Since the Kite demo I saw that Epic is pushing for a blend shape based solution for facial rigging…ART V2 will feature some custom blend shape commands or a speedy workflow? I know that the creation of the blend shape is completely based on the artist, but I want to know if some tips and tricks could be added
I’ve integrated corrective shapes into my rig and I got them working into UE4 with an animation blueprint…far from reality, but is there any way to be able to convert 1:1 the SDK from Maya to UE4? As a quick workaround to test them quickly I created a separate, very simple, rig with just a couple of bones which drives the corrective shape amount based on the angle, and as a post script it works, but a proper solution could be doable?
There will be an update on the FBX animation import ( mocap ), which is done externally ( 3ds, Mixamo, BVH found around the web )? currently if I want to import a FBX file I don’t have the ability to retarget/choose/exclude some of the bones, and most important of all I have no idea what kind of joint setup I have…is there any way to have something similar to MOTOR in Softimage? like the link below? Softimage MOTOR retargeting
I solved this issue for both FBX and BVH by having a python script which match the orientation between bones and the root position, but I don’t know how to build a GUI or how to expand the script in order to be used on many FBX/BVH files…are there any plans for that?
So the way we do this is by creating “IK” bones under the root of our skeleton. So our hierarchy might look like:
The ik_hand_l and ik_hand_r get constrained to their respective hand joints, and the same with the feet. The hand and foot roots are another layout on top to do terrain placement or procedural recoil whilst keeping the hands locked.
So the workflow here is, we bake those ik joints to their respective joints and export that data out. Then in engine, we use those Ik joints as our IK targets.
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Heyo!
So I’m trying to set up IK Feet/Arms for my ART characters, and when refrencing this post, I would get some weird errors that would cause my characters hands to move, but the fingers would stay stationary. Weird.
When I deleted all the leaf joints I made referencing the ik_foot or ik_hand prefix, the fingers would move perfectly with the joints.
What’s the best practice for creating IK_foot and IK_Hand joints using the ART? I also noticed that you mentioned that the “ik_hand_r and ik_hand_l get contained to their respective hand joints” How would one constrain these? When I constrain these joints before building my character rig, the build process fails, however I do get an export file.
I know its alot, but any help is appreciated! If there was a button that would automatically generate these, it would be super neat
1.)
So, the Kite demo…haha. The blendshape face rig there was more out of time constraints than anything. It’s cool the engine can push that many shapes, but like you said, creating them would be quite an endeavor, but it was quicker than converting it to a joint rig. We used 3lateral for the face rig, and they have a giant team of sculptors and a whole database of head scans to pull from. There is a down-side to an all blendshape rig we found out. Motion blur doesn’t work on blendshapes, only joints! So, keep that in mind if you go that route!
The initial face rig module, which is in production right now, will be a lot simpler. It will offer up a list of poses (corners up/down, mouth narrow/wide, etc…) and the user can either use the bones in the face rig module to define what those poses are, or pipe in a blendshape, or do both.
2.)
So you can export morph target curves straight from maya into UE4. You shouldn’t need to interface with a blueprint at all to get those things working together! Unless you are trying to procedurally generate facial animation in engine, then you can just bake out your joint animation and morph targets and export them via FBX! To make sure the morph target data is in your fbx, open a new maya scene and import the fbx in and see if the blendshape nodes and curves exist. If not, you probably need to make sure you select the right stuff when exporting, like the geometry. Just make sure when you import your skeletal mesh, you’ve selected import morph targets. Then when you import your animation, if you go into persona and look at the area with the graph where you can add float tracks, you can actually show all of your morph target curves there.
3.)
So, making retargeting part of the import mocap is not in the plans currently, as it’s a ton of work. The awesome thing is, now with UE4’s retargeting, you can totally do it in there and export out the result FBX I’ve done it a few times when I didn’t have motion builder installed on the computer I was on. https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/RetargetingDifferentSkeletons/index.html
First if I checked out V2 and it looks amazing! I can not wait:-) I dare say it looks even nicer than the HumanIK Plugin :D/
I copied my script editor log for you so hope it helps, I am not very afye with Mel & Python so did not even attempt to look into it. I also do not know if these errors/warnings is due to something i did wrong as I am no Maya expert either.
first warning i get looks like some deprecation alert type thingy. This happens when I open ART in Maya 2016:
**# Warning: The -bs/-borderStyle flag is obsolete and should not be used. # **
I guess this forum doesn’t have a collapse tag. In the future: pastebin.com for walls of text. You can even set it to expire within a time period. Completely free.
