An Early Start

In 2021, I built an Unreal Engine Control Rig that launched a generation of automotive animation. What started as my own personal experiment at Impossible Objects—in an attempt to build our own vehicle pipeline—slowly empowered a wave of remote talent. Car rigs existed a long time before I started noodling, but no one had done it in Unreal Engine at the time.

Miles Cable, a commercial director and talented Unreal artist, joined forces and the 2nd official use of my rig became his expertly crafted Alfa Romeo spot. We worked on several automotive spots together before he went on to create his own venture, Bodega Virtual, where his undeniable talent continues.

Constant Upgrades

In parallel with Miles, I continued developing the Control Rig, and eventually it became fully procedural out of pipeline necessity. For the Impossible Objects Cadillac campaign, I adjusted the rig so that it spawned all the necessary joints & offsets, meaning that as long as a skeletal naming convention was followed in the initial prep of the vehicle geometry, adding the Control Rig in Unreal was as simple as a copy/paste.

Having picked up Houdini in the last couple of years, I also eventually built an HDA that does all of the geometry prep for you. With a few quick geometry selections, the source data for Unreal (as FBX or USD) is nicely organized.

The Next Generation

Artists like Post Processed helped to generate both amazing content and training materials for this type of automotive work, and eventually Amir from Mad Goat Studio built his own version of a rig that has since surpassed my own in every way. Known as the Cinematic Car Rig for Unreal Engine, this thing is absolutely amazing, and worth every penny. If you're interested in animating cars, start there!