editing retarget pose while in an actual pose other than T?

[fael097]

I’m trying to fine tune some retarget animations. The thing is, when you are in “Editing retarget pose” mode, character switches to the default T pose

which is pretty useless, since you need to switch to “Running retarget” mode, to see what your adjustments will look like.

it would be at least 1000 times easier to adjust retargets if you could rotate the bones while the character is in an actual pose of a selected animation you want to retarget, so you don’t need to switch back and forth between modes all the time, nor guess what the edits will look like.

is there any way to do so?

[MostHost_LA]

You arent supposed to do any of that in engine.

Export both poses to a DCC and only rotate do not change locations of the bones of the final skeleton.
You need to have the exact same rotation values as the source skeleton for retargeting to work right.

[fael097]

Right, I can load the retargeted animations in 3ds max and rotate the bones as I want, but now you’re dealing with key frames, and honestly dealing with multiple animations in 3ds max is awful. and that’s the only software I’m familiar with.

But I mean, I was just trying to quickly adjust the retarget pose so the retargeted animations would look a bit better. When editing the retarget T pose and rotating bones you’re not actually editing the skeleton or anything, I just wanted to do exactly the same, to edit the base pose for retargeting, but preview that base pose as a different pose.

For instance, this is my character’s hand default pose:

If I retarget a simple idle animation I have for the ue4 mannequin (it looks good on it), my character’s hand turns into am ugly claw:

(using the auto align tool doesn’t help at all, it becomes just a different claw)

So, by manually rotating the base pose bones, I got to this result:

which looks way more natural, and more similar to the actual source animation. the problem is that for the retargeted animation to look like that, the default pose needs to be edited to look like this:

and here’s the process of manually editing the pose: (you’ll see what I mean)

(when I’m moving the mouse cursor at the end of the vid it’s me screaming why can’t I just rotate the bones right here? lol)

The steps:

1. load an animation to retarget
2. select a bone to fix
3. see what looks bad and imagine how you could rotate the bone to fix it.
4. switch to “editing retarget pose”
5. move the camera to the bone you’re editing since it’s now far away in t-pose
6. find the bones to select in the hierarchy panel and rotate them like you imagined before
7. switch back to “running retarget”
8. move the camera back to where the edited bones are on the animation
9. pause animation playback and scrub back to frame 0 (every. single. time.) since it starts moving like crazy
10. back to step #3 and repeat it forever.

if you could just adjust the base T-pose but while in a different pose, it would make this soooo quick and easy. there would be no reason to go and manually edit it in another software if what you want is just some basic retargeted animations and you’re not authoring anything. like just rotate the bones in real time as you see what it looks like. it took me probably near an hour to make that hand look better since it takes 10 steps for each minor adjustment. makes no sense at all, you’re just rotating bones in local space, it doesn’t matter what pose you’re previewing it, it would be the most basic thing for the engine to just translate it to the base t-pose automatically.

so is this really impossible? If so, how do I request a feature change? heh

[MostHost_LA]

Couple things.
Thats probably an A pose, not a T pose.

Second. I think you misunderstand;
For retargeting to work you need to change the default rotations of the skeleton (not create a pose).
So your end goal is to change the base bone rotations (while making sure the skinning still makes sense) before you import the updated base skeleton in engine to override what you originally had.

Assuming you do this right it wont damage anything but rather make the animations interchangable between the different skeletons.

I realize you don’t really know blender by admission, but here, give this hack a try…

BoneBreaker v-4 0 - NVCloth Visualizer + creating a garment from scratch.

At the very start when I make it into a T pose is kind of similar to what you want to achieve - mod a pose, make that be the base for the skeleton.

[fael097]

Right yeah, I realize you’re changing the default rotations of the skeleton when retargeting, I just mean you’re not actually editing the skeleton, just another file you use for retargeting. but it doesn’t matter, looks like what I wanted simply does not exist in unreal.

So ok, I tried editing animations in 3ds max. Sure you can quickly edit an animation and re export it back to unreal, but say you want to edit two different animations: idle_unarmed and idle_handgun so that the base pose, say foot position etc. looks the same in both animations.

There’s just no way you can do that in 3ds max. you can’t import two animations into different positions in the timeline, animation layers is completely broken, and motion mixer serves no purpose. Amazing piece of software if you ask me.

I’d try blender, even though I did try it before and I just can’t get used to it’s interface and navigation, but I don’t think it would be any different. I don’t want to edit the base pose of my skeleton, I don’t see how that would help with retargeting the animations, or even with my end goal of quickly fine tuning retargeted animations so they don’t look as bad, and are consistent with each other. Unless you mean I could import the edited rotations into the unreal retargeter asset as a base pose? if so, I’m interested.

Maybe I should try iclone, but I guess there’s just no quick way to edit the animations that quickly, which could be so easy and in real time if unreal supported that simple thing

[MostHost_LA]

See that’s the part you aren’t getting.
Your base skeleton is wrong which is what is causing the baseline jssue.
You need to fix that first.

Once you do that, things are going to start looking much better in the first place.

Then, you can worry about any additional fine tuning.
And yes, if you export an animation you can create a pose off the frame and use the created pose to fine tune the retargeting a bit by matching poses…

Its kind of similar, importing the pose vs fixing the skeleton - but fixing the skeleton is always the better option.
The closer they match (bone rotation values) the less issues you will get.

Oh and btw, the bone roll on your fingers is wrong if they distort the way you have pictured.
Each bone has axis to it. The chain of the fingers needs to be oriented identically.

In blender its trivial. Select the bones, select the last one with the right roll, and set all rolls to match the active bone.
In 3ds max there are similar things.

Same for copying a pose. Usually ita frame based.