Quick & Easy Mannequin to Metahuman Retargeting

This video shows a quick and easy approach to copying an animation from the Unreal Engine Mannequin to Metehuman body animations.
Note, that this quick and easy approach works specifically for UE Mannequin animations and is likely to NOT work for animations from other sources such as Mixamo or even Paragon characters.
There is a complete Unreal Documentation page available that describes a detailed process for retargeting animations in general, and that process would be needed for any source that is not the standard Mannequin skeletal mesh. The full documentation page for that process is here:
docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en...

[@robertcrystals]

Jesus, youtube is full of nightmares about this, and here you are, an angel of simplicity. Thank you.

[@ShirronDev]

I'd like to thank you for existing and making this video. I've been struggling for a whole day with UE's retarget system until i've found your video. I was so desperate that I gave it a go and omfg it just worked. I don't know why but it did. Thank you.

[@jkinman0]

It took me many, many, many video tutorials before I found this one. The only one that actually showed me how to do this. THANK YOU!!!!!

[@dougstewart107]

Thank you so much! This helped me understand Skeleton Retargeting so much more easily! Worked wonders for Paragon skeleton retargeting that I had been struggling with Mixamo animations for so long. Legend! Annnnnnd Subscribed!

[@stewview5575]

Really appreciated this! Exactly what I needed and easy to digest. I went ahead and subscribed.

[@fogforestfilm]

Thank you so much for helping me solve the retargeting problems. I followed the UE docs every steps and still got the wired legs on my metahuman. Until I saw your tutorial. It is really smart an easy to handle the animations. God bless you!

[@fairyfloof27]

This video is a lifesaver-thank you so much for sharing it!

[@David_Fernandez]

This is a dream! So mindblowing simple. Thank you!

[@minton-idol]

this is great! best tips and trick regarding retargeting. Really appreciate!

[@krizh289]

Thank you! The only video getting straight to the point

[@tejw2012]

Concise, clear and invaluable. Many thanks.

[@borrowedtruths6955]

Amazing! Out of hundreds of tutorials for these Metahumans, after many months of frustrations, I finally found exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much! I don't suppose you have one for facial animations for them, do you?

[@tiagomagero1417]

Best tutorial about it. Awesome!

[@scs_one]

Exactly to the point, Thanks for the tutorial

[@tonybowren3736]

Really useful info and well presented.

[@mrstephenpalmer]

Perfect. Thanks for this.

[@JCPhotographyMallorca]

this helped a great deal thanks ever so much been struggling to animate it for so long !!!

[@Damian_Alien]

Thanks!

[@hawaiifilmschool]

Well done and very helpful.

[@beanutgames]

This is great, thank you so much

[@EMNM66]

Thank you, you are awesome :)

[@oxygencube]

Your a good man! Thanks

[@rk7j595]

bro you fixed my problem in 5 min thank u so much

[@caramba9941]

Thank you so much!

[@saramostowfi2303]

really good thanks

[@aliamirian15]

life saver thank man

[@bokimon1989]

Thanks

[@Roblox_YT218]

I've spent hours looking for ways to retarget... this saved me. But I still have an issue with the skeleton especially the hands, everything else works fine but the hands just keep going into each other like a ghost, I previewed the same animation on another mesh which happens to be big bodied and it works fine but for my character bleh, I don't know what again to do, I am considering changing her size to see if that's the problem. Not sure if you can help

[@psproductions3513]

Hi! Thank you for this video, just curious... I'm just learning my way around unreal. Can you let me know how you have the sequencer looping the animation? (i.e. the character is walking in the crouch position in one spot infinitely in your video)

[@honerablemention4550]

You just have to drag the red bar wich indicates the end of the animation and then click the little arrow on the bottom left that is pointing to the right(Says "no looping" when you hover it), then it'll switch to a loop symbol and your looping.

[@bedoramadan9928]

thank you for this tut but can you tell us how to attach weapon to the same character with the animation

[@ablevi5774]

Hi Nick. Aren’t you using any pose in this case? I made some tests and shoulders are quite off, so finally I used bridge specific pose and I tweaked shoulder position to make it look better. Regards

[@PixelProf]

Fundamentally, this is a quick and easy approach to directly copy the joint rotations of a Mannequin animation to a Metahuman actor. It works off of the knowledge that the structure and rotations of the Mannequin and MH are basically the same to begin with, but this is, admittedly, not a "perfect" solution. There certainly could be animation that look fine on Mannequin that will look "wrong" on a Metahuman, requiring additional tweaking. Generally, I wouldn't recommend this for "hero" character production work. Instead, this is just intended as a quick and easy way of getting existing animation assets onto a Metahuman, particularly for those just getting started with Metahuman, or even just Unreal, that can be intimidated by the full retargeting process presented in the documentation.

