Easy animation retarget in 5.4 - Unreal Engine 5 tutorial

[@RSProduxx]

streamlining the entire "import character model and animate it" process is the best thing that can happen

[@LeafBranchGames]

Indeed. The quality of life of updates like this is immense!

[@vladtheclad]

That means you will not get paid, right? ;)

[@RictorScale]

no, it means you get paid to do more fun stuff @@vladtheclad

[@untitled795]

delusional take, good luck! @@RictorScale

[@MaxKusari]

I really was annoyed by the old process and that I had to use the mixamo converter and all the confusion with the files and 1000 clicks.... that its now just 2 clicks blows my mind, I LOVE IT! :D

[@LeafBranchGames]

It is quite impressive now, for sure!

[@Yggdrasil777]

That is incredibly quick and easy to use now. I'll have to check this out with VRoid models.

[@LeafBranchGames]

I know right? Feel free to report your results!

[@vladtheclad]

It simplified for Mixamo and couple of other "standard" skeletons only. Just because UE is using Templates for now. And you have to use an existing, retarget rigs based way if you need to retarget other skeletons.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Yes, of course. Any skeleton that it does not map for would have to be done normally.

[@RhyzzG]

Quick and easy! I needed this!

[@LeafBranchGames]

Glad to hear it was useful!

[@Drakuba]

im getting blown away with each version of 5.x everytime they release and everytime i thought it cant get any better. The rigging, retarget and the fluid animation switching are absolutely insane and i cant believe its free they also should release next version of Chaos Destruction, im looking forward to that one as well :)

[@LeafBranchGames]

I feel the same. They are making great strides at making game development more accessible and of higher quality each release.

[@dannykay4649]

Finally the synty characters can be easily used. So tired of the old retarget methods.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Now it will be a breeze!

[@jochmajor6925]

Great video! Does this new feature also make it easier to use mixamo characters as playable characters? (Swap out mesh in 3rd person blueprint)

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thanks. That should not have been an issue earlier.

[@HighLammer]

very good

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thank you!

[@kellowattentertainment]

From my understanding, this will not work perfectly for Mixamo animations. Mixamo Skeletons do not have a root bone. UE Mannequin does, so that alone may cause an issue. I can see how it works for animation packs from the Marketplace, but for other animations that don't have a root bone, it's may be an issue.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Test it out and find out! Let us know how it goes!

[@MG619Day]

Doesn’t work because of the root bones

[@kellowattentertainment]

@@MG619Day I expected this.

[@hotsauce7124]

Thank you

[@LeafBranchGames]

You are very welcome!

[@UnrealAdventuresPlayground]

For just animations it's great, but what about the Sockets when using runtime retargeting. Socketed weapons and items seem to just float around.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Shouldn't be an issue.

[@georgekendjiya1013]

Looks super easy now.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Indeed it is! Go make some great games now! :)

[@georgekendjiya1013]

@@LeafBranchGames I’m working on it, want to make open world zombie game :)

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@georgekendjiya1013Good luck! Keep working on it!

[@georgekendjiya1013]

@@LeafBranchGames Thank you!

[@dmrm2161]

For some Mixamo characters its OK. For others, does not work. I tested retarget from Mixamo Megan to Mixamo Dreyar, not working

[@LeafBranchGames]

Why would you retarget between two mixamo characters?

[@dmrm2161]

@@LeafBranchGames Because they have different bones and different rigs.

[@zumat9586]

what about the market characters? they look weird, can you please one day show a retarget that not to be mixamo or metahuman, just characters with epic skeleton retargeting to mannequin u5, on the 5.4 version.

[@LeafBranchGames]

I have. the link is in the description.

[@LimitedPerfection]

Looking forward to Leaf Branch motion matching tuts. 🫡

[@LeafBranchGames]

I am looking forward to checking that out as well! Stay tuned!

[@darkmyreflection]

Where can I access the Anubis model?

[@LeafBranchGames]

You can buy it from the Synty store.

[@davidedemurodominijanni9889]

I have been searching for a tutorial about how to retarget Animation Blueprints instead of single or groups of Animation Sequences. Things turn a bit more complicate from what I could see, when it comes to upgrading old projects.

[@LeafBranchGames]

How so? Most things are forwards compatible, you should be able to just convert the old project to a new version.

[@davidedemurodominijanni9889]

@@LeafBranchGames The fact is it still requires several annoying steps, nless I'm missing something in terms of procedure, of course. When retargeting the AnimBP only those animations included in it get retargeted, all others are meant to be retargeted separately but many times it happens you get duplicates of the same animations unless we retarget them by groups, which is time consuming specially when there are hundreds of animations involved. They introduced the feature for retargeting the animations keeping the same structure in folders _{AimOsset, Unarmed, Melee, Interactions and so on}_ which is already a huge steps of improvement, but if they make it possible to simply allow us to decide between the override the same animations rather than saving them as new ones which we have to delete manually with all the risks of the case, would be definitely much better. It might sound like an irrelevant detail but I like to keep my workflow the smoother possible.

