Thanks to the community and great tutorials, I imported a mixamo character, animations, created blendpaces, animation BP etc. everything works for the player.
Now I would like to create a NPC AI (taking another character from Mixamo), the question is : Is it possible to transfer all this to the NPC AI in order to save time?
I can’t seem to find an answer as most tuto for AI used the already implemented mannequin and its animation, If you could just point out a workflow that will be nice
You can try a copy/paste, but generally animations are linked to the skeleton so you would have to retarget all of them to the new character if you have extra or any different bones.
You can try to copy the animation blueprint asset, so that everything is in place, then you can try to create the new character and assign the copy as the animation BP in within the static mesh component.
If the skeletons match you shouldn’t have issues, if they do not or if there are other issues you’ll be stuck in a T pose until you start resolving them.
Generally, I grab the anim folder, duplicate it, and Blulk retarget to the new skeleton. It’s time consuming but it works.
If your AI character was imported into the engine using the same skeleton as your main character. You can simply reuse your existing Animation Blueprint with your AI character. You’ll need to make sure your anim blueprint doesn’t directly rely on user input or can update itself from both a PlayerController or AIController.
Thanks for the hints Mosthost and Wave! That is really nice.
yes, it works as long as the skeletton is the same. But in mixamo different characters were created by different authors and obviously as they seem to feature different skeleton, when importing one and using the skeleton of another the character are hideously deformed! It means that in mixamo you have to redownload each animation for your new character and its specific skeleton.
For the anim BP just copy paste including the state machine works well.
So as a note for others here is the workflow I used :
Download your character from mixamo (you will have to create a separate material for eyelashes with 3ds Max, Maya or blender sometimes)
Download all its specific animation (walking etc.)
Import your character then import your animation specifying your new character skeleton you just imported
Copy paste your Blend spaces and create an anim BP and paste inside your animation BP/state machine of your player
In these BS and BP and state machine re-enter animations and variables
And then as usual with AI create an AI Character, AI controller, AI behaviour tree and AI Black board.
To do all that I used 3 great tutorials (thanks to the authors!) :
I re-rig the mixamo characters I use to be compatible with the Epic Skeleton in Blender. You can use any DCC app to do so. This way I don’t need to keep multiple copies of the same animation and my characters can share the same blueprint code.
I made Uefy Script to help rig characters in Blender. It is a paid tool but you can find similar free options as well.
It’s really too bad that blender does a horrible job with auto weight paint… however it’s possible to download anything and apply the epic skeleton to it, even manually.
You either rename all the bones. Move them in place, and parent them correctly (which keeps the weight groups), or you have to change the weight groups to match the other names.
Most of the issues I have ran into doing either process are the Extra spin bones, which may require removal and a manual re-paint of the area involved. A complex process, but achievable (and a hell of a good learning experience)
