Is it ok to skin the character in A-Pose (it’s great for difficult areas like shoulder-arm) and then export the Skeletal Mesh with T-Pose as reference pose? Does this procedure create any problem when importing to unreal? (I’m using 3ds Max)
Unreal doesn’t care what pose your character is in when it’s imported. T-pose, A-pose, heck I imported mine in the start of his idle pose (arms down at his side).
Basically that. The only time you ever need to worry about A-pose vs T-Pose is if you’re re-targeting animations, and even then, that can be overcome.
Can you tell me how? I’m trying to retarget animations right now. Skeleton with animations is in A-pose, but the other one is in T-pose. I know I can edit the pose, but I can’t get it to match good enough, the animations are still off.
I’d like to know this as well.
u can export both meshes , in my case i use c4d then use retarget tag so the T pose match perfectly A pose, reimport ur mesh to ue4 retarget the animations.
Have you read “Retargeting a Base Pose” at the bottom of the following documentation. I believe it describes in detail exactly how to do what you are trying to do:
I did read it. But if I understand correctly the bones must have the exact same rotation for the best retargetting and I can’t do that well enough. The animations always look a lot worse than if I start with both skeletons in T-pose.
I wish there was a feature to auto T-Pose or something like that.
The joints need to be facing the same direction initially in the base pose (T-pose or A-pose) for the animation to work properly, so you will need to correct this in your 3D modeling program from the start. However, if the animations are simply distorted, you may be able to fix this by selecting all joints, selecting advanced features in the skeleton, and then applying: “Recursively Set Translation Retargeting Skeleton”
I find it really redundant to repose my skeleton mesh every time. It’s a waste of time especially when people like me, non animator, that isn’t going to add any custom animation to it. But still we have to repose every single mesh that I bought to match the A-POSE or T-POSE. If you forced the animators to match the A-POSE at least force the mesh characters to match the A-POSE as well. Quality is very important to many of us and “you may be able to fix this” isn’t what we want.
I really like the idea of an auto T-POSE as mention above. That should solve everyone problems.
I wrote “if the animations are simply distorted, you may be able to fix this by” because I’m not sure what the cause of the distorted animations is for sure in those instances, since I’ve tested the tutorials on retargetting ASP animations to the Mixamo S.W.A.T character and they worked without a hitch. If you will describe to me which specific characters you are having problems retargetting, I will see if I can resolve the issue or I will submit an official feature request for an automatic T-Pose as you have suggested.
Thanks for the feedback.
I can never get the fingers correctly. I followed the doc’s and tutorials. I just can’t get them to match nicely. This was tested on Mixamo character as well. I can get it eventually with lots and lots of tweaking. Again it’s time consuming. But the main problem for me is having to redo this every time I get a new animation set. Then struggling to tweak it to perfectly match the poses again. It becomes tedious. Its like programming you don’t want to do the same code over and over. Thats why we make macro/functions. It should apply here as well. I recently just got the Dialog Animation and now I have to match it the the T-POSE. Then if I start a new project I have rematch it again but also I have many more animation and have to repose them again to T-POSE. It really becomes an unnecessary process. That’s why I believe the automatic T-POSE is necessary.
Thanks for replying in more detail about why you’d like to see this feature. I have used this information and comments from others on this thread to enter a feature request for “Auto T-Pose:” JIRA[UE-19768]. If this feature is implemented, we will post an update to this thread.
In the meantime, a couple of suggestions:
I realize you’ve said you’ve read the documentation, but the section “Retargeting Adjustments” specifically addresses fingers with different bone numbers and how this can *sometimes easily be addressed by recursively setting translation retargeting to the Skeleton. (Disregard this if it does not apply to your specific situation.)
If you retarget to a skeleton in one project and *migrate those assets to a new project that uses the same source skeleton, you should not have to do this again.
Hi,
I am trying to retarget between A and T poses and bumps into the same problem. Don’t have much to add, except i am also interested in a solution 
The problem is that retargeting a base pose is necessary and yet isn’t currently an easy process.
The documentation describes how to retarget a base pose manually, but you have to do this with your mouse, which is very not precise, unless you spend hours tuning every tens of degrees on each bone. And if you’re not a experienced animator, even then you end up with a poor result.
So it would be super nice to have a way to T Pose the ue4 mannequin, either with a button, or at least by adding a clean T pose in the animation starter pack for example, and a way to quickly make that the reference pose for the ue4 mannequin.
Cheers !
Cedric
Please God yes! I am porting my project from unity and unity has no problems re targeting with different poses. I’m not sure how it does it but if unreal can fix it by forcing the bind poses to match so I don’t have to manually do it for hours then I would die of happiness. In my opinion unreal beats unity everywhere except for this one issue.
Same problem here. I have mixamo animations and am trying to retarget them to the mannequin. I have all bones (except root and pelvis) in the mannequin set to “recursive skeleton” (helps a lot) but as long as I do not have a perfect TPose, there always is something slightly off. I have to say, the whole retargetting issue would be much easier to grasp, if the default mannequin stayed TPose instead of being changed to APose.
Might be wrong, but I believe a quick solution would be to have a T-Pose animation for the current mannequin.
Once you had that, just save it as reference pose in the retarget manager.
Unfortunately, I don’t have one and have yet to learn how to set it up in a 3D program.
You can easily adjust the mannequin to be in the T-Pose as I’ve shown here (Be sure to select humanoin rig and to save pose once you’ve adjusted it.)
https://.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?83467-I-hate-the-A-Pose-mannequin
Important: When retargetting a Mixamo character, leave the Root bone blank. “Hips” should be the first bone you retarget.
To clarify, I understand how to match up the Target Skeleton’s Bones to the Nodes stored in the humanoid rig (base and advanced configuration, respectively), also how to adjust for additional bones (as in the 4th digit of fingers).
My only grievance is the “Retargeting a Base Pose” part, specifically:
“an animation has been retargeted for our Target Skeleton; however his arms clip into his side because the base poses were not the same. Thankfully, you can also retarget the Base Pose of your Target Skeleton prior to retargeting animations to reduce or eliminate issues like this from occurring.”
Now, you offered advice (even better than in the doc) how to adjust the pose to make the retargeted animation look better (as in “reduce issues”), but it won’t be the same (because the rotation of upperarm bones is not the only difference between A and T Pose) and thus not eliminate all issues. Or am I wrong?
As far as I understand, for it to work 100% correctly the base poses of source and target skeletons have to be aligned to match each other exactly.
Therefore an “auto-match pose” or “Auto T-Pose” feature as mentioned before would be great, as doing it manually in the editor is fiddly at best (for me at least).
Just on a side note, a simple 1 frame animation for the mannequin in complete TPose would do the trick as well (e.g. added to the starter pack or released elsewhere). That way no changes to the editor would be necessary, as we already can trigger an animation on the Animation Pane and than set “Save Pose” in the retarget manager on the Skeleton Pane.
Exactly This.