Mixamo Animation Retargeting

Distribution UE Marketplace
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NEW VERSION (FOR UE5): https://www.fab.com/listings/5eaf2746-1891-435a-837c-67c9f7a847f4

FAB MARKETPLACE (UE4 version): https://www.fab.com/listings/e23d0506-a45c-46cf-bac0-60a8e83a7ecc

Discord server: https://discord.gg/PuAyhDctHp

[UPDATE 2021-04-23]
We’re working on brand new documentation and videos, to help you take maximum advantage of the plugin. Follow the thread for the new links.

[UPDATE 2017-10-28]
Version 1.1.0 has been submitted, it introduces the new feature “Generate Root Motion Animations” that allows you to create a standard UE4 Root Motion animation from a In-Place Mixamo animation. To use this feature, you must import both the “normal” Mixamo animation and its “in-place” version.

[UPDATE 2017-05-25]
The plugin is officially available on the Marketplace: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketp…on-retargeting

[UPDATE 2017-04-27]
The plugin is officially available on Gumroad: https://gum.co/ue4-mixamo ! From there you can buy the plugin and have access to the source code and pre-build binaries (so no need to play with Visual Studio). Gumroad will be supported at the same level as the Epic Marketplace.

As soon as Epic will complete its review, the plugin will be available on the Marketplace too. As Epic and Gumroad are different legal entities, be aware that purchases are not transferable.

UE4 Mixamo Animation Retargeting is an editor plugin for precise and automated retargeting of skeletons, skeletal meshes and animations created with and exported from Mixamo tools (Auto-Rigger, 3D Characters, 3D Animations).

Description
UE4 Mixamo Animation Retargeting is an editor plugin that helps integrating Mixamo assets (exported from Auto-Rigger, 3D Characters, 3D Animations) into Unreal Engine 4.

With few clicks, it allows you to use any Mixamo animation with any UE4 character, and use any UE4 animation with any Mixamo character. In addition, it makes possible to use Root Motion animations on Mixamo characters and create Root Motion animations from Mixamo In-Place animations.

Video Trailer
Video Tutorial
Documentation

Discord server: https://discord.gg/PuAyhDctHp

Video Tutorials Playlist
Support forum

The plugin implements several advanced functionalities to obtain the best results in an automated way:

  • automatic configuration of all the setups required by the UE4 Retarget Manager;
  • the Retarget Base Pose is computed analytically, obtaining an exact and perfect match of the skeletons used by UE4 for the retargeting of the animations;
  • a Root Bone is added to the Mixamo skeleton (and all the related skeletal meshes and animations), allowing the use of Root Motion animations with it;
  • convert Mixamo animations to UE4 Root Motion Animations (NOTE: both the normal and in-place Mixamo animations are required, see the video tutorial).

To run the tool:

  • ensure that the Unreal Engine 4 mannequin skeleton in your project has the “Humanoid” rig set;
  • select a Mixamo skeleton asset and execute the “Retarget Mixamo Skeleton Asset” contextual action.

Then you are ready to retarget all the needed animations (select an animation, then Retarget Anim Assets > Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget).

The tool also supports batch processing.

Note: This product is not made by, or affiliated with, Mixamo or Adobe Systems in any way.

Tech Details

  • Editor plugin.
  • No third party code.
  • Automatic setup of Translation Retargeting options.
  • Automatic setup of Rig mapping.
  • Analytical computation of the exact Retarget Base Pose. Some bones preserve the original component space orientation due differences between Mixamo and Epic reference poses: “Head”, “LeftToeBase”, “RightToeBase”.
  • Addition of the Root bone to enable Root Motion animations.
  • End results can be hand-tuned if needed (see the video tutorial).
  • Animation Retargeting is done with the standard editor pipeline (Retarget Anim Assets > Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget).
  • Conversion of Mixamo animations to UE4 root motion animations (both “normal ” animation and “in-place ” animation are needed for the computation - see the video tutorial).

Intended Platforms: Windows, Mac.
Platforms Tested: Windows, Mac.

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2 Likes
2

Take my money … seriously … take my money!!!

This is awesome and you definitely have a sale, it will save me hours of mucking around with Blender and root bones and stuff like that. Looking forward to this one. 8-}

3

Huge time saver, can’t wait to get this on my hands!

4

Yeah this would be a great tool just for time saving.

5

Sounds really useful, perhaps some might find the 35usd tag a bit pricey.

6

This looks incredibly useful. :smiley:

If we were able to re-target Unity Animations to the Unreal 4 rig that would be amazing :slight_smile:

7

This is really cool stuff :smiley:

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Hi! Thank you for all the nice comments, very much appreciated. The first screening has passed and now the plugin is under evaluation by Epic, I hope to be able to update this thread soon.

As it seems a very similar problem, I think we could be able to develop a specialized plugin for this. We’ll investigate it after the release of this plugin.

9

Can’t wait.

10

Hmm, pretty sure, given the vaccuum left by mixamo, this will pretty much print money for you :stuck_out_tongue: So well done haha. Looks nice :slight_smile:

11

The ability to instantly use hundreds of free animations without spending god knows how much time retargeting each and every one of them for 35 usd? It could easily cost double that without any issues.
People still have the ability to retarget them manually if it’s too expensive for them so win win.

12

So basically I can autorig a char in Mixamo, and retarget the generated rig to the UE4 skeleton?
I mean, will this only work with Mixamo animation or I can use the Mixamo auto rig and retarget that rig to an UE skeleton based animation?

13

I personally think 35 usd is a good price for such a plugin. My observation is that plugins in the marketplace are somehow expected to cost less by the community.

14

There are many small differences between the mixamo and the epic skeletons, and while manually you can bring them very close, the retarget will be off in the end. I’m not sure if this can be fixed without reskinning the model. The arms will penetrate the chest and such errors will appear.

v=1CjtDFXnU08

How does this plugin will counteract the issue?

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Fingers crossed

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15

Hi,

thanks again for all the nice comments!

Yes: you can autorig a char in Mixamo Auto-Rigger, import it in Unreal Engine 4 and then use the plugin to retarget its skeleton to the “standard” UE4 mannequin.

16

Hi Konflict,

the plugin uses an analytical approach to perfectly match the poses of the skeletons and we do few adjustments to compensate some “structural” differences (e.g. the Head bones are oriented differently, if you align them the resulting UE4 skeleton will face-up too much). Note that small errors in the retarget base pose produce big errors in the final animations (e.g. your fingers, in our tests we have better results).

But the problem you pointed out is mostly due to the different meshes of the models: e.g. the chest and arm dimensions of your source Mixamo model are smaller that the UE4 mannequin one, so when you apply the “Mixamo” rotation to the arm it will inevitably intersecate the bigger chest of the UE4 mannequin. This is a problem inherent to all animations retargeting when the meshes are different, not only with Mixamo. The proper solution would require modifications to the animation, not only the skeleton.

Anyway the end result of our plugin can be manually tuned to help minimizing this sort of issues: you can tune the analytically computed “retarget base pose” to counteract the differences between the meshes if/when needed. E.g. slightly rotating “backward” the arms could avoid the intersection with the chest (well, not having tested it it’s only an opinion :slight_smile: ).

Cheers.

17

A little update about the question from Konflict: we did a quick test and the result of running the plugin (without further manual tuning) is quite good. Here two screenshots for comparison:

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18

Looks good, when is release date?

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Unfortunately we don’t have a date, we are still waiting for Epic testing the plugin. We wrote to them few days ago but we didn’t receive a response yet.

20

Thank you for developing this! 35 is an amazing deal for a plugin which will save so much time. Hope Epic approves it soon.