Rodin (Hyper3D) character to Unreal Engine 5: rig it for the Manny skeleton

What Rodin gives you

• •Pose: Hyper3D says Rodin generation is pose-free and lets you pick an A-pose or T-pose; in the API, TAPose asks for a rest pose suitable for animation on a human-like subject. Pick the A-pose for UE5, since Manny's rest pose has the arms angled down.
• •Mesh: triangle or quad topology at a face count you choose when you confirm the model (the Gen-2.5 API takes 500 to 2,000,000 faces, quads up to 200,000), with a PBR texture set that includes base color, normal, metallic, roughness and ambient occlusion.
• •Downloads: GLB, FBX, OBJ, USDZ and STL.
• •Rigging in the API: the Rigging endpoint rigs a confirmed Rodin model or a model you upload. Its skeleton templates are human, quadruped, bird, dragon, kaiju and custom, plus human_UE, human_Unity and human_ActorCore, which Hyper3D describes as the Unreal Engine, Unity and ActorCore skeleton templates. Skinning is shell (smoother, general) or core (tighter, made for humanoids), a request can add up to 10 stock animations or your own FBX clips, and the result comes as GLB, FBX or USDZ. The docs list a base price of 0.5 credits.
• •API access: Hyper3D's pricing page lists full API access on the Business plan ($120 a month, or $96 a month billed yearly). The Creator plan ($30 a month) does not list it, and the Free plan pays by result at $1.5 a credit.
• •In the browser: Hyper3D announced ACT, rigging and animation for humans, animals and creatures, on October 7, 2026. We could not open a public page that describes it, so this guide says nothing about how it works or what it costs.
• •Faces: ChatAvatar, a separate Hyper3D product, makes avatar packages with facial controls, blendshapes, ARKit-compatible expressions, visemes and lip-sync. Its commercial license is listed on the Business plan.

Why a Rodin rig may not play Manny animations as is

An Unreal animation belongs to a skeleton asset: its bone names, hierarchy and rest orientations. The UE5 Manny skeleton has 89 bones, including five spine bones, two neck bones, paired twist bones on every limb, finger metacarpals and IK helper bones. Rodin's plain human template is a different skeleton as far as Unreal is concerned, so Manny clips need retargeting onto it.

The human_UE template is the closest Rodin gets. Hyper3D calls it the Unreal Engine skeleton template but does not list its bones, and we have not run it. Test it: import the FBX choosing the project's SK_Mannequin as the skeleton and play a Manny clip. If the importer will not use that skeleton or the forearms twist, use one of the routes below.

One more thing to know before you send your own file to the Rigging API: Hyper3D says an uploaded model's embedded materials and textures are not kept, and textures are made again from a reference image. A confirmed Rodin model keeps its textures.

Route 1: keep the Rodin rig and retarget in UE5

• •Rig the Rodin model through the API with the human template (or test human_UE first) and download FBX.
• •Import the FBX into UE5 and let the importer create a new skeleton. Check the height against the default mannequin.
• •Create an IK Rig for the Rodin skeleton: retarget root on the hips, chains for the spine, head, both arms and both legs.
• •Create an IK Retargeter from the UE5 mannequin's IK Rig to the Rodin one, fix the retarget pose until the arms match, and preview a clip.
• •Batch-retarget the Manny animations you need into their own folder. Repeat for every new pack you adopt.

Route 2: rig the Rodin mesh to the Manny skeleton with RigMaster

• •In Rodin, generate the character with the A-pose (or T-pose) option, confirm it at a face count your game can carry, and download it as GLB without a rig.
• •Upload the GLB to RigMaster. It takes GLB or glTF files up to 100 MB and offers a free reduction in the page for very dense meshes, keeping your original.
• •Place the 18 joint markers, or press Suggest markers to have them placed from the silhouette and then check each one. On the Rodin characters in our own test set it found 16 or 17 of the 17 joints it suggests.
• •Pick the fingers per hand: 5, 4 or 3 fingers, or Mitten.
• •Rig it for 15 credits. Each rig includes 5 free polish rounds, so you can move a marker and run it again.
• •Download the FBX and import it into UE5, choosing the project's SK_Mannequin as the skeleton. Or use Apply in UE5 with the free desktop app, which also creates an IK Rig, an IK Retargeter from Manny and a Physics Asset beside the mesh.
• •Optional: need the same character in Unity or Godot too? The finished rig converts free to a Mixamo-named FBX or a Godot humanoid glTF.

