NULLSECTOR

Support & Contact Support Email: stoody.org@gmail.com or nullsectorproject@gmail.com Discord: NS MannyBridge Community Summary & Value Proposition Does it work for both First-Person (FP) and Third-Person (TP)? Yes. Because it utilizes the standard Manny rig, the toolkit fully supports both FP and TP animations. Save Your Animation Budget Custom, high-quality animation is expensive. NS MannyBridge is designed to drastically reduce the need to hire animators for scratch-made assets. This toolset allows you to effortlessly extract animations from existing projects (like Lyra or other FPS templates), retarget them, edit the poses, and reuse them across different weapons, items, or locomotion states. Note: Currently, the toolkit does not support UE4 to UE5 (or reverse) retargeting, as we wanted to focus purely on the UE5 standard. If there is enough community demand for UE4 support, we are open to adding it in a future update! What it is NS MannyBridge turns Blender 4.5 into a focused animation station for Unreal Engine 5's Manny skeleton. It closes the loop between the two DCCs: you import an FBX, the toolkit maps the rig onto Manny, you layer and clean the animation using tools designed specifically for that workflow, and you export straight back to UE. Everything lives under a single sidebar tab called NS MannyBridge in the 3D Viewport. This is not a general-purpose animation tool. It is specifically tuned for the Manny skeleton and the round-tripping FBX workflow that UE animators use day-to-day. Who it's for Solo developers and small teams shipping UE5 titles who cannot justify a full Maya or MotionBuilder license. Animators who already have a library of FBX mocap or keyframe animation and need it on Manny quickly. Anyone currently switching between Blender, a retargeter, a pose fixer, a keyframe reducer, and the FBX exporter, who simply wants one place to do all of that. What's in the box Mapper (nsmb_mapper): Analyzes any imported armature, identifies its bones, and generates a mapping onto the UE5 Manny skeleton. Works on clean FBX rigs and on rigs with unusual naming conventions. Produces a reusable mapping so you can re-retarget similar rigs in one click. Animation Stack (nsmb_layers): Non-destructive animation layering on top of Blender's native NLA system. Stack multiple passes, blend them, solo during review, and bake down to a single clean action for export. Includes influence keyframing, custom frame ranges per layer, selective bone baking, smart bake, scene-range-from-action shortcuts, and a cleanup pass that removes orphan baked actions. Constraints (nsmb_constraints): Virtual bone constraints that live outside the exported animation until you bake them. Supports Child Of, Copy Transforms, and Damped Track. Useful for rigging weapon parents, hand grips, prop follows, and IK-like behaviors without touching the skeleton Unreal expects. Includes a dedicated "Bake Constraints to Keys" operator that writes the evaluated motion into the action so the FBX export carries it. Smart Unbaker (nsmb_smart_unbaker): Reduces dense per-frame keys (the kind you get after baking mocap or constraints) down to editable curves without changing the visible pose. Includes per-fcurve tolerance, handle-type control, preview mode, and a bones-only or selection-only filter. Pose Library (nsmb_pose_library): Save and apply named poses with full bone-scope control. Stored as JSON so the library travels between projects cleanly. Includes select-by-pose, mirror, and a project-relative presets folder. Clean Keys to Markers (nsmb_clean_keys): Single-file utility that clears keyframes between two timeline markers, keeping the boundary keys intact. Useful when splicing and re-cutting mocap. How it fits together The standard workflow is modular and varies based on your needs, but generally looks like this: Import the source FBX (from Cascadeur, direct from UE, or another source. Note: If you need to use Mixamo or similar skeletons, we provide tutorial videos to guide you through the process). Use the Mapper to retarget the animation onto Manny (both the Mapper addon and the Manny reference rig are included). Clean the timeline by removing unneeded keyframes. Polish the animation using the included Animation Stack, Pose Library, and Constraints addons, then bake the result. (Optional) Unbake dense keyframes to clean curves if further manual editing is required. The current unbaker algorithm is highly functional, and the open-source nature of the tool means you can easily script additional algorithms if needed. Export the result back to UE5 as an FBX file. All tools are independent—install the full bundle or only the addons your pipeline requires. Requirements Blender 4.5 LTS or newer (Windows / macOS / Linux). Zero external dependencies: No external Python libraries, no network access, no telemetry.