So I bought the anim rifleset pro and the prototype characters. I want to use the prototype characters with shootergame which uses a different skelton for the character (and a different set of animations obviously). The rifleset animations are rigged using the epic skeleton. The prototype meshes are rigged using the epic skeleton also, but for some reason i cannot play the animations on the prototype character.
So how do I get them all to play nicely?
I know I could export all the anims to fbx and then reimport them choosing the shootergame skeleton. But that truly sounds like a pain (100’s of animations here).
I did try setting up the retarget manager, but for some reason I set up the retarget mapping between the bones, but once I save the pose what do I do next? It doesn’t seem to have anything to actually press to create a rig or perform the retarget?
I’m sure its all possible, but of course its likely all undocumented. So any help would be very gratefully received.
If I understand your question correctly, all you need to do after retargeting the skeleton is right click on the animation and choose the skeleton that is referenced as the player controller. Subsequent animations in the folder should update as well:
To offer an opinion I prefer core assets to match up rather than using in app solutions like re-targeting. Re-targeting is handy but with due respect it is a band-aid available as to when there is no other option and is a lot more pain involved down the road as compared to the time to match things up.
Retargeting on the other hand is not as complicated as it sounds with the right tools that does all of the work for you as a batch process. In this case I use MotionBuilder and as a tool for retargeting you set up input character A into character output B, push a button, and go for coffee.
You could take the entire CMU motion capture database and convert it to Blue man in a few hours and most of that is figuring out where to put it.
Thanks Frankie. I agree with you completely. Unfortunately I’m a programmer so there’s really no other option
I wish it were as simple as Character A-> Character B. My problem is that I can’t seem to find the specific art path to get from Character A to Character B with both animations and skeletal meshes intact. I can retarget the animations to another skeleton by right clicking on them. But I can’t find how to actually perform the skeleton mapping (I’ve done what I THINK is the setup for the retarget manager OK, but there’s no “GO” button, so I don’t know what else I need to do). Is there a specific doc on how to retarget both skeletons AND skeletal meshes somewhere you know of? I’m likely missing a tiny step here but can’t for the life of me figure it out. I’m used to motionbuilder too, so its usually a bit simpler and clearer what I’m doing.
I’m not sure what I’m missing from your question… Once you’ve gone through the retargeting process matching the bones from the original (ie. prototype characters) to the default Epic blue guy that should be it besides right clicking on the animation you want to assign as I’ve illustrated above. You’re right about “there’s no ‘go’ button” after the retarget process, which threw me the first time I went through the retargeting process. -Then follow the steps at the bottom of this page:
Thanks , thats useful documentation. I’m still a bit confused though, isn’t there an animation rig or mapping asset created when you do the retargetting? I mean if you setup the mapping between say the Blue guys skeleton and the shooter guys skeleton, then surely that needs to be saved as an assett? I guess I was expecting a “go” button to create the asset once I’d specificed the bone mappings.
My problem right now, is that I basically want to use animations based on the Epic Skeleton with the animation blueprint from the Shootergame with the skeletal mesh of the Prototype characters. I guess I’ll give it another go once I’ve read that documentation.
Why do you want to use the AnimBlueprint from the Shooter game vs the AnimBlueprint of the default Epic Skeleton after retargeting the Prototype character to it? (I think it’s unnecessary but you may have a specific reason in mind.)
I was hoping I wouldn’t have to setup the blend spaces and stuff for the aiming animations again really. I’m just being lazy, but having to recreate the whole animation blueprint (with the usual locomotion then with aiming blend spaces blended over) for the Prototype characters seemed like a bit of a chore.
So for instance the upper body on the shootergame guy has a blend space controlling it. The animation blueprints for the Epic blue guy and the Prototype Characters guys both only have locomotion in their blueprints. So I’d have to add new blend spaces and such as well. Which I guess it what I’ll have to do
Unfortunately I had to bite the bullet and just redo the animBP from the shootergame basic guy. Didn’t turn out to be too bad, but still a pit of a pain. It was mainly updating the various variables that was the issue. It copied the state machine just fine, so I plugged the various animations into the various states and conditions and it kind of worked. One thing that got me was that the animation set I was using used a slightly different setup for aim offset, so I had to mess with that a bit.
Man it’d be great if it would have just worked though
All content from the marketplace, so I can’t take any credit other than a bit of noodling around with animation blueprints. But yeah, it does look kind of nice doesn’t it.
I’m looking forward to having some proper time to work on fleshing out the animation controller though. I need to add crouch/prone/lean/grenade throw etc, which will be interesting to do.
Ha ha… yeah, I recognized the content. I meant the end result of your work looked good (as in smooth, natural looking transitions.) Look forward to seeing your progress with the other animations!
