Very solid and crazy useful video. Thank you. For users bringing Motion Capture animation into Unreal 4.25 I can suggest a couple of tactics: Use A-pose on the mocap software skeleton export FBX if possible. Mine from Brekel Body 2 came in as T-pose. I clicked the T-pose as Frame Zero choice within Brekel and that helped. But inside Unreal 4.25.4 I had to first make sure I had imported the Brekel Skeleton so my Kinect 2 data had a skeleton to hang on. Once you can Import the FBX mocap animation into Unreal, you must match the T-pose of the Brekel/Kinect skeleton to the A-pose of the Unreal Mannequin - then your mocap animations can generally be retargeted to any Mannequin based character - and there are thousands. Unreal is tricky and vague on the T-pose problem. You bring the basic skeleton into the Retarging Manager and hit the Modify button at the bottom. Then raise the arms of the skeleton from A position to an arms-out-and-level T-pose. Then you have to Save this new Pose - find the Create Asset button at top Tool bar - sub menu Create PoseAsset - submenu Current Pose. Now you have a T-pose asset for retargeting. You also have to build a Rig in the Retargeting Manager for both your Source Mocap skeleton, in my case Brekel, and for the Mannequin skeleton (this is largely automatic since it is an Unreal asset to start with). Finally, you call up your FBX animation file inside your Unreal Project and right click the FBX file in your Content Window - find menu Retarget Animation Assets - sub menu Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget. This brings up the Skeleton Select pop up menu. Your source pane will be the skeleton of the FBX file. Identify the Target skeleton on the left side menu of this screen - your Rigged skeleton likely has an asterisk(*) icon next to the name. Click that skeleton and it should appear in the Target pane, remembering that it must be in the same A-pose or T-pose as the Source FBX skeleton to its left. Fix, if not. Add the Prefix as noted above, hit Retarget button lower left and you are in business. Like anything in Unreal, this may take some trial and error but it does work...
Are you going to release a IK retargeter for UE5? UE5 is now more than a year old and this would help everyone. I made a retargeter myself but it does weird things to the transition from pelvis to spline rotation.
im searching a way to use alembic to export animation from c4d/mograph and import in unreal and use skeleton/morph targhet to blend different animation. this process works only with 1 file(mesh/skeleton/animation), the animation in the second file has the same name, but in unreal there is no way to recognize to the other. there is a way to have the same sort of retargheting ?
I imported that Radical Skeleton but when you go to choose it...it ain't on the list. It eeps using the other character skeletons in the list but now radical. so only thing that comes in with a model with a weird moving head. :( How do you do it when it ain't the default project? The skeleton doesn't exist in other projects. How do you get it on a character that ain't the mannequin from Unreal? I have a ton of rigged UE$ models I want to use and so far it is not clear - do you have rig the radical model to the UE4 mannequin and one rigged you rig the 3rd model to the Ue4 mannequin? So initially rig 2 models? Radical to Ue4 Mannequin back to other model?
Hey appreciate the question - are you trying to use RADiCAL animations? The tutorial is geared towards retargeting in general, not just RADiCAL. If you have RADiCAL-specific issues I'd email their support, but if you're just trying to retarget two different skeletons, then you can just treat the RADiCAL skeleton as an example and replace it with the skeleton that already has the animations, and the Epic skeleton as the one you're trying to retarget the animations to. For more detail I'd suggest checking out the unreal engine docs at docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimHowTo/Retargeting/index.html
Do I correctly understand the "epic skeleton", if my character has 1. the bones hierarchy and 2. the names of those bones as SK_epic_games_mannequin in this video, my character is epic skeleton rigged, or it's not enough?
I get "Skeletons are not compatible" no matter what I do. Just don't understand what I'm doing wrong. To add context, I am trying to use different animations that I imported. Every time I go to drag the animation into the Anim_BP I get "Skeletons are not compatible".
this happen to me too i think is a poblem with the pose being just too different, and if you unselect the option "only show compatible skeletons" and force to use your skeleton it will make weird things
It's not very well explained how to match bones between ue4 mannikin and radical mannikin! At 02:29 you show both of them but not how to deal with renaming. I'm confused... and don't know what to do!