Borderstyle is a property of frameLayout(and I think a few others like formLayout, etc.). It will be removed in the next version. Autodesk usually does this so people’s User Interfaces do not stop working and this gives them a year to adjust their changes. Whenever Version 2 is released, it won’t be based on Autodesk’s ever changing UI specifications. This doesn’t matter for now.
**# Warning: Object, ‘spine_splineIK_bottom_joint’, skipped. It is already a child of the parent, ‘world’. #
**This seems like you may have accidentally unparented this joint. I don’t recall this joint being in the world space.
As for the container being locked - it’s a little hard to know without seeing it.
Are you importing one rig into the same namespace as another rig? That’s what it seems like you’re doing and if you’re doing that and they’re based off of the same modular rigging system, the joints will clash and therefore go straight up Limp Bizkit and break stuff.
I got some tutorials for rigging and animation from Digital Tutors and you are correct. The majority if the issues with ART is my own fault and nit the toolset So what I am doing now to make sure I know whats cracking is I am doing the bones myself as well as the rig just to make sure I know how all of it works. Once done Ill bang it out with ART 2 hopefully in 4.8 :D/ In the meantime I will look into your advice when I am at home again Thanks again for the feedback!
I want to put a new mesh over the proxy mesh that I’ve made using ART. Because i want to have something I can switch back and forth to between a high and low poly model for animating. Is it possible to add a mesh to the rig file after the fact with the proxy still attached?
Also after I had edited my rig file for a character i can’t seem to import it into Maya. It just seems to freeze @ 98% when reading the _Export.mb file.
Hi again,
I had another problem that someone around here might be able to help out with.
I created the rig for one of our characters with the art and applied apex cloth physics to some of his parts.
Everything works like a charm except that when I apply the apex files to the character in unreal they seem to “snap” to the bind pose of the mesh, seeing as the bind pose was the model pose in art and my character is now in the rig pose this causes some clipping problems.
Is there a way to avoid this problem?
I thought I might be able to put my Character in the Model/Bind Pose and use that as a T0 Ref Pose in Unreal but it seems you cant access the ModelPose in Maya once you applied the Rig to the character?
I have applied multiple blendshapes etc. in the rig file so I cant export the rig from the export file.
Or maybe there is a way to change how apex is applied that Im not aware of?
Thanks in advance if somebody is able to help me out
Edit:
I think I solved it, just deleted the constraints in the rig file, assumed model pose and exported from there.
So I’m using the A.R.T to export both a weapon animation (in this case a pistol) and the fire animation at the same time. While the keyframes are correct across both animations, I’ve noted that the weapon animation only seems to repeat once during the frame limit, where as the character seems to repeat about 3 or 4 times.
Any reason for this? Maybe I forgot to keyframe some things? (Edit: Just went through and checked, my keys are looping fine in Maya.)
Hey i started some weapon animations today and since the beginning i had issues.
First i had errors but i solved it by downloading and apply last updates from dropbox. However now whenever i add a weapon reference the animation exporter get broken and starts to export empty files (6.34 kb) for both character and weapon.
Regards.
PS: but broken i mean it just doesn’t export anything anymore unless i restart the computer.
You know, I’m not really sure with ART. Fuse characters and Autorigged characters can be exported through our website on a UE4 default skeleton, so if you can load in the UE4 skeleton with ART, I don’t see why it shouldn’t work like a charm.
I think I’ll spin up ART for myself and take a gander
I purchased my Fuse months ago through Steam. It’s no way my pride will allow me to use a Fuse character in actual production, so I use Fuse primarily as my base mesh generator for Zbrush, then I completely overhaul it.
My only problem is importing my character back into Fuse so I can send it to Mixamo… hate losing a fully rigged character because I’ve ZB’ed it
That workflow would be much nicer with a BRIDGE function like GOZ between the two.
That character importing kit requires a PHD, or maybe it’s just when you have so many tools to use, as a generalist, you get kinda LAZY learning new tricks and workarounds.
Well cheers and thanks! Can’t wait till you guys release Fuse v1.4
Woke up today to get some work done and attempted to load up an animation and it wouldn’t load the animation. It leaves it in the T pose and the controllers turn purple. If I make a second attempt it gives this message in the Python window:
Warning: There is already a skeleton in the scene with the name “root”. Aborting
And I can not export anything either. I have tried reinstalling Maya, the ART script and verifying UE4 v4.7.6 to no avail. Any ideas on what would cause this?
So what I am doing now to make sure I know whats cracking is I am doing the bones myself as well as the rig just to make sure I know how all of it works. Once done Ill bang it out with ART 2 hopefully in 4.8 :D/ In the meantime I will look into your advice when I am at home again 