Fingers and face

• •Fingers: a rig can only bend fingers the mesh separates. The Rodin characters in our test set had their fingers fused into one block, and RigMaster rigs a hand like that as a mitten: it bends at the wrist and the fingers move together. If your game needs fingers that grip, ask Rodin for open hands with gaps between the fingers, or separate them in Blender before rigging.
• •Face: RigMaster's face rig, on paid plans, adds a jaw, plus eyes and eyelids where the mesh has eyeballs and lids. If the eyes are only painted on, you get the jaw. For expressions and lip-sync from the start, Hyper3D's ChatAvatar is built for that job.

Clean up the Rodin mesh first

• •Pose: an A-pose rigs and plays best with Manny animations. If a character came out mid-pose, generate it again with the pose option on.
• •Face count: skin weights are stored per vertex, so reduce before rigging, not after. Rodin lets you set the face count when you confirm the model; RigMaster accepts dense meshes and offers a free reduction in the page.
• •Scale: RigMaster exports in centimetres at the mannequin's height by default (an option keeps your model's own height), so UE's default import scale of 1.0 is right. For Rodin's own rig, compare the import with the mannequin, as Hyper3D's export help suggests for units and axes.
• •Facing: the character should face forward, along glTF's +Z. A sideways GLB is quickest to fix in Blender: rotate, apply rotation, export.
• •Props and loose parts: Rodin can generate a character with clothing and props in one mesh. RigMaster binds each loose piece (hair, a hat) rigidly to the bone it touches; a sword or gun is better removed and attached in Unreal to a socket.
• •Compression: export without meshopt compression. RigMaster refuses meshopt GLBs with a message saying so; Draco is fine.

Rodin rig, Unreal template, retargeting or RigMaster: compared

Honest limits

• •RigMaster rigs humanoids only. Rodin's templates cover quadrupeds, birds, dragons and kaiju; for a creature, use them or a hand rig in Blender.
• •RigMaster has no animation library of its own; Manny packs and MotionSmith motions play on its rig. If Rodin's stock animations are what you want, keep Rodin's rig.
• •Neither tool repairs bad input. Fused limbs, holes and a mid-pose character rig badly in Rodin and in RigMaster, and fused fingers stay a mitten.
• •Auto-rigged generated meshes suit prototypes, NPCs and jams. A hero character close to the camera may still want weight cleanup by hand.
• •RigMaster rigs one character per upload; there is no batch mode.
• •Hyper3D's features and prices change, and ACT is new. The facts here are from its pages on the date above.

Try it first

• •Free UE5 skeleton checker: drop a Rodin-rigged FBX or GLB to compare its bones with Manny's in your browser, no account and no upload
• •RigMaster sample character: the empty upload screen has "Try it with a sample character", a CC0 knight you can rig with a new account's free credits before you upload your own
• •Meshy, Tripo, Rodin and Hunyuan3D rig routes compared: which generator rigs what, and which skeleton you end up with

Sources

Rodin and Hyper3D facts on this page come from these pages, read on October 29, 2026. RigMaster facts come from our own product.

• •Rodin API docs: Rigging: skeleton templates including human_UE, skinning methods, animations, output formats, the 0.5-credit base price
• •Rodin API changelog: the Rigging docs added in October 2026
• •Rodin API docs: Gen-2.5: the T-pose or A-pose option, face counts, file formats
• •Hyper3D pricing: plans, API access on Business, the ChatAvatar license
• •Hyper3D: character design: pose choice, the PBR set, export formats
• •Hyper3D help: topology, polycount and LODs
• •Hyper3D: ChatAvatar: facial controls, blendshapes, ARKit-compatible expressions, visemes
• •Hyper3D ACT announcement on Reddit: October 7, 2026, a video post

Frequently asked questions