Animating a Metahuman in Sequencer for use in a Game

[jmgold07]

Hi,

In the blueprint for the Metahumans, in the “Body” section, there is an animation tab that allows for using an animation blueprint, animation asset or custom mode.

I would like a Metahuman to jump in my game.

Can I animate the Metahuman in sequencer, so it jumps, and save out that animation for use in an animation blueprint?

Thx

[scottunreal]

Yes. Once you have an animation of the metahuman in Sequencer (such as control rig) you can select the body (or face), right-click and select Bake Animation Sequence. That will export a standard animation that you can use as an animation assert or trigger with a blueprint/animgraph.

[jmgold07]

Hi. @scottunreal. Thx. I’ve baked out a face animation - in the metahuman blueprint there is already a default animation blueprint (Face_AnimBP) - that has a bunch of nodes eg livelink nodes - can that be switched out with my own custom anim bp for use in a game? thx

[scottunreal]

Yes, you can assign your custom animation. Simple test. In the editor select metahuman → Detail panel → Body → Animation Mode → Use Animation Asset → select a baked animation.
Repeat by selecting the face.
Hit play to see it in action.
If you’re working in sequencer you can add animation tracks and select animation directly in the sequencer.
In Blueprints, you should be able to feed in your baked animation and simply plug it in to replace the live link nodes so your baked animation blends with body and then goes to output pose.

[jmgold07]

Thx. Yeah i’ve been getting some weird behaviour. I had the metahuman lying on the ground, like in a dead body position, and everything looked ok in sequencer but then the head and body weren’t lining up using the assets in the main editor.

So in the image attached I just did something very basic. I brought the metahuman into the scene (image on the left). I added the metahuman as a track. I didn’t move any of the controls - I just keyed the metahuman body in its starting position and saved that out as an animation asset. And the image on the right is what happened when using the animation asset. (I haven’t added a face asset, so the face/head is the correct position, the body has changed shape though).

It’s as if for some reason the proportions have changed - or maybe it’s scaling up - but i can’t quite figure out why.

[scottunreal]

Sounds like a retargeting issue. Unreal makes the whole retargeting process for Metahumans much more difficult than it should be. If you haven’t see the right setup for the root and pelvis(?0 there are issues. And if you don’t assign the right ‘body’ then there are issues>
The hunched shoulders was/is an issue in UE5. Are you using UE4.26.2 or UE55?

UE5 EA - Meta Human Size Glitch when using UE5 Sequence or Take Recorder

This is a glitch in UE5, where if you bring in a Meta Human and record with either the Take or Sequence recorder, you get a larger-sized body appearing in the playback…almost as if the mesh snaps to the larger size despite the larger size not appearing in the BluePrint: Here it is with both the recorded and non-recorded MH on screen simultaneously, recorded with the Sequence Recorder. *Note - no animation was applied, just a static recording [UE5_MH_Glitch1] And here is a Before-timeline an…

[jmgold07]

Hi. Yeah, UE5…thanks, at least it’s a real thing and i’m not going crazy. Will wait for an update.

[BananableOffense]

Metahuman error after using take recorder

I think I got a workaround, if ya’ll are still having trouble. In your exported animation sequence asset, set retarget source and asset. I chose the same assets as the non-retargeted anim here, but it also worked fine when selecting pretty much any metahuman asset. [image] I’m not 100% sure, but it appears the warped proportions might match the standard Unreal Manny Skele (see pic below), my theory is that when baking an animation sequence for certain metahumans, it baking it to the wrong skel…

Just wanted to post this here, too.