Btw. I’ve posted it somewhere already I guess. But since there was an update at blender 2.76 or so up to date export/import settings for Blender to UE4 (mesh / animation):
Edit: Updated screenshot for import.
well I fixed the smooth problem, I will add a pic of my current import message in UE4, to tell you the truth I have been researching about weight painting, but I didnt made any changes in that, should it work if I dont make changes in the weight painting?
and there still an error of some bones being to small, though all I care right now is to make the animation retargeting
I also renamed the bones in Blender so they got auto filled when I made the humanod retarget
but even so when I try to mke the retargeting the mesh dosent appear in the retargeting window
and if I still make the retargeting, selecting a path for the animation then I get an empty animation :
and I also gave the manequin an humanoid rig
Am I still making mistakes??
Yes. You have to change the weight painting only if you add further bones. For example twist bones. Currently there is just one bone at lower arm. That means if you rotate your hand into a position that would require some twist it might look like a twisted balloon. You could avoid that if you create and use anims that does not rotate your arms too much but it would limit your freedom: Re-tarjet problem and please advise - Character & Animation - Epic Developer Community Forums …and if you start animating yourself you would wish some sooner or later.
This usually means that you did not apply scale and/or you’ve a wrong unit scale. Usually I set scene settings in Blender to Metric and Unit Scale to 0.01 for UE4. If you add some cube now in Blender and export it into UE4 then it should be 2x2x2m. If your character looks like some ant then it’s too small. Usually the default size of the ManuelBastioniLab is much smaller than the default size in UE4:
I think this is some bug in UE 4.14. Even if you don’t see a preview on the right side it still works.
I think it’s because your bones are way too small.
I think the mesh is not that bad even without twistbones:
However difference with some twist bone added (same rotations of upper/lowerarm and hand - just twist bone added which splits up the weights of lowerarm):
I really forgot about the scale, but maybe Im still doing something wrong, I used metric 0.01 and selected the “human female base” in edit mode, presed A to select all, then pressed s to scale, typed 100, and now it looks like it has the right messures in blender, then exported it as .fbx
then imported to UE4
yet the message stays the same
this really looks like my last problem regarding the animation retargeting (hopefully)
by the way I contacted with Manuel, and told him about the idea of making the add on more friendly for UE4 developers, by:
- adding twist bones
- changeing the name of some of the bones to match the ones of the manequin
- adding a pose alike the default one of the manequin
maybe I should tell him something about the scale too?
If you scale something in object mode then you have to apply “Rotation and Scale” first. In your first screenshot the scale is still 100. If you export it like that then it would be again 100 times smaller. That means the scale should be 1 before you start your export but without decreasing the size again. To do that just select everything (mesh, armature, …) in object mode, hit “Ctrl-A” (apply) and choose “Rotation and Scale”. The total size of your mesh would remain the same but if you look at that “Scale” numbers afterwards in that sidebar then they would be 1.0 now. If it’s 1.0 then you could export it and the size would be the same in UE4 now. If you do it right then there is no error and even no warning in UE4.
Would be a very cool feature - even if you don’t use it with UE4.
If you would add it yourself as hint: Make use of that “Shift-S” key and snap your cursor to center or startpoint of existing bones and form there “Shift-S” to place the new added bone in perfect line to your parent bone. Those twist bones should just use “Keep offset” (mark new twistbone and then your lowerarm parent bone and hit Ctrl-P). The lowerarm_twist_01_l should follow the rotations of the lowerarm_l bone but without beeing a parent of any further bone. Its on the same level as “hand_l” (which got lowerarm_l as parent as well) in the skeleton tree. If you take a look at the mannequin you could even see that all bones are kept that way (keep offset vs connnected). You could easier “cheat” some animation poses that would not be that easy possible with “connected” bones instead of “keep offset” bones (while those bones still follow like connected if you don’t grab and move them). Regarding the weights I would recommend to create a copy of the existing vertex group. For example copy lowerarm_l and name it lowerarm_twist_01_l. Afterwards remove some weights of both (lowerarm_l and lowerarm_twist_01_l). It might be easier if you paint with autonormalize on - so you don’t add 1.0 weight to both bones on the same vertex. If one vertex got 1.0 at one bone it should get 0.0 weight at the other bone. If it got 0.5 at one bone it should get 0.5 at the other bone. The sum should always be 1.0 (not more not less). If you copy the vertex group then you would get too much weight at first. That’s why I recommend autonormalize.
Adding a further pose would be nice but you would still have to change it to the rest pose (which requires a lots of steps if you would keep all those handy shape-keys).
now it seems to work, but still something feels off, maybe the pose I made for the manequin wasnt similar enough to the one of the manuellab mesh, anyway I will post a picture with the animation working
I guess the next step would be
1)to use marvelous designer5 to make some clothes for the char
2)to learn how to use “quixel” and “DDO Painter” in order to make quality materials for these chars.
by the way if someone is intrested in the second one here its a video on YouTube of some artist:
Normally I see that people use maya or 3dmax to use that, but I guess is posible to export the files from blender?
