How do I load my custom model into the Animation and Rigging Toolkit?

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hi,

I’m having a great time using the rigging and animation toolkit. I’ve actually used the proxy mesh as a temporary place-holder while I created all of the animations required for our project.

The time has come to use the character model instead but I’m not sure how to switch the proxy mesh out for the custom one I have and rig and weight it in the toolkit. I’m expecting I have to edit the export or rig file then export this from maya again but to be honest I have no idea what I’m doing in maya from a rigging standpoint as I’m primarily a 3DS Max user.

I thought I might just be able to skin my mesh to the bones after i delete all my animation keys and zero it out but the file i animated doesn’t seem to have any bones when I ‘Hide all’ and try to display ‘joints’ there is none.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Danny

2

Hey there!

What you want to do, is edit that character’s export file (Epic Games-> Edit Existing Character/Export File). In here, import your mesh, and assign weights to it by using the smooth bind(Skin->bind skin->smooth bind). Then you can delete the proxy geo skin grp (it’s called something like that) which has all of the proxy geo in it. Then you just need to start painting away!

3

Oh my god. That is so simple, got it working in under half an hour. I hope you’re proud of this ART plugin so far, it’s really amazing.

4

Thank you very much! I appreciate that! I think people will really like the new version I’m working on now. Take care!