Transfer the skeleton to another model

[mxmodx]

Hello, I have two human models, but their skeletons are different and the names of the bones are different and because of this I cannot use animation for both at once. Animation retarget does not work correctly. Is there any way to transfer a skeleton from one model to another, as if replacing it?

[VisAgilis]

Here’s my answer from another topic on the same question:

How to retarget the skeletal mesh of UE4 mannequin to the new skeletal mesh of UE5 mannequin

What do you mean by retargeting the skeleton? When you add / remove bones to / from a skeletal mesh, it becomes a completely different skeleton. How big the difference is doesn’t matter. I think what you wanna accomplish is retargeting your animations in between models that use different skeletons. Here is the documentation for it, you can scroll down a bit to reach the second part and check it out!

Hope this helps!

[mxmodx]

Thanks, but it seems this documentation is already outdated for UE5. It seems that everything is already done there through IK retarget and IK rig.

[VisAgilis]

There isn’t a more practical way of achieving this since it is in fact not possible to assign skeletal meshes to models that they were not designed for. You can also use a 3D editor such as Blender or Maya to adjust the skeletons but I think the approach demonstrated in this tutorial would be better:

Unreal Engine 5 - Retarget animations between skeletons

[mxmodx]

I already guessed that I would have to work in a blender, for example. Thanks for your help.

[VisAgilis]

Wanned to clarify that the tutorial I provided doesn’t include any adjustments to the skeletal mesh assets but rather retargets the animations that use different skeletons