Yes I think so too. And it’s some male anim.
1:1 Materials does not work that well as fire and forget export with Blender. Blender for example supports a different color for specular. UE4 does not do that but have a lots of possibilites to create very advanced materials. However exporting textures works well if you switch to “Blender Render” (instead Cycles with more advanced materials). Manuellab even contains some skin-textures that could be applied easy that way as Blender material to the mesh. Just select the mesh, switch to edit mode, go to the cycles material and hit select (so all faces from that material are selected) - afterwards create a standard Blender-material go to texture tab and add a texture and assign the final material to the selection. Afterwards you could create some skin-material in UE4 with some “Preintegrated Skin” shading or some Subsurface shader and extend it with more details later. You could additionally bake AO, normal or specular maps and others via Blenders bake function (that cam symbol) export that images and put them together in material-editor in UE4 afterwards.
Anyone find a way to make a good looking materials ?
i tried this but not looking good as in blender.
(maybe need to wait 1.50
Since the animation I havent tried to do anything else with the meshes, but I remember that there was an option to export 3 diferent images that form the skin in blender, I also Heard that the 1.5 versión will have some upgrades regarding skin shaders but I wouldnt put to much faith in that since materials in blender seem to work diferent tan in ue4, I think the names of the pgn are dermal subdermal and displacement. I will try to do something simple with them and post it if it works
I merged skin shader exp. from content exp. and got this
I want to use eye material exp. too but its hard to merge with this
The eye from the lab is more complex and got a second mesh for cornea and a iris hole. The built in eyeshader requires a simple mesh without that hole as it fakes refraction. I don’t think it’s possible to use the builtin eyeshader without replacing the eye-mesh. I did something like that already successfully in the past for a makehuman mesh… however it did not contain any shapekeys (the current mesh from the lab includes them to look up/down/left/right). You have to recreate those shapekeys if you replace the mesh (for example with an export of the content example mesh).
I would just keep you informed that Manuel wrote that the upcoming version 1.5 would include twist bones by default (very nice!) and you should be able to change the current pose as rest pose (which makes it a lot easier to prepare them for retargetting). Both are great news if you would make those characters alive in UE4.
omg I was just about to say that Neutronux, hahaha I had been a bit busy with school so I hadnt time to keep messing around with the meshes, but yes 1.5 will be a great improvement for those who want to animate the meshes, when I get some free time I will try to find a good configuration for the textures, and research some animation packages.
In blender fórum I was told that maybe Manuel used these libraries to make his first motion capture video, I will leave them here as reference
Does anyone have the correct steps to get Blender 2.78a ->ManuelBastioniLAB version 1.4.0a -> Unreal 4.15
I have more hours than I care to admit trying to get this to work, with the imported animation looking only like a blob or sometimes weird looking giant waving hands. I understand ManuelBastioniLAB 1.5 is due out soon and that may include twist bones and maybe a properly exported skeleton that may help the situation, but I believe there should be a sticky post with a step by step to get this to work, or even better yet on the ManuelBastioniLAB website.
If I do ever figure this out though, I will post a walk through.
heres a video i release a year ago showing i think ML 1
and here’s a link to a page from Alberto de Tena Rojas with a few fixes that he found
http://www.albertodetena.com/?p=346
hope they help
Blender 2.78b - 1.4a ManuelBasioniLAB:
*) Set Scene settings to “Metric” and “Unit Scale” to 0.01 (you would get a tiny mesh at first).
*) Go to ManuelbastioniLAB choose a Character type and click “Init character”
*) Zoom in (we scale it later)
*) Open left sidebar (T) if not already open
*) Open the “Body, face and measuere parameters”
*) Search for Morphing categories “Chest”
*) Turn “Chest_Girth” to max.
*) Turn it back… seriously.
