Hello everyone,
I am experiencing a critical issue with Character Creator 5 characters in Unreal Engine 5.8. The body skeleton completely fails to accept or process any third-party/external animations.
Below I have attached a YT video demonstrating the issue (the video also covers Cascadeur Live Link synchronization failure).
Symptoms / The Bug: When applying any external animation to a CC5 character in UE 5.8, the skeleton breaks completely:
- Bones become severely twisted and contorted.
- Limbs detach or fly off to the sides.
- The character mesh remains entirely static and doesn’t move, except for a single finger.
What DOES work:
- Facial Animation: Works perfectly as before (e.g., using the MetaHuman video-to-animation pipeline).
- CC5 HD Body Rig: Functions correctly, and the bones rotate properly within the rig itself.
The core issue is strictly tied to the body skeleton failing to retarget or play third-party animations.
Troubleshooting Steps Taken: I have spent a lot of time trying to isolate the problem:
- Tested multiple versions of Character Creator, Unreal Engine, and the Auto Setup plugin (see environment details below).
- I even used the “Migrate” function to transfer perfectly working CC5 characters from an older UE 5.6 project directly into a UE 5.8 project. Unfortunately, the exact same deformation issue persists in 5.8.
My Environment & Setup:
- Tested CC versions: CC 5.07 and CC 5.12
- Used plugins / setups:
- Auto Setup 1.41 for Unreal 5.6
- Auto Setup 2.01 for Unreal 5.6 (All-in-One)
- Auto Setup 2.03 for Unreal 5.6 (All-in-One)
- Auto Setup 2.03 for Unreal 5.8 (All-in-One)
- Versions of UE involved:
- UE 5.6.1 — Working great (same setup/pipeline works perfectly here).
- UE 5.8.1 — Not working.
- UE 5.8.2 — Not working.
Current specific setup where the video was recorded: UE 5.8.2; character from CC 5.12; Auto Setup 2.03 for Unreal 5.8 (All-in-One). Result: Complete failure when trying to use any animations (except animations imported directly from CC5).
Has anyone else encountered this complete skeletal break in 5.8, or is there a known workaround for the new UE version? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
VIDEO:
