Blender addon for animating Unreal Engine 5 Manny & Quinn characters.
This project provides a custom rigging and animation workflow that makes it easier to create Blender animations compatible with Unreal’s default characters.
As an independent animator and game developer, I often struggled to find a shared workflow between Blender and Unreal Engine.
Unreal provides Manny/Quinn as default demonstration characters, but creating animations for them in Blender is difficult.
Existing solutions are either outdated or missing features I need.
So I developed this addon for my own workflow and now share it as a free public test version.
- This is a test build: some features may be incomplete or unstable.
- I cannot guarantee that every current feature will remain in future releases.
- The main purpose of this release is to collect feedback and feature suggestions.
- If your suggested feature is accepted, you will receive the official version for free once it is released.
- Official releases will come with 1 year of free updates (starting from release date).
- Download the latest release from the Gumroad – Kenny's Quinn Alpha page.
- In Blender, go to Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install...
- Select the
.zipfile and enable the addon.
A tutorial video will be provided to explain usage in detail.
For now, please refer to the documentation in this repository and experiment with the rig layers.
The addon organizes bones into four layers, each with a clear purpose:
- Manny/Quinn’s original bones.
- Cannot be modified.
- Final animations are baked here.
- Only these bones deform the mesh.
- Bridges Manny/Quinn’s skeleton with Blender’s bone system.
- Makes imported bones Blender-friendly.
- Implements mechanical logic (IK, auto pole, spine bending, etc.).
- Complex setup is concentrated here.
- Exposed bones for animators.
- Designed to be minimal but functional.
- Uses proxies to avoid dependency cycles.
- Each layer only affects the next layer (Ori ← Int ← Mch ← Ctl).
- Cross-layer dependencies are forbidden.
- Cycles are strictly disallowed, except controlled proxies in the Ctl layer.
- Please open an Issue for bugs, feature requests, or design discussions.
- Feedback is especially welcome on rig usability and animation export workflow.
- Improve IK/FK switching
- Optimize proxy handling
- Add more animation-friendly controllers
- Improve compatibility with third-party animations
This test version is free to use, but the final release will be distributed via Gumroad.