5.6 Animation Retargeting Bug

Development Character & Animation
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I use Mixamo animations to test and demo retargetting.

When retargetting an animation to a Metahuman in 5.6, I am getting very different results than in 5.5. Attaching image.

RetargetBugSM
RetargetBugSM1920×506 135 KB

I used an identical process to import the character and retarget the animation.

I realize that a manual retarget will resolve, but it is definitely worth reporting, and wondering if anyone else is experiencing this.

I assume something has changed with the actual bone structure in the Metahumans (not likely), or the automatic retargetting feature in 5.6 is unfinished or changed.

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For now, retargeting is broken on 5.6.

Even if you export the third-person SK mannequin from 5.6 to reimport it under a different name and then try retargeting on the SK mannequin, thus using the same names on both sides, it won’t work. You’ll get this error message: “IK Retargeter bone chain, Root, was unable to be normalized. Chain too short.”

I tried this after cloning a project and found that all my animations were broken, since even those that had been retargeted on a previous version will be broken again at the hand level.

It’s currently not possible to use these functions, at least I haven’t found them yet; I think we’ll have to wait for a patch.

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I was able to retarget Rokoko mocap animations to the Metahuman 2.0 character skeletal mesh in 5.6 without issue (besides the usual clean-up etc.). Need to test again with Mixamo animations though.

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Successfully retargetted Mixamo animation sequence to MetaHuman 2.0 character. Might be a band aid solution, but it’s pretty clean and simple:

  • Import Mixamo animation WITHOUT selecting a skeleton in import dialogue
  • Note a Skeleton asset was imported
  • Open the MH 2.0 character BP, select body, open character Skeletal Mesh (‘SKM_Character Name_BodyMesh’)
  • Open Skeleton (‘metahuman base skel’)
  • Add the Mixamo imported skeleton to the list of compatible skeletons
  • Save everything
  • Right-click on imported Mixamo Animation Sequence > Retarget Animation
  • Select character Skeletal Mesh (‘SKM_Character Name_BodyMesh’) as target
  • Select animation, choose path, export animation…

Give it a shot…

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I’ve noticed this bug in UEFN too. Hopefully they fix it, as even the default mannequin retargeted to himself won’t work.

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This worked for me, my 5.6 Metahuman can use Mixamo animations again, thank you Emerging

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Does EPIC know about this bug, and is there a plan to fix it anytime soon?

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I also didn’t get retargeting on the same skeleton with different skeletal meshes (pelvic height is different). What helped me was that in the new settings I first added standard Ops and then removed Root and IK. After that, everything started working fine. I also set up Translation Offset in Pelvis.

image
image322×189 8.57 KB

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Has anyone found a solution to this yet, or has EPIC said anything about it?

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Yeah, retargeting has been generally bugged in 5.6… I hope they fix it going forward because it’s a bit of a hassle.

But I think, I’ve found a reliable workaround:

  1. Retarget the animation you need in a 5.5 project.
  2. Export the retargeted animation as FBX.
  3. Import the FBX into your 5.6 project.

This worked for me.

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Thank you, that solved my issue!

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For my animations it was the new ue5.6 manny skeleton if i choose the older mannequins (the silver ones) it worked. So by assigning skeletons i was succesfull

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