Unlock Animation Possibilities: Retargeting Mocap with 'Auto Rig Pro'

[@Max_Cypher]

"as you can see ARP automatically changed everything to FK" This is important to note... save your file before doing this as it can break your IK set ups and bone layers. Great add-on... but is not perfect IMO. It has erased some of my IKs more than once, and even breaks the switch, and moves things to different layers. (Granted they are more complex rigs and animations than what is shown here, but it can happen)

[@mck3D]

Thanks for mentioning it, I didn't face that before because I didn't use them on my custom rigs, but wow I didn't know that, thanks for mentioning, I'll pin your comment for others to see. cheers

[@wpmultimedia]

When you go to adjust the rest pose (1:22): You don’t have to manually adjust the joints. Select the upper arm and leg joints, then hit the “Copy Selected Bones Rotation” button before hitting “apply”. That said, you can always adjust them manually, but ARP has a button to do it for you that works a treat.

[@mck3D]

Thanks for your tips, yes true for the copy rotation I use it all the time in the animations but for some reason, I make the mistake of manually adjusting in the pose mode, but thank you for mentioning it. For the ARP I didn't know that it has a button to adjust it automatically, thanks for letting me know, I appreciate it.

[@SAZtheEditor]

@@mck3D yea like he said, the copy selected bones rotation saves alot of time and is perfect

[@mikesnapper9001]

Thank you, short and to the point, it fixed the exact issues i had with remaping the animations. You saved me like two hours of trial and error.

[@mck3D]

Thank you for your comment, and I'm glad it helped you, that was exactly my goal in mind, best wishes for you.

[@DimiArt]

Cant wait to go home and test this out

[@mck3D]

I'm glad to hear that, it's so simple and with the Mocaps getting more popular every day, it's a great start for your animations.

[@renderinginprogress]

tried this, doesnt work for me. exact simple model, but the arms from the t pose stay locked so the whole body does a weird movement, cant get the hands to unlock

[@mck3D]

I know it's been a long time, and maybe you've already fixed your problem, but the problem may happen due to the IK FK difference, make sure that that put your target model into IK or FK depending on the source skeleton.

[@renderinginprogress]

@@mck3D yep that was it, took me a few hours to find out but got there, but its good that you wrote this just in case people have the same problem and come searching! thanks mate

[@mck3D]

I'm glad you fixed it, and thanks for your reply, yes having it can help others. cheers

[@dawgrugby]

IT HELPED A LOT!!!tnx!

[@mck3D]

Glad to hear that, you're welcome.

[@donta42]

I have created human rigs using ARP and have animated some poses. My ARP rig has IK legs. I need to transfer my ARP pose data to a second rig. But the leg bones of that second rig are visibly all FK at the moment. Where would I be able to find out within blender if that second rig has IK legs and how do I toggle them on? The second rig is for UE5 (I believe i need to have both rigs set up the same at the start with FK arms and IK legs before pressing the RETARGET button in ARP, correct?)

[@mck3D]

To check if the rig has IK or FK bones, go to the "N" panel => Tool => Properties, there should be an IK/FK switch, you can increase the value to 1 or decrease it to 0 to enable FK or IK, but to really make sure, go to the Data panel (green triangle) in the right side, then in the vertex groups, select a vertex group and move by keyboard arrow keys (sorry but be in the weight paint mode with the model selected) when on a bone, the color of the model turned pinkish, that is an IK bone. but you can retarget animations in the UE itself, it's much easier, I highly recommend doing that instead of blender.

[@starder6676]

what if my Source Armature has no HIP bone? I don't know which bone to set as the root .

[@mck3D]

If your armature is human it definitely has a hip bone the name surely can be different, the hip bone is generally the bone that connects the legs to the upper body, other names for that bone can be: "root", "pelvis", "spine00", "spine01"(generally the first spine bone), but root bones are the bones that control the whole character, root bone can be the hip bone itself or it can be a bone beneath the character's feet. The hardest retargeting is retargeting the human animation to an humanoid or animal due to the bone differences but if both your source and target are human you should just find a bone in relatively same position and you can look up the name by clicking that bone in the pose mode. If you still had problems don't hesitate to ask.

[@mck3D]

If your armature is human it definitely has a hip bone the name surely can be different, the hip bone is generally the bone that connects the legs to the upper body, other names for that bone can be: "root", "pelvis", "spine00", "spine01"(generally the first spine bone), but root bones are the bones that control the whole character, root bone can be the hip bone itself or it can be a bone beneath the character's feet. The hardest retargeting is retargeting the human animation to an humanoid or animal due to the bone differences but if both your source and target are human you should just find a bone in relatively same position and you can look up the name by clicking that bone in the pose mode. If you still had problems don't hesitate to ask.

