Hey, new version is fantastic, really impressive system from what I’ve seen so far. However, I’ve had problems once I’ve retargeted to my own skeleton, and . My mesh stays in the retarget “A pose” in-game and refuses to play any animations. Is there something I’ll need to change in the ALS Component or Anim BP to get the system to work properly? Thanks!
You shouldn’t need to, have you changed the AnimBP in the CharacterBP?
Yes, I’ve changed the AnimBP used by the Mesh in the CharacterBP to my retargeted AnimBP. This is the result:
Hmm. Did you check the Animgraph in the debug mode in-game to see if everything was hooked up and working? Also, which AnimBP did you retarget? There are many different things that could cause this so Its hard for me to track down the problem without much info. By the way, If your skeleton is the same as the skeleton included, as it appears to be since you are using the same mesh, you shouldn’t need to retarget.
@KingTumTum101 Congratulations on making an impressive system! It’s one of my first Marketplace purchases, picked this up yesterday. I’m often worried about how flexible the systems are since everything I buy I will adapt to my own purposes, and on that front I’m very pleased with your work. I would only ever purchase from the marketplace to save time, so I’m a happy customer.
I have one feature request, another feature request I can very much do without but would be nice, and some feedback/suggestions that I don’t need for myself but putting it out there in case you want to incorporate it.
Feature Request
The Ragdoll is really well made, there is one thing that looks very clearly wrong which is when it gets up using this animation (gif below) while there is no surface for the hands but all the weight is placed on the hands, do you think you could add some detection (line traces etc) and use a different animation instead in this case? For example, he could pull himself up using only his legs/core muscles by pushing into a kneeling position, placing his hands by his feet, then pushing upwards.
Feature Request 2
I don’t really need this but it would be nice to have, when he’s on a slope and gets up there’s a ton of clipping, any chance of some IK at least for the hands, possibly the spine/chest here? Could even simply be an impact normal from a trace rotating the spine joint upwards, after all ragdoll never will be perfect, nor does it need to be, and it would minimize the clipping.
General Feedback / Suggestions
- The camera settings in ‘ChooseCameraSettings’ function found in the Character blueprint are likely to be changed for every game and could be exposed via variables (a bunch of CameraSettings struct variables) just for user-friendliness. Of course this depends on whether your system is intended for use or intended for example.
- Possibly an input to toggle the left/right offset for settings that have a Y offset, this is commonly used for over-the-shoulder cameras where the body could block the player’s line of sight.
- Locomotion State/1/2/3 could use friendlier/descriptive names.
Thanks for your hard work 
PS. I almost didn’t give this a chance because the first comment in your OP asks about multiplayer support and the answer is ‘no’, perhaps update your original post to make it very clear that it’s changed and supports multiplayer? You still have the V1 video up there too.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
As far as the first feature request, well, its mostly just an issue of adding more content. Its not a huge priority, and since my system best serves as a template or starting point (foundation) to build from, I probably wont be adding additional get up animations in the near future. Its not difficult addition, so others should be able to make additional features like this one for their own projects without a problem.
For the second request, thats an issue that would best be taken care of by a full body IK solver, or something similar. Ive thought about possible methods of rotating the root bone to align with the terrain for certain animations, but I havent done any testing yet. I also dont have the skills to write a full body IK solver, but know that Ikinema offers a full body IK solution that can align the body to the ground for prone animations, so maybe thats worth checking out.
The camera stuff is mostly there as an example, as the focus is on the locomotion system. I included it to just show how different camera angles could work with different locomotion states, and how to seamlessly switch between them. It also looks cool ;). I might add the Y Offset in the future though, but nothing is set in stone yet. And yes I might end up renaming the different locomotion states as well. Their purpose is just too show how flexible the system can be, and are intended for others to replace them with their own states and conditions, and I thought their differences are pretty obvious and dont require a ton of explanation, but maybe a name could help.
No worries! Thanks again for the awesome product.
Hello,
I have tried many times to replace the character in the demo level with Kubold’s Katiusza character, following normal retargeting work flow, and every time retargeting crashes the editor. Katiusza has a few extra bones for eyes, and there are two Virtual bones in the ALS character. I set up the common rig, set smaller shoulders and IK bones to animation, adjust Katiusza pose to match, add the VB to Katiusza, ignore the eye bones, etc. When I then hit Retarget Anim Assets, to retarget an animation, or try to retarget the ALS_AnimBP, it just crashes. The Mannequin_PostProcess_AnimBP does not crash upon retargeting. I was able to retarget a character with a very different skeleton from blender without crashing, but anims look wonkie and require time in Blender to fix, and the character remains in a T pose in the level … so I though I would save some time by using Kubold’s character, which has a nearly identical skeleton. Once I have a humanoid character, I want to build out the state machine, and add swimming, prone, crouch, etc … using the ALS demo level as a sandbox until I get the animations right.
