Possibility of transfering Maya 2016's delta mush deformation to the skin weight of the ART tool?

[anonymous_user_3ab5e1e7]

Hi there,

I am currently in the process of using UE to create an animated short film I am currently working on. I have already built all the sets and props I need to use, and imported them into the engine just fine. But now it is time for me to import the characters and their animations, and this is where my problem starts. I am using Maya 2016, and I used the ART tool to rig and animate my characters. BUT I have used the new delta mush feature (Delta Mush Skin Deformer Maya 2016 Tutorial - Rosana Marar - YouTube) in Maya 2016, to save some time in the skinning process. Within maya my animations look fine and they fit perfectly into my prebuilt scenes. But when I import my character with his animations it does get imported just fine, and the animations seem to match what I did in Maya, but the problem is that it seems as though UE ignored the Delta mush information on my mesh so the skinning within UE looks horrible without it.

So my question is Is there any way to make ART actually use this delta mush information as in maya and use it in the engine, or is there any way of transferring the delta mush deformation into skin weights within the ART tool? Because everything looks and works fine in maya, but the skin deformation isn’t being carried over.

Alternatively, is there any way I can bake the animation into the character mesh, and import ONLY the mesh with its pre-baked animation without any skeletons? Because if that is possible at least I can insert these animation into the UE scenes and still be able to match them up perfectly as they were in Maya.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks

[anonymous_user_4e65ebc2]

The “delta mush deformer” is just that; a deformer not a skin weight, but unlike other deformers it cannot be frozen to the mesh. Think of it as pressing 3 for smooth preview in Maya.
The information cannot be exported to any other app.

To Export a skel mesh it MUST properly skinned, weight painted and bind to a skeleton.
Animation keys are transforms that MUST to be baked to a skeleton and cannot be baked to the mesh. If it has no bones then it is a static mesh.

You can animate a static mesh using blend shapes, but for your project that would be a lot of work.

My Advice:
There are some new skinning methods in Maya 2016 which might help you.
Add extra edge loops (UE4 can handle pretty high poly counts) at the major bends then use these settings (in the image att) to skin. You will still need to fix the weight painting but it will get you fairly close.
Also on export make use you have smooth groups selected.

[anonymous_user_3ab5e1e7]

Aaah okay. I was afraid that might be the case. Thank you very much for the reply, I haven’t used this new skinning method so I am gonna try that out right now, if it can save me some skinning time at least it would be awesome. Thanks again

[Roumenov]

For anyone who stumbles upon this later, Maya 2018 has an option for this(I think it was introduced in a 2017 update). “Bake Deformation to Skin Weights…” at the bottom of the Skin menu. Credit to Hans Godard, whom I’m pretty sure came up with the method.