Hi.
I want to create a neural network that will learn how to animate a character based on motion capture data. I’m using bvh files from cgspeed (I know that ue4 doesn’t support bvh but I’m going to write my own parser and animate the character directly from c++). The problem is that the skeleton in those files is really weird.
Root, left hips, right hips and lower back are all in the same spot (same with spine1, left shoulder, right shoulder and neck) and some of these bones don’t even have keyframes.
Would retargeting these animations to the default ue4 skeleton work properly (without any glitches etc) or should I get my own motion capture files that will be made for a “normal” skeleton?
I’m not going to sell those animations because this project is my engineering thesis. I’ll make a prototype with this weird skeleton and see if everything is working properly. After that I’ll probably get some professional motion capture that can be used for more standard skeletons with as little retargeting as possible. Thanks for your help
You are welcome.
If you don’t need anything else, I can covert the comment into an answer and you can mark it as resolved. If you have any other doubts, you can post another question with you specific problem.
If you want to obtain the best results, I’d suggest you to create a skeleton that matches the bones hierarchy of your motion capture data, so you can easily “import” or procedural generate animations.
Then, you should use that skeleton for your characters on your project. If you already have a model, then you should do the rig again.
If on the other hand you are planning to sell those animations, then you will have to do some retargeting, if you want to use the default UE4 Skeleton. You can also leave this step to the end user, or after the retargeting you should clean the animations up before selling them.
However, in the case of you own project, I’d go in avoiding retargeting, and set all your characters on your new Skeleton.
Hi unfortunately I don’t have the code anymore. I remeber I was able to parse the BVH file directly inside ue4 but I had some problems with replaying the animations (the models were deformed). At the end I abandoned the project and changed the topic of my thesis.
I’ll make a prototype with this weird skeleton and see if everything is working properly. After that I’ll probably get some professional motion capture that can be used for more standard skeletons with as little retargeting as possible. Thanks for your help