What's the best workflow for non-Game character animation, say, for film and video?

Development Character & Animation
1

I’ve spent two days trying to find the info I’m asking about here. I must be missing something because I’m coming up empty.

I’m not interested in games. I’ve visualized scenes in 3ds Max for 20 years. I’d like to leverage UE’s real-time capabilities. I can’t find much about animating characters that have nothing to do with launching or playing a game. I’ve watched a few webinars on UE use in movie production and they have all kinds of characters doing their thing. Not in a game and not being moved around with a pad or keyboard.

What’s the accepted workflow? I can find tuts about bringing motion from Mixamo and placing it on characters that are ultimately controlled as a game pawn. But, I can find very little about actually creating a character that moves around and performs independently in a scene. I see tuts on Sequences and Cuts and I assume that’s where it’s all stitched together and launched to run.

But say I want a character to stand, walk over to a table and pick up an object. I’m talking 100% independently of being in a game and I’m viewing the character like in a movie, from a distance. I know I can animate a character in Max or Maya, etc. But I can’t determine what’s possible to do within UE.

Where can I find information or tuts that go through the process of bringing a non-game character to life for use as an environment background for a video or film production?

2

Make the character. Make the animation. Set the character to play the animation - or even just drag the animation onto the scene.
I believe you can get sequencer to start/stop it as well.

Or, since it is 2020 I suppose, you can set up a rig with ControlRig

And manually animate in unreal - with 20 years of max experience I really hope you don’t :stuck_out_tongue:

I doubt you’ll find specific stuff that isn’t Game based btw. And that’s because doing things for cinematics is much more lax than it is for games. When you have 100% control of everything over 1 animation you don’t need to worry about anything at all. there’s no collision, no physics. nothing that you need to dynamically adjust for. So you animate outside the engine - possibly a full sequence of events - export 1 animation, and call it a day…

3

Thanks for that. I sort of figured that’s it’s generally done outside of UE and then just brought in and set to run or loop. My reason for the exploration is that even as I’ve used Max for 20+ years, I’m not a character animator. To do it well, that one task really is a specialty and if you don’t do it every day, it’s difficult to do it well. I’m looking for a way to do some character animation without having to spend a year learning it in Max. I just don’t have the time. Yea, I realize that in 3d, you just have to learn it and there are no shortcuts. I’ve spent my life learning it.

So I guess for now, I’ll need to keep hiring people to do my character animation if I want really nice ones.

4

The softwares for VFX may be really expensive for some cases (probably companies want to promote own product using it), but if you spend a lot of time with 3ds Max you should trust Shotgun from Autodesk and if you want to make own video from 3d scene like a animated movie or trailer from game try HTC Vive for animations in real time or Kinect for Xbox ver.2 . With it you don’t need to animate characters manually with modeling programs, if you setup it for example thought Unreal 4 you save your time.

5

It’s not the expense that’s the problem. It’s the lack of time to become a character animator. I just don’t have the time. I spend a lot of time helping people on the 3ds Max Forum and I’m always telling newbies that sometimes you have to just, “get in there and learn it the old fashioned way.” In this case, I’m not heeding my own advice. I am in fact trying to find some shortcuts and a workflow such that I can do half way decent character animation when needed. I can do just about everything else in 3d but lately I’ve turned away a number of projects because they were character heavy. With Covid, I can’t afford to turn away too much work…lol… Thanks for the feedback but I’m afraid the respect I have for good character animators is well founded. It’s not easy and if you are really good at it, it’s a powerful skill.

6

If the expense is not a problem, why not just go to a mocap studio for the animations?
way cheaper than doing it by hand, and normally a much better product.

That aside, its not overly difficult if you apply a couple core prenciples.

Everything is a bouncing ball (not necessarily giggly jello though).
and Bone Stretching is the immidiate killer of lifelike animations.

Making a walk cycle from 0 takes about 20 minutes to start and 3 hours to refine by hand.

Filming and claning (or using a mocap roku suit and cleaning) takes maybe 1 hour total…

If you are working cinematic either look into the mocap suits you can have at home or look at professional studio costs…

7

If cost is not an issue, get xsens for mocap and most of your animation worries will be gone. This is especially so when you are not dealing with game based animations.

