I only used Maya for 30 days, and never used it together with unreal, but it looks like the joints are not oriented in the same direction and once the animation starts that is “fixed” by unreal, twisting and turning the mesh.
I have been trying to import a skeletal mesh for a while now, and I keep running into the same issue, where the imported skeletal mesh deforms like it’s supposed when rotating bones in the Skeleton asset. But when any animation is applied it warps (not only retargeted animation, also 1 frame A-Pose ‘animations’ directly imported from the same FBX).
I have no errors when exporting, and I have 1 warning that states [Imported bone transform is different from original. Please check Output Log to see detail of error.], which (I believe) is due to having a different forward axis. When I check the Output Log it shows that is rotation everything by 90 degrees.
I have recreated the slaverig, tried adjusting my import settings and reimporting, but the issue persists.
My mesh is frozen, has no history (except for a skinCluster and Tweak) on it, no mesh errors as far as Maya can find, no multiple bindposes. The bones are frozen and only have translate values, no JO or Rotate Axis values.
What could be the cause of this?
Recorded Gif of the problem:
What do you mean with not oriented in the same direction? I exported the joints in 2 different ways, one where they are all aimed at their child so bonus only have an X translate value (which is usually the standard) and the other where all joints are in world orientation. Both resulted in the mesh warping.
I meant the local axes orientation. It does look like each bone being rotated by 90 degrees once the animation starts.
Seems there was a plugin messing with my Joint Orientations. Bones were indeed being rotated by 90 degrees locally.