*) If you are done with changing the body parameters continue with:
*) Choose Pose tools in the right side bar of ManuelBasioniLAB
*) Click on “Reset pose” - you should see some A-pose now (too different from UE4 but a starting point)
*) Switch into Pose mode in Blender (Select the skeleton / a bone to be able to do so)
*) Adjust the rest pose (note following are just very quick example values based on a female mesh)… adjust this to make it UE4 A-pose like:
*) Select the upperarm_R bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y” “-18”
*) Select the upperarm_L bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y” “18”
*) Select the lowerarm_R and lowerarm_L bone in PoseMode do “R”, “X” “-25”
*) Select the hand_R bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “Y”, “-30”
*) Select the hand_R bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “-10”
*) Select the hand_L bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “Y”, “30”
*) Select the hand_L bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “10”
*) Select the thigh_R bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “-3”
*) Select the thigh_L bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “3”
*) Select the foot_R bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “6”
*) Select the foot_L bone in PoseMode do “R”, “Y”, “-6”
*) Select the mesh in object mode
*) Select the wrench / modifier symbol (modifier tab)
*) Search the armature modifier and hit apply
*) If you have any further mesh (cloth, …) do the same (apply armature modifier before you switch the rest pose)
*) Select the skeleton and choose Pose Mode … select all (AA)
*) Hit “CTRL-A” and choose “Apply Pose as Rest Pose” (if you now enter the edit mode of the skeleton it may not change any longer)
*) Choose the mesh in object mode again
*) Go to the modifier tab again
*) Add a armature modifier
*) Choose your skeleton
*) Move the armature modifier on top of the modifier list again
*) While in the modifier tab even remove the subdivide modifier now (too much polys for game)
*) Click on the ManuelLab tab (T sidebar)
*) Choose “Finalize tools” and hit “Finalize”
*) Select the skeleton and switch to pose mode
*) Hit “A”, “A”, “ALT+G”, “ALT+R”, “ALT+S”
*) If nothing changes good! Your mesh got the new rest pose (and you still have all that fancy shape keys)
*) If the pose changes bad! Your mesh still got the old A-pose (which differs too much)
*) Select the mesh(es) and the armature in object mode
*) Select the curser as new pivot point “.” and hit Shift-C to set the cursor to 0,0,0
*) Hit “S” to scale. Type 100 and hit Enter
*) Still everything selected hit “CTRL-A” and choose “Apply Rotation and Scale”
*) Select the skeleton, enter the Editmode, choose the root bone and hit “X” to delete it
*) Go into the outliner … search that orange armature icon and rename it to “root”
*) Optional: You could choose some bone roll as well (enter edit mode with Tab and hit CTRL-N … choose which you prefer for animating later or probably IK anim in UE4. I’m afraid none is the UE4 one as it does not roll around Y). However you would retarget anyway.
*) If you wanna make your life easier rename bones now (so they fit to the names of the UE4 mannequin)
*) Ignore the 00 bones at the hand (you don’t need them for UE4).
*) Export as FBX and Import into UE4 (note if you would export shape keys / morph targets disable the “Apply modifier” setting at Geometry: New project released by MakeHuman team leader - Community & Industry Discussion - Epic Developer Community Forums
*) Import into UE4
*) No errors! No warnings! If you get some error or warning something is wrong.
UE4:
*) Open your new imported skeleton
*) If you don’t see any morph targets (eyes, mouth, …) and if you are sure you disabled the “Apply modifier” flag in Blenders FBX export settings reimport the mesh with the reimport button. Seems like a minor 4.15 bug. Reimport works around it.
*) If you reimported the mesh to get the morph targets you have to go into the materials and enable that “Used with Morph Targets” in the Usage section of the imported materials (do this when you create your materials later).
*) Select the “Retarget Manager” Tab
*) Select Rig “Humanoid”
*) If you did not rename your bones in Blender you have to map all bones now. spine01 -> spine_01 and so on. Ignore the 00 bones at the hand (start with the 01 ones).
*) Select the “Skeleton Tree” Tab
*) At the bottom search “All Bones, Active Sockets” click on it and enable the view of “Show retargetting options”
*) Choose the root bone, right-click and select “Recursively Set Retargetting Skeleton”
*) Choose the root bone again and switch from Skeketon to “Animation”
*) Choose the pelvis bone and switch from “Skeleton” to “Animation Scaled”
*) Hit Save
*) Even choose the other mesh - e.g. the UE4 mannequin and select the “Humanoid” Rig in the Retarget manager and hit Save
*) Select some AnimBlueprint (e.g. UE4 mannequin) and retarget it.
I wasn’t able to check this today, but I will go step by step and see if I can import a correctly rigged character tomorrow.
If everything goes smoothly, I will put together a visual tutorial to aid others using your written direction. It looks very thorough and I appreciate the effort.
I’m interested in finding the tools to make Manuel’s (or other) models work in ue4 with both mixamo and mannequin animations. I have very limited time to test, but someone might be interested to try:
-First use ue4 tools to change the mannequin mesh to your custom mesh. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyg9ctrnKvo)
-modify fbx exporter so it will not add the extra bone (Prevent Blender FBX Exporter adding extra root bone – Kris Redbeard)
-make new animations or just export the model to ue4
-UE4Mannequin animations should retarget without issue.
mixamo animations:
- upload the no-root mannequin (provided here: Retargeting Mixamo In-Place Animation To Epic Skeleton - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums) to mixamo, might need several tries.
-Download animations using this no-root mannequin
-These animations will simply retarget to unreal mannequin, but not to blender’s mannequin (it will be rotated). But after it has been retargeted to ue4 mannequin, it can be retargeted to Blender’s (with Manuel’s model).
I tried the mixamo animation to blender mannequin in 4.11 and it worked. I haven’t tried changing the mesh to Manuel’s model yet… I’m not that good at rigging anyway.
If you try this let me know how it went 