8

These are really great suggestions which I’ll explore. Also, in a reverse way, they are reiterating the notion that there isn’t a simpler or different workflow within UE that I’m overlooking or someone would have mentioned them. I appreciate this feedback. It’s very helpful.

11

I made animation in maya and transferred to UE4

12

For sure, and I know I can do that. Here’s my point. I’ve been working in 3ds Max and was doing animation back when Max was owned by the Yost Group and was called 3d Studio. I’m giving my age away but that was 1993. I have no problem animating and no problem bringing animations and .fbx files into UE.

I guess I was a little confusing. On one hand I’m acknowledging how specialized and amazing truly excellent “character” animators are. Character Animation is it’s own unique side car to all other animation. Mechanical arms like manufacturing robot arms take a little special care because of links and things, but there is nothing that challenges true animation skills like top quality Character Animation. We can, even I can, make characters move but they are often peg legged, zombie-like and unrealistic looking. And I’m not looking to do Pixar character animation.

I also fully acknowledge that doing 3d work well takes the time and dedication into learning it properly to master it. I tell people that all the time on the forums at Autodesk when they are looking for an “easy way” out. If an easy way out does exist for some task, then by all means there is no reason not to take advantage of it. But generally, most things in 3d are accomplished via hard work and a lot of education and immersion.

However, I was just shaking the trees and see if there was by chance some implementation within UE that could allow for “better” (and I say that with a grain of salt) character animation for people like me, who just have not spent the time or haven’t had the opportunity to learn it well. So, if I’m honest, I am looking for a “short cut” to doing it.

I have always and still do fully acknowledge that for some things, nothing can replace the old-fashioned notion of expertise. And expertise has to be earned, it is not handed over or gained by $49 plugins…lol… I think someone will take what we can do with Mixamo and similar code and truly build something really easy to use to animate characters one day. But it’s not quite here yet. That’s good for “job protection” for character animators, right? There was a day when I was only 1 of 3 animators in Baltimore. We were it. Then the internet came and a less steep learning curve to learn 3d. Now I have to compete with everyone in the world for crying out loud…or laughing out loud…I don’t know which. These’s that danger that “when everyone can do it” the fees we can command for our expertise shrivel up, literally. I’ve watched that, lived that and have had to reinvent myself many times in a new 3d artist reality for over 20-years now.

Back in 2002 a 3d artist named Andy Murdock tried to do it with an amazing character animation platform he called, “Lots of Robots.” Some of you might remember it. It was truly game changing. But crackers got a hold of it and broke it and put it on the internet. Instantly his revenue dried up. Andy said he’d continue to work on it but finally just threw in the towel and chastised the crackers who just want free software. But what they do is destroy a lot of amazing intellect and opportunities for the rest of us to enjoy programs that do amazing things. That’s a ‘soapbox’ rant for another time.

Wrapping up my meandering here, I’ll just either learn to be OK with my kludgy character work, learn to do it right or just hire (like I have been) someone who’s good - to do it for me. :slight_smile:

13

I also worked 3ds DOS version. I agree that mocap is a good thing, but not everything can be animated with mocap. I think that animators and 3D artists will have a lot of work to do. Of course, you need to constantly improve your professional level.To do something good, you need to put together a good team. This is a difficult task. Many good teams, but only one champion.

14

You can either:
A) add the animations into sequencer and play with transforms to get the desired results
B) use behavior trees or if it’s something simple, just a basic AI character blueprint that goes somewhere, plays a montage, etc.
C) use mocap and put everything into position, then in sequencer add camera cuts (see sequencer and infiltrator demos in the learn tab)
D) do it all manually in whatever modeling software you use and use datasmith or something to bulk export it

There are probably more ways, but those are on top of my head that I could remember.

15

Wow, DOS 3D. That predates me as far as my production work. I have a degree in Product Design and did an internship at IBM for a year. In 1984 then had one of the first 3d systems in the world. All it would do is wireframes on a black CRT. It had this big button panel that you drove beside your keyboard. As Interns, we got a lot of time on it as they tested it. It was mind-blowing way back then. The machine cost 2.5million and there were only two of them. Fast forward to 1994. I was wanting to start a business and a friend showed me 3d Studio V1. It was love at first sight and my studio was born and has miraculously survived till this day (although Covid almost killed it). I used to be really good at DOS in general. What an interesting time that was.

