Animation is rotated 180° before retargeting and plays backwards in gameplay

[Fardnury]

Engine Version: UE 5.8

I generated an animation using MetaHuman Motion (markerless motion capture) from a reference video.

The motion solve itself is excellent. All body movement, timing, and poses are correct.

The only issue is that the entire animation is rotated exactly 180° around the vertical axis.

In the Animation Sequence Editor, the character faces the opposite direction from Unreal’s default orientation. Instead of facing the buildings in the preview scene, it faces the open area behind them.

The issue already exists immediately after MetaHuman Motion generates the animation, before any retargeting.

Retargeting is not the cause. It simply preserves the same orientation.

What I’ve tried:

• Retargeting with IK Retargeter.
• Rotating the Root bone.
• Checking Root Motion settings.

None of these permanently correct the animation.

Questions:

1. Is this a known MetaHuman Motion issue?
2. Is there an official way to rotate the generated animation by 180° without editing every frame?
3. Should the fix be applied to the animation asset, the root bone, or during export/import?

[brs-rachid]

Hi @Fardnury this is the first time I have encountered this problem to be honest, but I think we can figure something out and get you back to your project . Thank you for the information you have provided, it has helped me in trying to replicate your issue to a certain degree on my end. With the new motion capture system, it is expected to run into a few problems since it is still under “experimental”, but there are ways that we can work around this specific issue you are having. From what I have gathered is that you are able to get the animations correctly exported and assigned but the issue is that it has a permanent rotation from the start. In my opinion I think your best bet is going to be to use “additive layers” and then baking them so that it becomes it own standalone animation with the corrections already applied. You might find yourself using them for other animation issues in the future as well depending on the results that you get from the motion capture system. Below you will find step by step instructions on how to apply this.

Setting UP

Note: My layout out may be different from yours, but I have set it up so that it makes it easier for me to have all the resources we will need in one screen for presentation purposes. Below you will find an image that breaks down what each section contains so that you can convert it to your own personal set up to make it easier for you to follow along.

Okay with that out of the way. We’ll start with a fresh Sequencer and add the character we would like to work with to it.

Now let’s add the animation you would like to change to the character by muting the Control rig first (click on the small eye next to the headphones) and adding the animation by clicking on the “+” next to animation and select the animation from there.

My character is animating facing/ animating the opposite way from how I would like it to be

We will be using “Additive Layers” to fix the orientation and bake the animation. from there on the new orientation will have it’s fixed orientation permanently.

For that we will bake this animation to the control rig we originally muted at first

Bake to Control Rig

Right click SKM_Quinn_Simple → Bake to Control Rig → Select your character’s control rig → click on “create”

You can now delete the old animation you assigned, the entire animation has now been transferred to the control rig

Adding an Additive Track

Let’s click the CR_Mannequin_Body’s “+” sign and select “Additive”

I’m selecting the “body_Offset_ctl” and rotating it to -180 degrees facing forward and keying it so that it saves the changes. And when I scrub thru the animation, we can see that it’s playing in the right direction.

Baking the Animation

Right now, all of this information is living in the control rig so we need to go ahead and bake this information so that you can use it as a standalone animation.

Right click “SKM_Quin_Simple” → Bake animation Sequence-> Select the folder and name of the animation → Export

Now you should have a standalone animation sequence with the corrected orientation that you can use moving forward.

I hope this helps, if you run into any problems or need further assistance, please let me know .

[Fardnury]

(post deleted by author)

[Fardnury]

Thank you very much for your time and detailed explanation @brs-rachid. It worked perfectly well. Couldn’t be more clear than that. You’re a life saver. May that workflow help many

[brs-rachid]

@Fardnury supper happy that worked out for you! I wish you the best of luck with your project, if you run into any problems in the future I’ll be here in the forums ready to help

[Fardnury]

I actually have another question related to that. How to do the same for metahuman character?

[Fardnury]

I actually fixed that part by retargeting the animation after we bake the sequence. But I realized that Skeleton Tree is missing IK bones ( IK foot, hand and all )

I believe that must have happened during baking it to Control Rig and I found only this on Reddit related to the issue. Still can’t seem to fix it

[brs-rachid]

Hi @Fardnury, I have a similar post that I go over the setting that work for me when trying to use the new performance capture method. If my assumption is correct, I think one thing you might run into is that metahuman essentially has 2 rigs in one, one for the head and one for the body, so when exporting it is important to have a few options checked / unchecked. I went over this in a previous post let me hunt that answer down for you so that you may be able to go over it. If however I have misunderstood your question please let me know and I’ll look more into it for you .

Here is the answer I referred to previously:

blending animation in unreal 5.8 issue

Hi @nwell26 I’ve been looking into your problem and trying to replicate it on my end to see if I can find a work around for you. Although I was not able to replicate your problem “the body animation’s arms/hands stop animating correctly” I was able to replicate something that I think is close that may help you. In the process I will go over with you we will go over the setting I have for Live link, the settings I’m using to process for the Metahuman performance and how to bake the animation we j…