I have a character that is considerable smaller than the Starter Mannequin and uses a different skeleton.
I retargeted the skeleton, made the base pose the same, and applied animation scale to the pelvis bone (Hip bone in my case) and animation to the root, but for some reason, my character still floats above the root node when I apply an animation to it. It also increases in scale.
Obviously, I’ve done something wrong, but I’ve been through the example tutorial videos more times than I’d like to count.
but you could check your physics file for the model (content browser) and see if one of the capsules are holding your model up off the floor, sometimes resizing or deleting the root bone capsule can help. if not check your collision capsule in the actual model’s file as well.
then you might have to reset your base pose in the retargeting to get it on the floor
and always mention what program or where the model etc. comes from when looking for help on forums, that also helps. good luck
Since the animation usually contains scaling transforms it’s not unusual for the character to adopt the scale and with out source in hand guessing is the best I could do.
So a guess as to best practice if a character is sharing the same rigging info retargeting should be avoided and instead use the 1-1 scale and by scaling down the rigging as part of the component character should adjust the character to the proper size as will transfer the inherited scale to anything connected to it.
The reason the feet are above origin is maybe the scale retarget is applied to the hips so as part of the parent child hierarchy the legs will scale upwards towards the hips and anything above it as connected to the torso will scale downwards towards the hips.
To correct for scale such a function needs to be applied to the root so everything connected to the root will inherent from that point upwards and correct the foot placement relative to the ground.
Or
You could open the character component and pull the character downwards as the usual cause of floating feet is they are above the capsules collision plan which will always fall to zero plan when spawned or in the viewer.
Thanks for taking a look at this. As you figured, it’s a Daz G2 model, and I sent it through 3DS Max, using 2011 FBX export into Unreal.
The Pelvis bone in my character is the Hip bone, which I mentioned earlier. When I went into the model’s physics asset, I deleted its Hip capsule because it occupied the same space as another bone capsule. There was no capsule for the root node. The whole things is still a mystery to me. Frankly, I’m amazed that someone has put out a video on importing Daz models and fixing whatever needs fixing. Perhaps it exists, but I have yet to find one.
One ting I noticed, and it probably isn’t important, but when I apply the animation, the distance that the character move up puts the bottom of the bounds at ground level. I checked the mannequin skeleton, and this wasn’t the case.
For me it has something to do with scaling (hip) perhaps.
Is the heigth changing, while animations are playing? lol toooo late i see, you got a better answer from FrankieV.
I think you are onto something with the feet floating above because they are pulled to the hip. I looked at the rig in 3DS Max, and the pelvis bone is actually between the hip and legs, with the abdomen bones and children above the hip bone.
I’m not sure how to do the 1-1 Scale thing that you mentioned, instead of retargeting. Maybe you meant to target the appropriate bones in the retarget manager, but not in the translation retargeting tree. This I tried, and it put the skeleton in front of its root node. See below:
If I set the Pelvis node to Animation Scaled and the root node to Animation, then it just floats above the root node and is scaled up a bit. With this option, I went into my Character BP and move the mesh down. I also scaled the capsule, as I saw in the video you provided. After some trial and error, I got it at the correct Z translation to have the feet on the ground. See below:
I did notice, however, that the feet slide a little, which is probably a result of scaling the feet toward the pelvis node. Also, though I haven’t tested it, I’m pretty sure that certain rotations, such as the character banking, will send the feet sideways.
You had mentioned that to scale it properly, the scaling should be applied to the root node, but I’m not sure how to do that. If my assumption is correct, the skeleton translation tree does calculations based on the the distance of root to pelvis, and compare that to the source rig that is being retargeted from. This would give the scale, which is then applied to everything further down the tree.
