Animation Retargeting Issues: Preview Mesh Appears Twisted, Oversized, and Distorted

[pa1n990]

Hello everyone,

I’m running into a puzzling issue with retargeting animations, and I could really use some help figuring out what might be going wrong.

Here’s what’s happening:

• I have a set of animations on the Belica skeleton, which I’m trying to retarget to a different skeletal mesh—specifically, a robot girl.
• The retargeting process seems to work fine on the surface, as the animations themselves are functioning correctly. However, the preview mesh in the Animation Blueprint appears completely distorted:
  • The upper body is giant and twisted.
  • The feet look tiny compared to the rest of the body.( or the feet is the only bone that is correct not small I think that’s the correct size)
  • The entire mesh is enormous, appearing far larger than it should relative to the world.

At first, I thought it might be an environmental or post-processing effect making the mesh look this way, but after further testing, it’s clear that the problem is with the mesh itself. This happens consistently when retargeting from the Belica skeleton. For instance:

• I tried retargeting the robot girl mesh using the UE4 mannequin’s animations as a source, and the preview mesh looked perfectly normal with all animations working as expected.
• I then retargeted the Belica skeleton using the UE4 mannequin as the source and observed the same distortion issue: small feet, an oversized, twisted upper body, and a huge, shredded appearance in the preview mesh.

What I’ve Tried So Far:

1. Ensured the bone hierarchies and scales are aligned between the skeletons.
2. Checked the Translation Retargeting settings for the target skeleton.
3. Made sure the retargeting base poses (A-pose, T-pose) match between the source and target skeletons.
4. Verified that the mesh import settings are correct.

Despite these efforts, the problem persists. The preview mesh for any BP_Anim associated with the Belica skeleton ends up looking like a “giant titan” with twisted, shredded body parts, while the feet remain tiny.

Does anyone have insights into what might be causing this? Could it be a scaling issue, something with the bone hierarchy, or possibly a bug? Any suggestions or ideas for further troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Benn_Hokie]

I am having the same problem. Retargeting works with Twinblast, but not Belica. Did you figure out what the problem is?

[ilkopa]

Hi! It seems like in UE5.4 when retargeting animations, it will wipe out all Additive Settings in every Animation Sequence asset. And this will break your meshes in some way.

As far as I know, you have to go through all the ORIGINAL Animation Sequences associated with that Animation Blueprint and search for all Animations that have Animation Sequence not none, and copy the information to your corresponding Animation.

I think you can see your Animation Blueprint go back to normal after you copy the additive information related to your “idle” pose. But additive information should also be applied for other animations as well