I am posting this with the hope that I can give some additional feedback for UE-73343.
The PHAT process really is in dire need of some improvements.
- Allow for some custom string/regex matching between left/right naming conventions
- Allow for setting the physics body mirror axises/custom transforms
Aside from the hell I go through whenever I get some generic asset and I want to use it in the phat tool (and it doesn’t comply to UE4 _l _r naming conventions, I am running into issues mirroring the physics bodies themselves.
It seems that the mirror option currently only applies to Maya/3DSMax-centric joint symmetries, and there is no option to configure this. As a user who moves between a lot of modeling software, it is almost impossible to utilize the mirroring ability of PHAT with blender Armature exports.
Currently, it seems that PHAT’s mirroring is hard coded to Maya’s symmetry axises, and its impossible to use with blender based Armatures. Refer to the below diagram for the differences:
I think it would be extremely beneficial to be able to manually specify the Mirroring axises per skeleton-asset. I am sure that this would be beneficial for UE4 rigging and symmetrical joint rotations as well.
Also, I would like to add that there is no documentation on what UE4 expects primary and secondary bone axises to be. I had to somehow find the UE4 default mannequin from the rigging project and inspect it to figure it out.