How to retarget Unreal 5 Mannequin animations to a MetaHuman (Tutorial)

This tutorial covers how to retarget MoCap Central UE5 mannequin animations to a MetaHuman using Unreal 5.2.
*Checkout a more recent MetaHuman retargeting vide here • How to retarget Unreal... *
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0:00 - Intro
1:44 - Locate your MetaHuman proportion skeleton type
2:14 - Create a new UE5 to MetaHuman Retargeter file
3:30 - Turn off Blend to Source in Retargeter
3:59 - Review and export retargeted MetaHuman animations
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[@louisiannna]

You're the best - thanks so much for explaining so well and going at a good pace. Much appreciated :)

[@mocapcentral]

Hi Louisianna, your very welcome, hope it helped you with your retargeting!

[@tarbyte7112]

Great job thank you!

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, your welcome, thanks for leaving a comment. If you would like to be part of the new MoCap Central community join our Discord server discord.gg/tr9Qbue2xs. I have a mocap-wish channel to listen to the needs of indie developers. Hope to see you there.

[@michaeldonahue5711]

very helpful Thanks!

[@mocapcentral]

You're welcome!

[@user-jb1dq2xj9k]

진짜 감사해요! Thank you!

[@mocapcentral]

천만에요, 댓글 남겨주셔서 감사합니다!

[@WilliamVideoUT]

Thank you, this is very helpful. It does seem much easier in UE 5.2.

[@mocapcentral]

I appreciate the comment, thanks!

[@kurkista]

Cheers! this defn. is one of the more clearer explainers of the retargeting process. I find most of the tutorials assume viewers already understand quite a lot about the topic. I was wondering if you know of a diagram of sorts (or having done one yourself) describing all the elements in relations to each other that make visible the a) elements and b) dependencies of those elements? I have a hard time understanding all these steps without having a view of the greater picture. - retargeting being one part of that picture.

[@mocapcentral]

Hi kurkista, thanks for the message! I agree that a diagram would be helpful, I often have to stop and think through the steps each time, I'll look at putting one together and sharing it.

[@kurkista]

sweet! @@mocapcentral

[@keerzhao752]

thank you so much for this tutorial! a quick question, after retargeting, the head rotation was missing, do you know a way to fix this?

[@mocapcentral]

Hello, hmm...I'm not sure what would have caused that. Feel free to join our Discord server and I can help you there discord.gg/byMsYbkAkE

[@elgatonet]

but they are all separated into multiple files, how can I get them to be grouped into one animation file?

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, am I correct in understanding that you would like to take a selection of individual animation clips and combine them into a single animation clip? I've not done this before in UE, but looking at UE 5.0.3 quickly you could add your character to the Sequencer, then add the animation clips in a row, select all the animation clips and click the Actions button (wrench) and select export. This will export an fbx file, you could then import that fbx back into your UE project. When I have time I'll check 5.2.1 to see if there's an improved flow. We have a MoCap Central Discord community, feel free to join so I can help you directly discord.gg/tr9Qbue2xs.

[@Dawin4e]

Question, I was making my own clothes for the character, I'm trying to hang them on the character, everything seemed to be imported and connected normally. yes, when the character stands in clothes and the IDLE animation is played, everything is cool, but as soon as the character starts running or jumping, the clothes start to sag and fly off in the area of the elbows (sometimes they start to flicker and rattle as if it were a glitch in the video card), when the character stops, the clothes return to their place. I've already broken my head - I can't find a solution, I've tried different settings, I've tried connecting different skeletons to clothes - nothing really changes. For some reason, there is no such problem with Shoes. Everything was imported and attached immediately.

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, I can only assume it's the clothing mesh skin weighting needs adjusting in the areas you mentioned...unless your using a cloth dynamic simulation on the clothing then it could be setting adjustment.

[@Dawin4e]

Thanks for the answer, Yes, fabric simulation was not used in my clothes. Now I'm trying to transfer the weights of the vertices to the clothes through Blender.

[@Los_Wolves]

Is it possible to make my metahuman to swing a baseball player?

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, yes if you have an animation you can retarget it to a MetaHuman. Are you looking for an animation of a baseball player swinging a bat?

[@salazar665]

Sorry about this.. But I'm new to ue. how do you get animations to mannequin? Can we use mixamo animations?

[@mocapcentral]

Yes, you can retarget Mixamo animations to the mannequin, just search KZbin for Mixamo to Unreal Engine 5 Mannequin Animation Retargeting.

[@MysterixInfinity]

Hey, this is just wow! I just have a major doubt - can I personally ping you? After that you can make a tutorial out of it cuz I ain't seen anyone done this before. Edit: I solved it myself. So I was trying to animate ON TOP of the retargeted animation in the sequencer, but I couldn't cuz the animation wasn't showing. All I did was delete the control rig of the body and BOOM! Now you can animate on top using additive tracks

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, glad this worked out, UE5 has some amazing features now with retargeting and control rigs, happy learning!

[@boxtodragon]

You can you just have to bake your animation to control rig.

[@borrowedtruths6955]

Only problem is that every time I try to import a metahuman into UE 5.0.3 the engine crashes. Any suggestions.

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, if your project allows it upgrade to Unreal version 5.2. The version your using (5.0.3) was released a year ago and there's been a lot of fixes since then.

[@borrowedtruths6955]

@@mocapcentral I'll give it a try. Appreciate the reply. thanks again.

[@RandomNoise]

nice tutorial, however my UE5 crashes every time when I export selected animation 😞

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, that's no fun, what UE 5 version are you using?

[@RandomNoise]

@@mocapcentral Yep, its definitely not fun, I am using UE 5.2.1

[@mocapcentral]

Only suggestion I have right now is to try restarting your PC and try it again, incase there's something in the background causing an issue. I used 5.2, not tested 5.2.1 yet.

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

Are the fingers fixed ? What about using ue4 animations?

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, thanks for your message! Can you add more details regarding your question "Are the fingers fixed?", do you have broken fingers? To use UE4 animations on a MetaHuman there's some existing KZbin videos describing the process, here's an example kzbin.info/www/bejne/amWoY5etjrVmnq8. Hope this works for you!

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

I used this tutorial to get everything working .. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4Dac2Z3j9SVqtE@@mocapcentral

[@markhor141]

how to retarget fp arms animations with tp in unreal engine

[@mocapcentral]

Hi, I'm not fully understanding your question, can you add more details so I can better help you?

[@markhor141]

@@mocapcentral brother i want to say that how we can use first person arms only animations with full body.means how to merge both fp and tp animations.

[@mocapcentral]

Look into additive animations for combining the arm motion with the rest of the body, here's a tutorial kzbin.info/www/bejne/iqfScoalh5yKn7s