About this tutorial

Learn how to rig a complete tank in Blender and prepare it for the Chaos Vehicles system in Unreal Engine 5. In Part One of this UE5 tank series, we’ll create an animation-ready skeletal rig for the wheels, deformable tracks, suspension, rotating turret, cannon movement, and barrel recoil.

Because tanks contain so many wheels, rigging everything manually can quickly become repetitive. We’ll use Blender scripting to speed up the wheel-rigging process, create smooth track deformation, and prepare dedicated track UVs so the material can move correctly around the belt during gameplay.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

Prepare and separate the tank’s movable parts
Create a clean root bone hierarchy
Rig all movable components, including the wheels, turret, cannon, and barrel
Use Blender scripting to automate repetitive tasks and speed up the rigging workflow
Create helper bones for track suspension and deformation
Weight-paint the tracks using smooth gradients
Prepare dedicated UVs for animated track movement
Properly export the completed skeletal mesh for Chaos Vehicles in Unreal Engine 5

🔗 Resources used in this video: Tank Model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/tank-t-34-01af3ca4a7bf41ebbd5f1986edeb77fd