I was able to attach the new Paragon eyes to the character, and they look fantastic. Wish there were more “advanced” characters, with eye, eyelid, tongue, teeth, realistic looking Character rigs, like Stefan’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YalS_A8eYJw, to use with ALS, offered on the Marketplace. I think this ALS controller is amazing. Just need a workflow that works, for applying it to an advanced character.
Anyways, if anyone has successfully retargeted the ALS_AnimBP, or the ALS animations to Kubold’s Katiusza, and replaced the SK_Mannequin in the ALS_Demo_Map with Katiusza, can you please list a step by step workflow. The online tutorials do not work with ALS … I have tried them all, and I can’t figure it out. Should be straight forward with a few tweeks. That would really save me a lot of time, and perhaps help others with the same problem. Then I can work on adding swimming, facial expressions, and Kubold’s animations.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Hey, sorry you are having difficulties. I haven’t encountered a problem like this before. Have you tried waiting to add the virtual bones until after you retarget? I know working with virtual bones can sometimes cause the editor to crash.
Good Idea, I will hold off on the virtual bones and see what happens. Either way, I will stick with it until I get it figured out, because I definitely want to use ALS in my projects. It looks so good, and I just want to see the results with a human character … I think it would be fantastic. The SK_Mannequin gets a bit boring after looking at it all this time. Can’t wait to see what you do with Update 3, if there is one, knowing how busy you are now. Kubold mentioned a First Person camera method where you “meat hook” the head to the camera, and the rest follows, eliminating head boob. That, or the IK Spline solution, would be my vote for Update 3. Look at your sales, please don’t abandon this, you are one of the most talented sellers on the Marketplace. Props …
Success! The virtual bones were the problem. Thanks for the help. Not sure what your degree is in, but you belong in the gaming industry…clearly your have a passion for it, and you have skills!
Lol I’m a college dropout.
So was Steve Jobs!
Hello,
I have retargeted to Kubold Katia character. Everything is working great, including IK for the feet, with a few bugs with ragdoll still to work out. She does have a very “manly” walk and run, which I will soon fix by swapping out the animations for Kubold’s female animations. If you are having problems, these reminders might help:
- Don’t add the Virtual Bones until after retargeting, then open character skeleton, click on thigh, add VB, click on calf … make sure to add L and R, dah
- Fastest way to retarget is to set up the Humanoid Rig, for SK_Mannequin, and your new Character … on the Skeleton Tree, hit the “All Bones, Active Sockets” tab at the bottom, and select "show retargeting options. Make sure “root” and “pelvis” and “ik” bones at the bottom all say “Animation,” and “Skeleton” for all other Translation Retargeting … then match the bones, view pose, match poses as best your can … save, then right click on the ALS_AnimBP in the Blueprints folder, and retarget … and it will retarget all the animations at one time.
- As mentioned above, you must assign the Mannequin_PostProcess_AnimBP located in the Mannequin folder, to your mesh, by clicking on Mesh, then under Asset Details, Skeletal Mesh, Post Process Anim Blueprint, pull down the tab and select it. IK should now work.
- Make sure you go into the your new character AnimBP, and select each Macro, and change the animation to your new retargeted animations, such as “ChooseLandingAnim,” change the “ALS_N_Land” animation sequence, or your character’s knees will not compress on landing from a jump. Note, my ALS_N_Stop blend space was missing the N_idle blendspace after retargeting, had to add that back in or it crashed the engine.
- If things don’t work, just save and restart the engine, and try again, or retarget any missing animations … because the engine will glitch on occasion, and not apply the PostProcess_AnimBP, or save or retarget all the animations.
Hope that helps.
