Retargeting Animations in 5.4 is Finally Easy!!!

Retargeting Animations in 5.4 is Finally Easy!!!
We can now automatically retarget between humanoid skeletons such as Mixamo, the Epic Mannequins (old and new), MetaHumans, etc.

[@deivid-01]

Thanks for always updating the content for the courses!

[@KidLudens]

Amazing! The animations and UI stuff has always been the most convoluted and obscure things for me in Unreal. I've gone over those sections multiple times in the Echo and Aura projects because there's just so much to take in. I actually find the cpp the easiest part, funnily enough lol. I'm so glad Epic has made it easier to retarget now! I'm assuming this will work pretty naturally with metahumans, being an Epic service as well. I think Unity is a really great engine, but honestly, I'm so glad I switched to UE. Thanks for all your help making it easier to learn a lot of these complex things dude! You rock! :)

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

I totally agree! I'm happy it's much less of a pain now :)

[@natecoet3291]

Very instructive and well made, thank you, this is indeed a game changer and a time saver.

[@christophwoloszyn4264]

Great and clearly explained, thank you very much. ❤

[@VaughnAnderson]

Great Video! Looks very close if not exactly like the Maximo animation after retargeted and don't have to fuss with the Original positioning. I'd have to mess with the original pose each time if I wanted the animations to look like I wanted.

[@marshallross3373]

Ya, thanks for posting. Very helpful!

[@CarisTheGypsy]

Wow! It's so easy now, you actually could have made this video like a minute long. This is insane! So nice, thanks for the video demo

[@activemotionpictures]

Fantastic! Wonderful video. What about retargeting the other way around? I bring in a Non-many skeleton rig from other application, and I want to retarget MANNY animations into that skeleton. How would it work?

[@irodoridev]

Thanks man it works perfect.

[@grundvater]

Klasse Video. Richtig gut.

[@dmrm2161]

Finally easy when it works. Several mixamo models work, but for example, Mixamo Megan to Mixamo Dreyar, not working. Even when I resize Dreyar.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

😥

[@ledthegamedev]

Hey! your making videos again! sweeeet

[@ngoctrung4608]

thanks for your video, Did you check the animation from cascadeur?

[@alianajacobs5703]

Thanks you're awesome!

[@camiloguerrero-wu8zr]

Amazing. I'm doing the c++ course. Do we need an update for 5.4?

[@FPChris]

Waiting for someone to make a full blown Motion Matching tutorial beyond just locomotion etc.

[@gregfrllo]

fr

[@gabrielchcosta]

Awesome

[@kameenavery9616]

This is AMAZING~!!!!!! sooo much easier and faster

[@user-ev4ud5xs2j]

Speaking of sports matching, how to use it for the character action resources in the mall...

[@user-xn7st3lo8b]

so technically this was present in previous version, they just made a button for that! which is good actually!

[@brocscogmyre5592]

Its strange how many people show something easy like retargeting but no one does tutorials on harder stuff like blending animations

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

I cover those topics in my courses

[@brocscogmyre5592]

@@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment twice already someone's written to me saying this only for me to go to their channels and find they have no such thing, once again retargeting is easy even for a beginner like me but I see no videos in animation blending on KZbin

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

@brocscogmyre5592 well first I'm not writing to you, you commented on my video and I responded. I'm not coming to you asking for anything. I don't even know who you are. Second, I teach retargeting and animation blending in my shooter courses on Udemy. I'm just saying I do teach it.

[@CrimsonWoods]

One thing that can make it difficult is mixamo skeletons not having a root or ik bones. Does this properly translate root motion and possible ik bones to the Unreal Mannequin? Usually this requires some external tools to fix.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

I did so with anims from Mixamo

[@fray989]

Does this produce better results than the existing UE4 to UE5 retargeter that comes with Unreal by default? My #1 problem was not that the process wasn't user friendly, but that the results were often not great. Anims would look great on the default mannequin but awful on custom characters. Does this actually fix the results or just make the process more accessible? Everyone uses Mixamo for examples...I really want someone to use an anim pack from the marketplace and a custom character because that's much closer to what actual devs might be doing in their projects.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

Yeah, I hear you. I agree that it's more important to get good results than have a more user-friendly process. So far, it seems to work alright.

