Hi!
First post here and first serious project on UE for archviz.
I was wondering which workflows are commonly being used for populating the arch scenes with not-so-close to the camera people. For rendering an animation purposes, in the first place.
I am interested in people walking and jogging across the environment, interacting with the ground. Was thinking there has to be a better solution than statically animating in 3dsmax and exporting.
As I understand, unfortunately Twinmotion people cannot be imported to UE, which would have been a starting point.
For now, I wanted to ask if anyone have tried the Axyz Anima plugin, and if you think it is worthy.
Also, I am just beginning to test Metahumans, but I think it would be very resource expensive to have lot of characters at the same time, even in the background. Do you have any experience on that?
I was trying to avoid to individually prepare custom characters to import, but maybe that’s the way.
I use Anima with 3ds Max and import into UE5 with the plugin. Its a very easy bit of software to use. You export background geometry into Anima from 3ds Max, then set up all your people and paths in Anima. It live updates into Max when you save. As for how it interacts with Unreal, there is a good tutorial on the Axyz website. Once you have that anima file you don’t need Max open and you can edit your people and interactions in Anima by itself. UE is simply an import of that file once you have the plugin installed. It brings each person in as an animated element. I am doing a 4 minute animation at the moment with hundreds of people and its working well. The metahumans are great but pretty heavy in file size and also a pain to rig to walk on paths etc. I had one riding a bike but that was an ordeal so I will stick with using the easier Anima workflow for now.
Hi there. I too am bringing Anima people in to UE5 and they are great. Do you have any idea if you can apply different materials to them? I am trying to add a simple base color to them to stylise them but having no luck at the moment. Any ideas/thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks.
Unfortunately, I delayed the people importing because I am using some metahumans for the scenes I am working right now.
I am planning to test Anima in the following weeks. I was somehow disappointed by the 4 seconds limit on the Lite version, but considering buying the full Anime if the tests go well.
Will get back here when I test the Anima people.
Just for the record, if it is useful for anyone by this time:
I finally purchased an Anima All license due to the shortcoming of the deadline.
It was pretty useful for the project. Even though the UE integration could be tighter, the workflow went very smooth and the time saving was enourmous for populating near a hundred custom actors.
You have to come and go to their editor to fine tune the timings and paths if you want some more choreographic movements in combination with other simulated assets, but I would encourage to give it a try if you are short on time.
Also for the record, changing materials is the same as any other material in UE.
The actors are imported as skeletal meshes and you can work from there.
Anima also has a simple system to produce procedural color variations inside its software. Those variations are imported into UE, but I think you cannot change them through that system once imported.