At 2:18 I show you the Set Up Rig section where you select the corresponding radical bone (right side) for each epic bone (left side). It's pretty fast in the video, but you can also download the sample project linked in the description, open up the asset and view all the mappings.
If I'm making my own custom character, and I just want as few bones as possible because they're pretty cartoony and don't need the crazy mannequin bone structure, does anyone know what the like minimum bones I need to add are so that I can still use marketplace/mixamo animations? Should I just rig it as if it were the mannequin anyways?
Bit late but in case anybody sees this, what you do is go to the retargeter, then change the translation mode to 'globally scaled' and then you go to the animation that needs the rootmotion, turn off rootmotion and force lock, then export the desired animation. Works for me
Very solid and crazy useful video. Thank you.
For users bringing Motion Capture animation into Unreal 4.25 I can suggest a couple of tactics:
Use A-pose on the mocap software skeleton export FBX if possible. Mine from Brekel Body 2 came in as T-pose. I clicked the T-pose as Frame Zero choice within Brekel and that helped. But inside Unreal 4.25.4 I had to first make sure I had imported the Brekel Skeleton so my Kinect 2 data had a skeleton to hang on.
Once you can Import the FBX mocap animation into Unreal, you must match the T-pose of the Brekel/Kinect skeleton to the A-pose of the Unreal Mannequin - then your mocap animations can generally be retargeted to any Mannequin based character - and there are thousands.
Unreal is tricky and vague on the T-pose problem. You bring the basic skeleton into the Retarging Manager and hit the Modify button at the bottom. Then raise the arms of the skeleton from A position to an arms-out-and-level T-pose. Then you have to Save this new Pose - find the Create Asset button at top Tool bar - sub menu Create PoseAsset - submenu Current Pose. Now you have a T-pose asset for retargeting.
You also have to build a Rig in the Retargeting Manager for both your Source Mocap skeleton, in my case Brekel, and for the Mannequin skeleton (this is largely automatic since it is an Unreal asset to start with).
Finally, you call up your FBX animation file inside your Unreal Project and right click the FBX file in your Content Window - find menu Retarget Animation Assets - sub menu Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget.
This brings up the Skeleton Select pop up menu. Your source pane will be the skeleton of the FBX file. Identify the Target skeleton on the left side menu of this screen - your Rigged skeleton likely has an asterisk(*) icon next to the name. Click that skeleton and it should appear in the Target pane, remembering that it must be in the same A-pose or T-pose as the Source FBX skeleton to its left. Fix, if not.
Add the Prefix as noted above, hit Retarget button lower left and you are in business.
Like anything in Unreal, this may take some trial and error but it does work...
Hey thank you for taking the time to share your tips! I've pinned your comment so that other people can see. Cheers :)
This might be the most useful rigging tutorial for unreal
This tutorial is golden!!!! Wow!!! Just tested this out with some mocap data in unreal with two separate rigs and it worked beautifully. Thank you!!!
You're a hero.
Are you going to release a IK retargeter for UE5? UE5 is now more than a year old and this would help everyone. I made a retargeter myself but it does weird things to the transition from pelvis to spline rotation.
3:57 lol the mannequin is flapping his wings trying to fly 😂
You have taught me a thing... I thank you.
4:22 Help! In my project there is nothing on the left list (even though the skeleton is clearly inside the game's content folder)
what if my skeleton is not a humanoid rig? The bone structure doesnt populate the "Set Up Rig" section of the retarget manager...
This is a great video with clear instruction. Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback! We have a live link retargeting tutorial uploading in a few hours.
Is there a way to retarget a few bones from an animation and another bone from another animation?
Great tutorial, thx bro.
