I want to put the Adam mesh on the top down skeleton. I can retarget the animations and all of that will work. But when I try to apply the mesh it says bones are missing and that if I continue it will mess up the animations. Which it did. So when you use the “assign skeleton” when clicking on a mesh how do you get it to recognize the bones that are missing. Thank you…
Hi ,
You can retarget significantly different skeletons by following the steps in our documentation: [][1]
Be advised, however, this is not an automatic process. You will first have to select a humanoid rig to assign both skeletons to, then you will have to manually align Bones on the Skeletons that are similar in location to the Bones on the Rig. The main bones need to be aligned (upper arm to upper arm, for example) but smaller bones can simply be ignored (Like a hand with 4 fingers vs a hand with only 3 fingers.)
*Your animation will only be distorted if you accidentally retarget the upper arm of one to the lower arm of the other because the animation will be playing for the wrong part of the body.
[1]:
I have that figured out. I can swap animations. Im trying to put the adam mesh on the top down skeleton. Replacing the mannequin, with adam. When I go through the process, right click on adam mesh, assing skeleton, then choose top down, it says animation data will be comprised. Any thoughts?
Compromised*
I’m not sure what you are referring to as the “top down skeleton.” If you are referring to the silver “Mannequin,” here is a video walk through of how to replace it with Adam:
[][1]
[1]:
I have watched this whole line of tutorials. He starts with the adam skeleton and adds the anim starter pack animations, to the adam skeleton.
Im trying to do it the other way.
Ive already set up all of the animation from the anim starter pack, on the top down skeleton. Now I want to retarget the adam skeletal mesh to the top down skeleton. When you click on a skeletal mesh it has an option to assign skeleton. I want my blue guy to be adam, with out changing one animation. Thank you for helping me, im stumped…
Hi ,
I’m happy to help if I can… What is the “top down skeleton?”
The player skeleton from the top down template
If you want to replace the SK_Mannequin with Adam from the Mixamo Pack so that Adam runs around instead of the silver guy, you do not need to retarget the skeleton. Instead, in the Content Browser, go to: TopDownBP/Blueprints/TopDownCharacter. Open the TopDownCharacter Blueprint, select Mesh (as highlighted below) and in the Details panel change the Skeletal Mesh to “Maximo_Adam” Then in the dropdown menu under “Anim Blueprint Generated Class,” select “MaximoAnimBP_Adam.” Compile and Save.
Now Adam is the character you control:
If this is not the end result you desire, please explain further including why you want to do it that way.
Thanks.
That is it. But I dont want to switch to the adam anim BP. I want to use all of my animation data and my anim BP. Im trying to put the mesh on to my skeleton. When I try to assign it to my skeleton, with the exception of the head, the bones are labeled with the word “missing” and written in red. If I continue it says all animation data will be compromised. That is why ive tried to retarget the skeleton to the humanoid rig and so forth. I can swap animations between the two, but not the mesh. Thanks again!
You wrote that you “can swap animations between the two, but not the mesh.” Try:
- Open an AnimSequence
- Select the “Mesh” tab at the top
- Select “Preview” at the top
- In the “Mesh Details” panel, under “Mesh/Skeleton” select the Skeleton you have retargetted to.
- If you have followed the previous instructions from the video and the linked documentation, you will see the other skeletal mesh that you want to change to.
- Select this.
- Now all the animations will preview with the desired mesh
The adam mesh is not in the list. I can use adam’s anims on my default skeleton. I can use my anims on adam skeleton. But I can not choose the adam mesh on the default skeleton.
Hi ,
If possible, please send your project/assets as an attachment here, via Dropbox, or as a Private Message to me on the and I’ll try to work this out. -Thanks!
Here are a few screens of what I have been talking about. I also tried to use the Base Male Mesh from the Content Examples, when I tried to re-target the animations I got very strange results. I assume it is because the skeleton has extra spine bones. If I could get that (Base Male) mesh on my skeleton it would be helpful. Thanks again.
I was able to reproduce this here as well. It means you do not have your “Rig” set up correctly according to this documentation:
[Animation Retargeting (Different Skeletons)][1]
For the UE4_Mannequin_Skeleton the retarget source should be selected as shown:
For the Adam Skeleton: No retarget source should be selected but be sure “Humanoid” rig is selected as shown:
Now you should see the UE4_Mannequin_Skeleton in the list of compatible skeletons when you click on the Adam_Skleleton and select “Retarget to another Skeleton”
If NOT, then: go to one of the Animation Starter Pack animations and right click and choose: “Retarget Anim Assets/Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget” Once you have done this, the UE4 Skeleton will appear in the list of compatible skeletons for retargeting.
I did every thing listed and tried a couple different variations. It lets me re-target skeleton to skeleton. But in red it says its for animation data only. When i try to assign the Adam mesh to the default skeleton it still shows bones missing. Im only having problems with mesh swapping, not animation. Can you get the Adam mesh onto the default skeleton? a.k.a. the mannequin skeleton.
Hi ,
I thought re-targetting skeleton to skeleton would resolve your issue so you could retarget Adam to the UE4 Mannequin’s animations or vice versa. To answer your last question, “Can you get the Adam mesh onto the default [UE4] skeleton?” -Yes.
But I messed up Adam while experimenting so here it is done with “ExoRed:”
To acheive this, be sure to set Translation Retargeting to skeleton on both the target and source skeletons. Be sure to set all the bones correctly for the Humanoid rig in both the Base and Advanced Menus (Important!) Then on a copy of Adam Skeletal Mesh (I’d make/move a copy into the Mannequin folder to avoid confusion) right click and assign the UE4 Mannequin Skeleton to the Adam Skeletal Mesh. This will result in the Adam Mesh replacing the Mannequin mesh in the UE4 Mannequin Skeletal mesh preview as well as all related animations.
That is the result that I want. Sadly, Im still having trouble with this for some reason. When I do both rigs (humanoid) and set translation retargeting to skeleton, I still get missing bones in the Assign Skeleton option. If its not too much trouble, could you do a step by step on this. What is the very first step you took?
Okay, I was able to acheive the above by simply ignoring the missing bones and fusing the two skeletons together. While it works in the preview, it does not work with animations like I thougtht it did. In any event, starting with your initial question: “When you use the “assign skeleton” when clicking on a mesh how do you get it to recognize the bones that are missing?”
The bones need to have the same name. Notice the Mannequin “Head” is not missing because it has the same name as a bone from the Adam skeleton. If you try to assign other Mixamo skeletons, they will be only missing a few bones.
However, you do NOT want to retarget this way. For instance, if you assigning “Maw’s” skeleton to Adam it will result in Adam deforming to fit Maw’s frame.
Instead you can retarget Adam’s entire Animblueprint to the Top down blueprint and this will result in Adam being able to perform all of his native animations PLUS the top down animations as shown in the picture below. (To achieve this however, it is important you do not set a root bone on both Adam or the Mannequin when setting the bones to the humanoid rig.)
You said to re-target adams entire blueprint to the top down blueprint. Is that the top down anim blueprint? How do I retarget blue print to blue print? Will this result in the adam skeletal mesh being used on the top down skeleton?