[@ChristopherFranko]

dont most marketplace anims use the UE skelly though? I legit wouldnt buy them if they didnt.

[@vladdimitrov819]

​@@ChristopherFranko yea that's the point I'm trying to make. Even though they use the UE skeleton you have to retarget them to whatever custom mesh you're using. And that often looks really janky because of the custom mesh's proportions. They use the same skeleton, but if the proportions are different it looks bad. So I was hoping this new retargeter was better at accounting for that than the old system. But this is mostly a UI change to make retargeting more accessible, but it doesn't actually improve the quality of the retarget from what you used to get. I hope that makes sense.

[@AdamWoolnough1981]

My project wont open anymore sinse updating to 5.4

[@badipaddress]

Can you fine tune the animation retarget with the new system? Otherwise it's great only when it works.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

You'll have to use the retargeting tools we have previously in that case.

[@bakaabsolute1253]

do this new system auto set the UE5 manequin to T-Pose ? because that one is not T-pose, in the previous system we had to set both to the same pose, infortunly UE5 manequin is A-Pose and its complicated to set a skeleton to A-pose or else, except T-pose, every skeleton should be in T-pose

[@brandhuetv]

thanks for this easy steps tutorial, can we also retarget it to Metahuman ?

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

Yes

[@A.J.Interactive]

would this make the process of using say metahumans with something like a custom als version easier?

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

Yeah it works with metahumans

[@kenyong7595]

Please make a paid third person shooting course with UE5.4.

[@KicKbyElit3]

I got a weird problem. The Retargeting is working completely fine, but in the Retarget Animations Window my Target Skeletal Mesh is walking 5 times its own size above the ground. I'm a little lost at this point since it has to be some kind of transformation problem, yet I can't find the thing I need to change in any Details panel. hulp plox :o

[@blendergame]

업데이트 보고 찾아왔습니다~ 감사

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

Unity?

[@martinjakob6079]

Great! So sad my project doesn't work with 5.4 anymore. 😢

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

You should always back up (or use version control) for major project changes. Switching Unreal versions is a big change.

[@martinjakob6079]

@@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment Yes, I made a backup pn my nas before. Now, with some changes and with an upgrade of a plugin I use, it works. I even upgraded my github plan, so I can use this for version control.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

@@martinjakob6079 very nice

[@ericmatthews9894]

So can you retarget the anims then migrate retargeted anims to UE4? Asking for a friend.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

You cannot migrate from a later version to an earlier version. But you can export .fbx

[@ericmatthews9894]

@@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment Thanks, I prefer UE4 but retargeting is a nightmare in 4

[@ChristopherFranko]

Holy shit this is soooooo much easier

[@paolopallucchi8054]

3:00

[@jackesamson609]

But that's not what I need. It's exactly the opposite. After all, I won't be playing a mannequin, but a character of my choosing. So make a video on how to replace the mannequin with a character that will run around the set when I press W - S-A-D on the keyboard. Thank you.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

The process is the same, your target skeletal mesh will just be a different character.

[@Glowbox3D]

Isn't it interesting that I'm using 5.3 something and already this tutorial is obsolete. I think I figured it out, or rather didn't, because the Rikoko skeleton wouldn't retarget to an Unreal Engine asset skeleton. In the end, the buttons and dialog boxes here didn't match, and I can't tell what's what.

[@DruidMechanicsGameDevelopment]

This is 5.4, my friend.

[@Punisher1992]

does someone else have 5.4 constant error crashes after double clicking on already retargeted and saved animations? Some models work some not, same with retarget, and then change the third person blueprint skeletal mesh, will crash too. "LoginId:8475703a43605d5250b8de8eef0f1d43 EpicAccountId:bb773973979749bc82e9ce6a3c327edd Assertion failed: (Index >= 0) & (Index < ArrayNum) [File:D:\build\++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Public\Containers\Array.h] [Line: 758] Array index out of bounds: 53 into an array of size 53"

[@josephalbert.]

YESSS!!!! I can't find a fix! :/

[@josephalbert.]

mine crashes when I press retarget in the first place