16

Hey, thanks for this. It’s kind of what I’ve begun to intuit. It’s good to see that I have been thinking about the options pretty much as you list them. I appreciate this list. :cool:

17

Hi guys, new to the discussion here. Thanks for the tips above.

I was curious about stylized animation, and was wondering how I’d approach creating a workflow, where I’d be able to animate characters directly in VR.
I tried doing some animation this way, albeit non-character, and it’s really fast and intuitive.

With the addition of “Control Rig” in UE, perhaps this could be utilized or adapted to work in VR editor mode. What I’d possibly like to do, is grab the control rig controllers, pose them and set up keyframes on a timeline, then get out of VR and adjust everything, timing, refine the curves between the keyframes.

This could work for stylized animation really well, and would also be a great use case for Control Rig! Do you guys have any thoughts on this, that will help me get a fresh look, before I do any work on preparing the tools?

Thanks!

Just for some background on where I’d like to use this, I’ve helped create similar animation here in Unity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGRnOJfHKOc
I’d like to switch that whole platform to UE. We also do own a mocap system, so I can confirm, that normally you won’t animate reallistic motion directly in UE.

For the above question of RobH2:

  1. One option would be to use existing game-ready character and animation loops (walk, sit, pickup, …) and then just set up waypoints and behaviour switches on a timeline.
  2. If you need to animate for visualisation, you can use AXYZ Design Store - anima4
  3. Or if you need absolute control over the animation, then use a mocap pipeline (there are some that do live recording in UE, that you can then use even without post-production). I did this animation within a day using similar technique for a quick and dirty output: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PO4-pJCBUY
18

@**AndrejGrek

Thanks for the comments. Yea, I’ve used Anima for years and it’s great for what it’s great for. My need now and then, and it very infrequent, is to do a character but I can’t have any sliding or imprecision. Game-ready loops all have a bit of sliding with anything beyond standing in place if the feet show at all. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback in this thread that’s helpful as much as it is disappointing (but the disappointment was expected). I was hoping someone would pop in and say, “sure, just go do this or get that and you’ll have a perfect character in just a few hours.” I didn’t expect that to happen but did have my fingers crossed…lol…

Anyway, what I need apparently can only be done, as I surmised initially, the old-fashioned way, with “real” character animation. Having said that, I’m now taking a course online about 3ds Max CAT animation as I get time. Sometimes, like I often say to newbies at the Max forum, “you just have to dive in and learn it.”

Oh yea, I’m always amazed by mocap setups but it’s beyond the scope and facilities that I have available to me. So if I need to go that far, I’ll just do what I have been doing, and, hire someone to do my character animations when needed. This whole thread begun because I’ve been getting more calls lately that need character animation and I’ve had to turn them down. In the days of Covid, it’s never good to turn anything down. **

19

That’s right, I understand Rob. A lot of those sliding issues might come from animation compression. I’d have to look into how this works in Unreal, as I’m just beginning to research using it for linear animation projects, but in Unity, the difference when you turn off compression is night and day.

20

Ok, what you mentioned prompts a question. I don’t know Unity very well at all but played with it a little a few years ago. Does it have some good user ‘noob’ friendly character animation tools that could be exported out? Is that what you are suggesting with the talk about “animation compression?”

21

Something else to check out is iClone7. A number of included mocap actions packages and animation tools to blend animations.
You can also blend mocap animation in Unreal in the sequencer.
Unreal also support their unreal iPhone app to motion capture facial expressions and actions.

22

use the Kinect 2 for motion capture and skip the agony of keyframing… you will still have to do cleanup of the motion capture but you are years ahead of key framed workflow

Brekel Body 2 and a single Kinect 2 can have you “animating” in hours (once you digest Unreal as an animation platform, which takes some time, but ignore the gaming aspects and concentrate on motion capture, cleanup and set building. For face, use the iPhone ARK that is free with Unreal - borrow an iPhone 10 or later and you are off to the races…