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Control Rig

Procedural rigging system. Build IK solvers, secondary motion, dynamic pose modifications inside a node graph. Editor-first authoring + runtime evaluation.

Roles

Role Use
Animator-friendly rig In-editor manipulators for posing in Sequencer
Runtime IK Foot planting, hand-on-object, look-at
Retargeting Convert animation between skeletons
Procedural FX Dragon tail wagging, antenna swaying
Backwards solving Inverse-control bipeds (Mannequin-style controls)

Authoring

  1. Create a Control Rig Blueprint from a skeleton
  2. Open the Rig Hierarchy panel — add Controls (manipulators)
  3. In the Forward Solve graph, drive bones from controls
  4. In the Backwards Solve graph, derive controls from bones (for retargeting)

In AnimGraph

Drop a Control Rig node — feeds the current pose into the rig, lets it modify, outputs the modified pose. Use cases:

  • Foot IK — trace down from foot bone, plant on geometry
  • Aim look-at — orient head/spine toward a target
  • Weapon hold — IK both hands onto a weapon socket

In Sequencer

Animators can pose the rig directly in Sequencer using controls. The Cinematic team uses Control Rig for hand-posed cinematics layered over mocap.

Modular Control Rig (5.4+)

A library of pre-built rig modules (Biped, Quadruped, Bird) you compose. Reduces authoring time for new characters.

IK Rig vs Control Rig

Topic IK Rig Control Rig
Primary use Retargeting Procedural deformation
Authoring complexity Lower Higher
Runtime cost Lower Higher
Sequencer authoring No Yes

Use IK Rig for retargeting between skeletons; Control Rig for procedural pose modification.

Performance

  • Control Rig graph evaluation is per-instance — heavy rigs can dominate animation cost.
  • Optimize with LOD Threshold on the AnimGraph node.
  • Profile with stat AnimationParallelEvaluation.

See also