Is there a way to automate exporting an animation from the a Performance Asset with the CRIG overlay?
In a metahuman animator performance asset you can add a CRIG to the animation, I also noticed you can key it in the timeline. I have noticed a few issues
- The CRIG does not bake out when you click export animation
- Any keys I add to the timeline get destroyed if I close the asset editor
Diving into the CPP it seems that the timeline gets recreated on open and does not store any previous key data, it just regenerates new data on open. Is there a way to maintain the key data?
The only way I have found to bake out the CRIG data from the performance asset directly to an animation sequence is to right click on the assets face component in the timeline and hit bake animation sequence. It there a way to automate this? Looking at the code it appears I would have to open the asset in an editor in order to even generate the timeline to then bake it out. Is there a way around this?
The main idea I had was to write a custom post process that brings the CRIG into a level sequence, brings in the exported animation and bakes from there, but wanted to see if there was a simpler approach.
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Hi Serena,
It sounds like you would like to export the animation directly from the MetaHuman Performance asset. While this is understandable given the view is very Sequencer-like, it is not the recommended workflow.
The MetaHuman Performance asset is only intended for solving animation from the performance, and the timeline is primarily there to aid review, etc. with some assumptions made accordingly which might not be right for you.
Instead, we suggest exporting to an Animation Sequence or Level Sequence and continuing from there - baking to a Control Rig as needed and refining key frames as you would with any other animation in Unreal Engine. By working outside of the MetaHuman Performance asset you can benefit from all Sequencer and animation related features, and retain full control over any export options, etc.
While I appreciate this is more steps it should be more robust against any future changes we make to the MetaHuman Performance asset. We do have an example Python script in \Engine\Plugins\MetaHuman\MetaHumanAnimator\Content\Python\export_performance.py which might be of interest, and we are looking at how we can improve the API for automation in the future.
Thanks,
Mark.
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Hey Mark,
Great to know! I will investigate a sequencer based solution. Thank you!
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