Hi. Where is Regarget Manager in UE5? I need to convert Mixamo animation fbx to Metahuman from UE5. Heelp :)
HEy Pending , 😊 does it work the other way around ( Unreal Skeleton Animation to Other Skeleton from Blender , thanks
im searching a way to use alembic to export animation from c4d/mograph and import in unreal and use skeleton/morph targhet to blend different animation. this process works only with 1 file(mesh/skeleton/animation), the animation in the second file has the same name, but in unreal there is no way to recognize to the other.
there is a way to have the same sort of retargheting ?
I imported that Radical Skeleton but when you go to choose it...it ain't on the list. It eeps using the other character skeletons in the list but now radical. so only thing that comes in with a model with a weird moving head. :( How do you do it when it ain't the default project? The skeleton doesn't exist in other projects. How do you get it on a character that ain't the mannequin from Unreal? I have a ton of rigged UE$ models I want to use and so far it is not clear - do you have rig the radical model to the UE4 mannequin and one rigged you rig the 3rd model to the Ue4 mannequin? So initially rig 2 models? Radical to Ue4 Mannequin back to other model?
Hey appreciate the question - are you trying to use RADiCAL animations? The tutorial is geared towards retargeting in general, not just RADiCAL. If you have RADiCAL-specific issues I'd email their support, but if you're just trying to retarget two different skeletons, then you can just treat the RADiCAL skeleton as an example and replace it with the skeleton that already has the animations, and the Epic skeleton as the one you're trying to retarget the animations to.
For more detail I'd suggest checking out the unreal engine docs at docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimHowTo/Retargeting/index.html
Do I correctly understand the "epic skeleton", if my character has 1. the bones hierarchy and 2. the names of those bones as SK_epic_games_mannequin in this video, my character is epic skeleton rigged, or it's not enough?
Is there a possibility to retarget the Skeleton in real time? From Motion Capture Shadow system to UE rigged character?
I get "Skeletons are not compatible" no matter what I do.
Just don't understand what I'm doing wrong.
To add context, I am trying to use different animations that I imported.
Every time I go to drag the animation into the Anim_BP I get "Skeletons are not compatible".
this happen to me too i think is a poblem with the pose being just too different, and if you unselect the option "only show compatible skeletons" and force to use your skeleton it will make weird things
@@motionmx for some reason or another I was not getting the UE4 mannequin. I've made sure I got proper one for retargeting and this time it worked.
It may be that your skeleton types are not the same. They have to be either humanoid or whatever custom one you have.
It's not very well explained how to match bones between ue4 mannikin and radical mannikin! At 02:29 you show both of them but not how to deal with renaming. I'm confused... and don't know what to do!
At 2:18 I show you the Set Up Rig section where you select the corresponding radical bone (right side) for each epic bone (left side). It's pretty fast in the video, but you can also download the sample project linked in the description, open up the asset and view all the mappings.
I am doing this maybe 100 times and the same result is that hand and shoulder are not on correctly place. Any solution? Please
If I'm making my own custom character, and I just want as few bones as possible because they're pretty cartoony and don't need the crazy mannequin bone structure, does anyone know what the like minimum bones I need to add are so that I can still use marketplace/mixamo animations? Should I just rig it as if it were the mannequin anyways?
Gonna show how to setup the T pose?
Thanks so much
Bit late but in case anybody sees this, what you do is go to the retargeter, then change the translation mode to 'globally scaled' and then you go to the animation that needs the rootmotion, turn off rootmotion and force lock, then export the desired animation. Works for me
4:25 it doesn't show my Skeleton. do you know why and how i can change it?
Try checking that you have set up the retargeting manager in your custom skeleton, mapping the custom bones to the Humanoid Rig.
Why my character floats when i retarget animation from mannequin
It's getting so confusing. if I do not have to convert this to another.
You're an absoulte legend. I wish many free chicken nuggets upon you!
this tutorial is good, but we have problems with fingers :(
you can not just use a t pose you had from a animation, cause we don have it
Am I the only one where retargeting makes ue4 crash?