Character

You have a character model, from an AI generator or anywhere else, and you want it standing, walking and jogging in your game. This template takes its .glb and gives you back one file with the character at its real size, cleaned up for a game, rigged with a skeleton that follows Mixamo’s joint names, with hair that swings as it moves, and carrying three ready-made animations: Idle, Walk and Jog.

Start

On the start screen, click Character under Create from Template. The new project opens on the sample elf that comes with Forge, with the markers and the hair already set up for it, and cooks. It is named Character; rename it any time by clicking its name in the menu bar.
The Import node is selected: choose your character’s .glb under File there, and the chain cooks again on it. Or drop the .glb on the card in step 1 to start with it straight away. Starting from File ▸ New from Template ▸ Character instead, you name the project first; it opens on the same sample.
Wait for the chain to cook. The viewport shows the Hair Physics node: your character, rigged, carrying all three clips with its hair swinging, exactly as it will export.
On the Transform node, set Fit length to the character’s real height, and turn Rotate Y until the character faces front (+Z, towards you in the Front view). Auto Rig needs it facing front.
Select the Auto Rig node and drag the nine markers onto the chin, the base of the neck, the wrists, the elbows, the knees and the groin. The skeleton follows as you drag. They start where they fit the sample elf.
Select the hair Curve and redraw its strands over your character’s hair, one strand per clump, root first. They start on the sample elf’s hair. No loose hair? Delete the Curve, Hair Guides and Hair Physics, and wire Auto Rig to the first Add Animation and the last Add Animation to Export.
Switch the viewport to the Rig view. The Motion picker lists the test motion, Idle, Walk and Jog: pick one and press play to watch it on your character.
On the Export node, choose a file inside your game project and click Export.

The chain

Import

Load the character.
Transform

Give it its real size, stand it on the ground and face it front.
Auto Rig

Build the skeleton and the skin weights.
Hair Guides

Add a chain of hair bones along each strand of the hair Curve.
Add Animation

Add Idle, then Walk, then Jog.
Hair Physics

Swing the hair through every clip and bake it in.
Export

Write the animated .glb.

Between Transform and Auto Rig sits Game-Ready Mesh, the cleanup subnet. A Curve feeds Hair Guides its strands. The template has three Add Animation nodes, one per clip.

Transform comes first. Fit size scales the character evenly so its height matches Fit length (180 cm to start), and Align stands it on the ground at the centre of the world. Rotate turns it to face front. It sits outside the cleanup on purpose: skipping the cleanup never skips the size and facing the rig depends on.
Game-Ready Mesh cleans the model the way the AI mesh cleanup template does: repairs cracks and fragments, caps small holes, reduces it to 20,000 triangles, gives it new UVs and bakes the textures back on at 2048 by 2048. If your character is already game-ready, right-click the node and choose Skip: the character passes straight through, untouched.
Auto Rig builds a 25-joint skeleton with Mixamo’s joint names and binds the surface to it. Fingers is None: each hand is one joint. Set it to Full if your character has five separate fingers on each hand.
Hair Guides reads one strand per contour of the hair Curve, root first, and adds a chain of five bones along each, hung from the nearest joint, then re-weights the hair to them. The template’s five strands are drawn on the sample elf’s hair.
Add Animation, three times: Idle, Walk and Jog, one clip each. Every clip plays in place and loops without a jump.
Hair Physics simulates the hair bones through every clip, colliding with the body, and bakes the swing into the clips. Nothing to set up in your engine: the hair moves wherever the clips play.
Export writes one .glb with the skinned character, its hair bones and its three animations, named Idle, Walk and Jog. Unreal, Unity (glTFast), Godot and Blender each import them as separate animations of the one character.

Settings worth changing

Transform ▸ Fit length: the character’s real height. Rotate Y: its facing.
Auto Rig: the nine markers, and Smoothing if a joint bends too sharply.
Game-Ready Mesh ▸ Target triangles: raise it for a hero character, lower it for crowds. Or Skip the node for a model that is already clean.
Add Animation: delete the clips you don’t need, or change a node’s Clip.
The hair Curve: one strand per clump of hair, drawn through its middle. Hair Physics ▸ Stiffness and Damping: how far and how long the hair swings.

Check the result

In the Rig view with no joint selected, each part of the surface takes the colour of the bone that moves it most. If an arm’s colour runs into the torso, or a knee’s into the other leg, move the markers until it stops. Play each clip in the Motion picker and look at the shoulders, elbows, hips and knees.

Limitations

Three clips. Idle, Walk and Jog are the clips Forge ships. You can’t add your own animation files yet.
In place only. Walk and Jog bob and sway but don’t move forward, and there is no root motion: your game’s character controller moves the character.
Unreal push is static. The Unreal Engine Output node sends the mesh without its rig and clips. Export a .glb and import that instead.
Bipedal characters. Auto Rig builds a human skeleton: two arms, two legs, one head.
Set up for the sample elf. The Auto Rig markers and the hair strands start where they fit the sample. On your own character, move the markers and redraw the strands.
The cleanup’s own limits. No LODs or collision, lighting painted into an AI model’s colours stays, and holes over the cleanup’s limit stay open. See AI mesh cleanup.
Unity needs glTFast. Install the glTFast package to import .glb files in Unity.