Control Rig
Animation & MotionControl Rig node-based rigging: in-engine skeletal manipulation with FK, IK, full-body IK, retargeting, and Sequencer integration.
/skill control-rig What this skill does
Control Rig gives you expert guidance on UE5's node-based rigging system for in-engine skeletal manipulation. This skill covers creating Control Rig assets, working with FK and IK solvers (including full-body IK, CCDIK, and FABRIK), using Control Rig in Sequencer for posing and keyframing, setting up IK Rigs and IK Retargeters for animation transfer between skeletons, and building procedural animation behaviors like foot placement and look-at targeting. Control Rig is essential for both hand-keyed cinematic animation and runtime procedural motion.
Covers
- Control Rig asset creation and graph editor
- FK and IK solvers (basic limb, full-body, CCDIK, FABRIK)
- Control Rig in Sequencer (posing, keyframing)
- IK Rig and IK Retargeter
- Procedural animation (foot placement, look-at, aim offset)
- Bone manipulation nodes
- Space switching
- MetaHuman Control Rig integration
Does not cover
- Animation Blueprint state machines → animation-playback
- MetaHuman import and LOD → metahuman-setup
- Facial capture → face-capture
- External DCC rigging → external tools
How to use
Invoke directly in Claude Code:
/skill control-rigThis skill is also auto-detected when your prompt mentions Control Rig, IK, FK, bone manipulation, pose, rigging, retarget, or full-body IK intent. AgentUX will automatically activate Control Rig when it recognizes you are working with skeletal rigging or procedural animation.
Key Unreal Engine concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| UControlRig | The core asset that defines a node-based rig graph for manipulating a skeleton, usable in Sequencer for hand-keyed animation and at runtime for procedural motion. |
| UControlRigComponent | A component that attaches a Control Rig to an actor at runtime, enabling procedural animation behaviors like foot IK and look-at tracking. |
| IK Solvers | Algorithms that compute bone rotations to reach a target position: including basic two-bone limb IK, CCDIK for chains, and FABRIK for flexible multi-joint solving. |
| IK Rig | An asset that defines IK chains on a skeleton, serving as the foundation for the IK Retargeter to map animations between different skeletons. |
| IK Retargeter | A mapping asset that transfers animations between two skeletons by matching IK chains rather than individual bones, handling proportion differences automatically. |
| Full Body IK | A whole-skeleton IK solver that adjusts the entire body pose to satisfy multiple end-effector targets simultaneously, producing natural full-body adjustments. |
| FABRIK | Forward And Backward Reaching Inverse Kinematics: an iterative solver well-suited for tentacles, tails, and multi-joint chains. |
| CCDIK | Cyclic Coordinate Descent IK: an efficient solver that rotates each joint in a chain iteratively toward the target, suitable for organic limb motion. |
Related skills
animation-playback
Play back and blend character animations
metahuman-setup
Import and configure MetaHuman characters
sequencer-basics
Use Sequencer for cinematics
What you'll learn
- How to create Control Rig assets and build rig graphs for skeletal manipulation
- Setting up IK solvers for natural limb, chain, and full-body posing
- Using Control Rig in Sequencer for precise hand-keyed character animation
- Retargeting animations between different skeletons with IK Rig and IK Retargeter
- Building runtime procedural behaviors like foot placement and look-at tracking