Blender does exactly that.
Once you are done, your vertex groups should be like this:

Part 3: Parent the Bones and Export

You are now ready the apply the M&P rig to your perfectly set up model.

Once you have parented the objects, feel free to use the rig's pose mode to see if the bones are moving correctly. Finally, export the model as an FBX and open your SDK editor.
When you import the rig to UE, make sure to use the UE4_Mannequin skeleton on it.


If you've done everything correctly the imported model should now be able to play M&P animations.

What Now?

Now that you have a custom playermodel you can upload it to the workshop for everyone to use!
You can learn more about creating mods here[docs.google.com]