Best method to retarget UE4 Mannequin animation to Metahuman

[scottunreal]

What’s the best method to convert MCO MoCap Basics and other UE4 animation to UE5 metahumans?
I did this in UE4 when Metahumans first came out. But when I use the official Unreal docs I end up with broken wrists and mangled fingers. Does this still work? Tips if it does? If not, is there a better retarget process?

Retargeting UE4 Mannequin Animations

[alberto]

Hello @scottunreal !

Well, there are many ways, I think this is the best one because I got the best results:

Auto retargeting?

I just found the retargeting is really time-consuming. It takes lots of time if the mesh has many bones. Is there a time-saver like auto retargeting?

If you have any doubt ask me!!

[scottunreal]

Thanks, I’ll try it out.

Still baffled given how much animation already exists or has been captured for UE4 mannequin, which is a standard for Unreal, that Unreal doesn’t come with a simple option to just auto-retarget since there are only 9 basic metahuman forms (18 both sex).

Extra controls are great for dealing with a different skeleton or needing something more but right now it seems like a lot of people going through a number of steps, in some cases, repeatedly. My idea of any good software is saving me time, especially if it’s multiplied by thousands of users.

[alberto]

No one cares about old animations, I have a lot retargeted

MetaHuman AnimStarterPack and everything from Epic content since I was young for metahuman animation

Well guys as I see there are a lot of people asking for animations using metahuman and I have like like X000 animations … [image] I decided that if there are enough people interested, I can work on this a bit and share. [mhStarterPack] This is not retargeting, I did a trick, of course, is not perfect Also… If someone asks me I accept help and the project is on GitHub…

[3DJC]

One minor speed tip when setting up the IKRig for a character… you can select and create multiple chains at one time (as long as they aren’t part of the same chain…). Meaning, say it’s the mannequin… you can ctrl-select left shoulder to left hand, and right shoulder to right hand, and left upper leg to left foot, and right upper leg to right foot. So all of those are all selected - then right-click to make the chains… you can blast out those 4 in one shot. THEN for fingers, same thing, Select all bones under a hand (meaning all fingers) and again rt-click and make chains. it’ll step you thru each chain creation. You could skip renaming, but then you may need to fix later in the retargeter… up to you really where you wanna fix What you can’t do is spine and neck together, as technically in the hierarchy they are part of the same chain so it won’t see that as 2 chains but it’ll make 1 big one - you need to do those separately… here’s an example (not mannequin but same idea): Copy Mixamo animations to your MetaHuman in Unreal Engine 5 #UE5 #animation #MetaHuman - YouTube

[scottunreal]

Thanks for the info!