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@davidedemurodominijanni9889 You can always contact Epic and give them feedback so that they can improve that in future versions.

[@frgmnt7313]

Anyone know if the retargeted assets from 5.4 can be exported to a lower version of UE? This looks awesome, but I don't want to update my current project to 5.4 yet since it is still in preview edition. I'll try to test this out myself, but I don't have much experience working with animations. I usually leave all that to the artist in my team.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Fairly sure you can export an animation and then migrate it to a different project. So retarget in 5.4 and export it to a saved animation. Then migrate to a 5.3 project.

[@BloodfighterxD]

thats absolutly great. i tried it and it works perfectly except for root motion. is there a good solution for it too?

[@LeafBranchGames]

I don't know. I have not run into any root motion issues yet.

[@BloodfighterxD]

oh try the animation with forward movement (mixamo have just few anims with "on place" option) without this option you have to set rootmotion in the unreal animation (capsule component is following correctly). The problem is the root bone which is on mixamo characters on the hip and not on the floor.@@LeafBranchGames

[@schemeny]

just checked and it works with root motion, even with rotation

[@soratus]

Wow is amazing

[@LeafBranchGames]

Indeed!

[@killer8217gaming]

Doesnt seem to work for blender skeletons st all. No matter what i have tried so far wont work

[@LeafBranchGames]

As far as I know, Blender skeleton is not a thing is it? You can create any type of skeleton in Blender, there is no standard.

[@fray989]

Every tutorial for this uses Mixamo 😢 what I think would be he the most useful is using an animation pack for UE4 manny, like most of the anim packs from the marketplace. Using the 5.4 retargeter to get those anim packs on the UE5 manny or a custom marketplace character. This is the scenario that I think most users are likely to encounter. Retargeting UE4 skeleton anims to UE5 always makes them look really bad because of the different proportions of the skeletons. Its my biggest problem as a dev: marketplace anims that look good on the default UE4 manny but awful on any custom character with many twists or elongated bones. If anyone covers this process with a good looking result it would be amazing!

[@LeafBranchGames]

I mean, I show exactly that in the retarget tutorial that I mention and that is linked in the description of this video.

[@samwolfie7021]

It doesnt work with vriod charcater 😢

[@LeafBranchGames]

Unfortunate. But you can still create the retargetting assets manually as shown in my retargetting tutorial. A bit more work, but you can get it exactly how you want it.

[@samwolfie7021]

@@LeafBranchGames i got an update on how to reterget the vriod character in an easier way. The creator of the plugin update it last week and this time the character as already been retergeted.the remaining steps is to go into the animation blueprint (also provided by the plugin creator) and add reterget to mesh and connect it to the other node. last step is to add a skeletal mesh to mesh and (put the vriod skeletal mesh and it anim blueprint) then make the mannequin visibility false as well as scrool down to advance and set visibility base anime mesh to always tick pose and refresh and that all😁

[@retrowrath9374]

No Miximo animation works now "Mesh contains root bone as root but animation doesn't contain the root track. Import failed. "

[@LeafBranchGames]

In which version?

[@retrowrath9374]

@@LeafBranchGames The latest but I've got this error since 5.4 versions, so maybe 5.4.x has a compatibly issue

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@retrowrath9374 Just tested it, this is not correct. It works perfectly fine for me, just like shown in the tutorial for latest version of 5.4

[@retrowrath9374]

@@LeafBranchGames Always get that error when I tried to import any miximo animations, used to work, I remember it working because my first go at UE5 was using swimming animation about 4 months ago when I started, now I just get that error, alot of others are saying the same thing, miximo converter in blender don't work either, some kind of change in the bone naming

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@retrowrath9374 Try following the tutorial exactly and see what you result is.If it works, then you know you are doing something different that is causing the issue.

[@Vylocity]

Anyone tried this with VROID??

[@liquidized106]

this is just huge...

[@LeafBranchGames]

Massive even. :)

[@olliverkatana4168]

How long it will be going on? When will the Epics make a thought reader so that I don’t have to learn all this, but just imagine what I want and the engine will do it...

[@LeafBranchGames]

With the advent of AI it may be closer than you think.

[@吴大伟-r5x]

I need more out of box tools like this.then I will be able to creat my own game without costing much time learning and doing repeat things

[@LeafBranchGames]

You should probably expect that you have to learn a lot. Making a game is not easy. :)