[@Rubychoco99]

Great video, thank you! Do you know how I could properly add multiple mixamo animations to one character, for export to unity? And would I have to get rid of the Mixamo armature (not sure how to without deleting/messing up the animation)? Thank you!

[@mck3D]

My pleasure, thank you for watching. I'm not familiar with unity, but in Blender in the action editor, you can add multiple animations (actions), just like anything in the blender, click on the create new on top of the action editor, and add new animation or new retargeting, and they all should come with your model when you export. And when you retarget the animation to your model, the keyframes are written on your model, you don't need the Mixamo armature anymore, and you can delete it.

[@redless21]

For some reason it messes up the hands of my model, its hands are behind the back in a x shape ( like he's arrested), do you know how I can fix that?

[@mck3D]

Most of the time this happens because one of these two reasons: 1- you forgot to make a rest pose for the source armature 2- you retarget to the IK hand bone but your hands are in FK mode or the reverse For the first one make sure to check the steps in the video to make a rest pose, this is necessary when your source rest pose is different from target's rest pose, one is in A Pose and one in T Pose. For the second one you can simply change the FK or IK for the hands and legs in the N panel, that's also in the video where I change the targeting to the Ik and Fk but if you didn't find any of them, please don't hesitate to ask, I will explain them here. Please let me know the result.

[@NoobFalamGamer]

same thing happen to me XD but its working now Thx to the video..

[@BuzzKirill3D]

Thanks!

[@mck3D]

Welcome!

[@meta_wav]

can you make a video on how to rig video mocap fbx for GTA characters. Im currently trying to rig but ARP is not auto detecting my bones

[@mck3D]

if I'm not mistaken, you have a GTA character without a rig, and you rigged it with ARP and you can't match the bones to retarget the mocap animations, am I right? can I ask where you get your MoCaps?

[@shannon7041]

Hey! I'm having an issue where importing the mapping presets doesn't work and I'm not sure why. I'm using custom mocap data, could that be an issue? So far it only maps out to the default fk rig and I was hoping to make some edits to the exported anim ;o;

[@mck3D]

Hey, most of the Mocap's skeletons are designed like the skeleton in the video, but if your Mocap skeleton differs too much from the example here it may cause the issue, if the skeleton is almost the same and you double-checked the bones mapping for retargeting, then maybe this is the issue: make sure that when you address the IK bones, your skeleton is in IK mode, as you may know, you can switch between IK and FK modes in the rigs, so you need to be in the same mode as what you are mapping, if you use IK bones as a target you should be in IK mode, that's just a check, and yes in more times we want to retarget to IK to edit the animations. BTW: Auto Rig Pro has a handy feature that can change the position of a bone for the entire duration of an animation, for example, if you want your character to have a lower stand with knees bent, you can change that one bone in one frame then the ARP will do the rest, if it's what you want. If these didn't fix your issue please give me more information.

[@shannon7041]

The IK/FK switch was the fix I was looking for along with fixing the skeleton, thanks so much!@@mck3D

[@mck3D]

Nice, my pleasure.

[@shahmaarbaba]

how to export only amature from auto rig pro

[@mck3D]

just export as a simple fbx, in the Object Types of FBX options select only the Armature, and in the Transform check that Forward be "Y Forward" and Up be "Z Up", you can check Applt Transform option.

[@shahmaarbaba]

@@mck3D i want to export for ue5 from auto rig pro export option nd selected only object or selected only bones option not working when i export every the mesh include with amature

[@mck3D]

For UE5 if you want to export using auto rig pro fbx, you can't export only the armature, but you can export the whole model, and inside UE5, take the armature and use it for other characters, but I think exporting only the armature from normal FBX and importing it inside UE5 do the same thing, the exporter for auto rig pro is for moving the whole character+armature together

[@Paulinhox88]

What about VRM conversation?

[@mck3D]

You mean retargeting animations from a VRM model? or retargeting animations from videos to a VRM model? live or offline?

[@Azrabehnamian1360]

so beautiful🧿

[@mck3D]

Thank you

[@Famousforfantasy]

Hey guys ,I want to know the full form of mck. And also your name.

[@mck3D]

I'm Pooya McKee and McK is just the short version of my last name.

[@touyaakira1866]

Please make a video for use threedposetracker it allows to create mocap bvh free from video.Please can you share the characters you used in the video :D

[@mck3D]

Sure, I will make one, but remember video-based MoCaps are not as accurate as MoCap suits, but sure yeah. I forgot to add the character's link in the description, I've added it now, here is the link: www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/character/woman/ruby-blue-fortnite

[@pmlstk]

hell yes, lol the arms IK and rest pose fix it

[@mck3D]

I'm glad it helped you, yes it's easy to fix. Thank you for watching.

[@Famousforfantasy]

👋👋👋👍

[@mck3D]

Thank you 👏🏻🙏🏻