[@RikiRisnandar]

this is much easier and quicker than other trick.. thanks.. but sometimes it's not work for some mocap

[@ArtKatarina]

Thanks a lot🙏 Is it work the same for UE5? Do you have tutorial about Axis Conversion UEvsMB? How to export animation from UE with the same axis as MB?

[@lordofthelair6716]

Oh yes 👌🏾

[@coffee-coco]

my question is how do you use it. to make a blend space and an animation BP?

[@pierobejarano3191]

incredible, work in ue5 preview 2?

[@KeithPutnam]

Hello! I'm using a Root Motion animation and the problem I'm having is that the origin widget of the Metahuman is not moving along with the Metahuman as it animates foward. Because of that I can't easily make the Metahuman change direction because the further it gets from the origin the more extreme any keyframed directional / translation changes become. How do I get the origin point to move along with the character?

[@IamNeighborlee]

Will this make metahuman read to be used in place of 3rd person character ? I presume so, but *I've seen SO many tuts none of which do a good job of that need. Ty , hoping so as this is the only one I've seern to cover it quickly and with purpose of using these in our own projects/games . UE4 doc page covers this, but I could never get mine to line up right and work in game. What a mess.

[@PixelProf]

This is less about replacing the 3rd person character and more intended for using Mannequin/UE-rig animations on Metahumans.

[@Instant_Nerf]

I just learned this on my own after 5 months of trying to add animation. I have a tool called mixamo to unreal and you can import animations to unreal wirh that. However the issues are that we need custom animations.. and I’m trying to use the ai mocap because I don’t have $6,000 for a mocap suit .. but I have not succeeded in importing mocap animation using my own animations I made using my iPhone. It takes the video and adds skeleton animations.. but not successful into unreal. By the way I’m working with mesh to metahumans that I made using a scan, photogrammetry and make a custom meta human so it’s in UE 5.0+

[@windows11zumba95]

After I delete Control Rig to add Mixamo animation, can't I use Carol Rig too? To make facial animations for example. Thank's!

[@PixelProf]

You shouldn't need to delete the control rig asset to use mixamo animations. In Sequencer, body and face rigs are separate tracks, so you can apply an animation asset to the MH body and keep the face control rig for face animation. Also, after you've applied an animation asset to either the body or face in Sequencer, you can use the Bake To Control Rig Asset command to copy the animation into a control rig track for further adjustment in the Sequencer timeline.

[@tkamal81]

how can u convert 100s or 1000s of animation to metahuman?? all one by one by adjusting the retarget option or is there a plugin available

[@PixelProf]

Oooo…. Good question….. I’d probably do this with a Python script in MotionBuilder. Will think about it….

[@jonlicht1826]

If I wanted to export the metahuman into blender with a T pose is that possible?

[@Spongejeezy]

i have a metahuman downloaded and nowhere in my skeleton list do i see metahuman_base_skel anywhere. they are all the f_tall and M_tall or meds

[@Spongejeezy]

found it. its in the female section

[@dhillibabup8548]

In my unreal engine, the sequencer is empty I can't able to load animation in the sequencer tab

[@Joydern]

after exporting and importing the .fbx animation double click on the imported animation and in the next window in the upper area click on "edit in sequencer". I had the same problem, initially.

[@dhillibabup8548]

@@Joydern sorry I can't understand

[@RWBKelly]

Is it nesessary to delete the comntrol rig? I'm looking to do some custome animations with a walk cycle

[@PixelProf]

Technically, the control rig itself was not deleted, just the control rig track. After retargeting, you can right-click on the animation track and bake the animation to the Control Rig, which will re-activate the Control Rig, copying the animation to it so you can modify as needed.

[@RWBKelly]

@@PixelProf briliant. Thanks for the heads up.. I'l presume down the road they wil make this process much easier :D

[@MODEST500]

@@PixelProf hi could you pls explain the process , instyead of deleting the metahuan CRig i muted it , how can i bake animation now into CRig? i cant find any bake option in animation track i mean. pls help

[@ksunnywazowski]

Ahahah/ My reupload animation look too broken and the legs look so funny :D So sad this method doesn't work for me. But it's funny so im happy to try it)))

[@lordofthelair6716]

Why is it that i only see legs?

[@David_Fernandez]

Oh noooo!! Of course other problem should appear, UA5.1 has an FBX importing error... "Animation length 9,985 is not compatible with import frame-rate ..." bla bla bla ... Suffering never ends when it comes to UA

[@dot_asim2648]

Hie , Can u help me in retargeting of apex legend character ?🫠