Actually this method will only retarget about 90% of the sequences, blendspaces etc, but will miss a few which must be tracked down in the retargeted animbp and manually retarget then replace them in the appropriate nodes. For instance, equations that do comparisons will not retarget the anim sequences, and will attempt to do the compare against the old sequences for mannequin skeleton which obviously will fail. “Montage is active”, most functions and macros are all will remain to hold to the old sequences which better to be looked for around and manually change them. The best method so far (for me) is to do a Ctrl+F in the animbp and search for the word “Mannequin” which should reveal most (if not all) the missing pieces. You better to place your retargeted anim sequences to a separate folder to be easy to recognize the wrong associations that still points to the ones from the /Mannequin folder.
There also are variables both in the CharacterBP and AnimBP with names that point to pelvis bone (which may or may not exists in your new skeleton), that should be reviewed first, as well as anim sequnces and montages that still point to the old skeleton which, again you must retarget then replace manually.
The blueprint in Game/Blueprints called “TurnInPlace_AnimNotifyState” will attempt to cast the anim bp to the old, which will break the turn in place until you replace the cast nodes to cast for your new animbp.
After all this most features should actually work very well.
Like what? My custom skeleton have “broken” arms and legs, but it is unlikely that the physics asset would be faulty, since it only looks odd once i use the ragdoll feature of ALS. In editor and the scene i have added the mesh and the physics simulation looks ok, which suggest that it should work but i get the odd results with als’ ragdoll for some reason. Found no explanation so far.
Konflict:
The problems I am having with Ragdoll after retargeting are:
- not adding the Play Curl or Flail Blend when InRagdoll
- not playing the get up animations, instead the character pops up to a z position a bit above the ground, and then only moves in place
Note: Just changed the Get up references in the character blueprint animaitons, that fixed the get up, but still stuck in place after getting up from ragdoll, and no blends into the Ragdoll. Now I will go check the Custom Events like you referenced. Thanks for the info Konflict.
@CrashA51 Once you set up a PhAT asset that have similar properties to the Mannequin in the ALS project, both these issues will be gone. The character will also require to have a physics body (sphere) to be on the root bone.
Thanks again Konflict,
Katia was missing a physics body on the root like you mentioned … good call. So I added it, but now on ragdoll she “falls” way up… when I get her up, she slowly drops back down to the ground, then locomotion works fine again. Getting closer, with your help! Never messed around much with the Physical Asset tool. Need to change physics body from a capsule to a sphere, match the mannequin settings in the ALS project, and perhaps that will do it, or maybe there is another setting causing her to go up instead of fall to the ground.
I also noticed N_Rotate_to_Idle shows up on the ALS project Mannequin Skeleton Animation Notifies, but is missing from Katia’s. Any ideas?
Update, The “pelvis” constraints on Kubold’s Katia character were not all set to free, one was locked, and the “Angular Motor” settings on bones needed changing to Twist and Swing, so adding the root physics body and matching settings on the ALS Mannequin fixed everything … except one more issue.
I still do not see "Play ALS_Flail and Play ALS_Curl_Pose Blends showing up in the Final Animation Pose of the the InRagdoll State … and I have the right animations assigned. Oh, so close! Any help would be appreciated. And I hope this helps other noobs like me. I am writting this workflow down, it is a bit more effort than I expected, but worth it.
Hey there, I’m really sorry I still don’t have any tutorials or workflows out there yet. I’ve just been so busy with other things, I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m in the process of making documentation, so hopefully I can get it out before the summer sale. Its also kind of hard since I’m already so familiar with the system so its easy to miss a step or skip over something. Being able to look at it with fresh eyes would help me know the best way to make a tutorial as well.
As far as the ragdoll anim problem, I might know what could be causing it. In the component, there is a sub-graph in which angular motors are changed based on the pelvis velocity during ragdoll. If the bone nae is not correct, then it may not be setting the Angular motor properties properly.
If that isnt the issue, then Ill have to do some more digging to try and figure it out.
I am using a “Pelvis” bone in my skeleton, if I understand you right. And the graph that I am using, that came in ALS 2, in addition to Add Force, has a second function (Add Force at Location) hocked up to the Mesh and Pelvis Bone, Return value on the Get Socket Location, and X 200:
But I don’t think that has anything to do with the problem. Any more ideas?
Also, I noticed a second issue. When I go into Ragdoll, the get up animation is played, but if I apply forward movement with my controller, the character slides along the ground while the Get up animation is playing, then goes into the run. Do you know where I messed up, because your default character does not move until the get up animation is finished.
I can’t believe the amount of work you put into this … your help is greatly appreciated … two issues to go, and I can start adding swim and other animations. And no more looking at Mr. Faceless Mannequin! 