ActorCore AccuRig Character Retargeting in Unreal Engine 5 #UE5 #ActorCore #AccuRig

[Music] welcome to Unreal gems in this video we are going to learn how to retarget the actor core skeleton to the Unreal Engine 5 mannequin so that we can have basic Locomotion for a route direct characters okay so here we are in unreal this time we are going to see how we can retarget the actor called skeleton to the Epic skeleton so that we can use the third person character animations in our custom character let's go ahead first and in our skeleton editor we are going to choose the translation retargeting options we need to set everything to animation initially so the root and the ik bones are animation and then from the hipon you can choose Orient and scale this is a different retargeting option that you have probably not seen that it is used in fortnite biopic games and it is quite special because for really different characters with different proportions it works really well so you're not going to see a lot of tutorials on the internet that use this animation retargeting mode but I think it is the best one and the one that has the best results okay so we want to retarget the character on the left to the big character on the right and as you can see the stretch and squash is gone on the pelvis on the weak character due to the scaling of the bones so we want to solve this and that's why we use Orient and scale especially in characters that are quite different like our case okay so from left to right you have the three classical retargeting modes that account for more complex effects like scaling and like translating animation data from a skeleton to skeleton but you are missing one more key piece in the puzzle that is orientation and that's what Oriental scale does so on one hand is going to scale the bones according to the difference in size and then it's going to orient them according to the Delta between the wind pose in both skeletons so as you can see with this one we can keep the stretch and squash even on the weak character you also need to switch in the money in this case Queen you need to switch again every bone toward internet scale except root and the ik bones that are animation and then we just need to save both of the skeletons and we are ready to start adding our chains and creating the ik retargeter asset so let's go ahead and create a new folder in which we are going to have everything and right now let's go to animation and then ik rig and the ik rig asset type we click on it and we select our skeleton the actor core skeleton and we can go ahead and name it with ik underscore and our name in our case it will be actor core so that we know what is what let's go ahead and once we have it save all and open it up so that we can start adding our chains and we are ready to retarget everything okay so this is the ik asset and right now you have everything that you need to start adding chains so first things first we are going to have to set groups of Bones and we are going to call them chains we need to set the retarget route first that's what we are doing with the CC base hip bone it's going to be our retarget root our route is going to be the root chain so it's quite quite straightforward and quite easy we are going to follow the the mannequin rules more or less so that's pretty much what we need to do and let's go ahead and right click new retarget chain from selected bones and then we already have the correct name no goal we will see later what the ik goals are but for now we just not need to name the chains as you can see we have the I gave retargeting chains right there we have the only one that we have created which is the root chain the ik goal it should be none and we are ready to do the next this is going to take a while so I may fast forward through some of it because it's quite tedious we are going to go ahead and select the spine right click new retarget chain from selected bones and name it the spine no goal again once we have this we need to keep on adding bones you're going to see that it takes a while so let's go ahead and go to the next ones everything is more or less the same up until we need to create a chains for the ik goals we can see the bones in the character options so we can select on the viewport which is kind of easier let's go ahead and select the neck and the head and again we are going to name it as new retarget chain from selected bones we are going to call it head we are trying to mimic the ik retarget asset from the money so we are not doing this randomly let's go ahead and create the clavicles so write clavicle no goal again and next the left clavicle with again no goal so okay and no goal so as you can see we are following the naming Convention of the money because we want the rate targeter to be able to automatically and know which which chains correspond to which chains and so we don't have to manually say which is which so you can see here the name of the clavicles and you can see that we are trying to imitate all of the bones so here we have something new we are going to add the arm which has an ik goal so the hands can be um attached to things and we need ik for that in order for the contact to be realistic so let's go ahead and get the Bones from the arm with the base our hand and again new retarget chain with the right arm this time and we are going to add a goal other solver which is the full body ik and assign the goal to the right arm because we want that goal to be associated with that chain so there you can see all of the bones the upper arm the forearm and the hand and in the hand we have the ik goal right now we need to do the next one which is going to be the hip which is going to be added to the solver as the root bone the same as the retarget route but this time for the full body ik solver you need to have the solver selected in order for the selection of the bone to work if you don't have the full body ik solver selected it won't work it would be grayed out I think so just be careful with that and once you have that we can go ahead and create the next um the next Bones the next chain which is going to be the left arm so again left upper arm left forearm and last but not least the Han L Han and neural Target chain from selected bones left arm and at goal again assign goal that is going to assign the ik goal which is what you see on the right and we are now ready with the arms so let's go ahead and keep retargeting everything let's go to the legs now and we are also going to add the ik goals So Thai next cuff next will be foot next two ways and right click as before let's see it better right click new retarget chain and right leg at goal this time again because we need the two legs also so the goals for the fit and we are now going to do the right leg so again let's choose thigh and with the thigh the calf the foot and the toe base neural Target chain left leg at goal assigned goal and now we have the left foot goal so right now we are done with the ik goals and we need to start with the twist Bones from the skeletons so this is going to be tedious again there are a lot of them let's go ahead and start with the upper arm twist bone you can go ahead and select the twist 0 1 right click and your target chain from selected bone let's go ahead and be careful with the names because you are going to see that they are quite long and with a lot of numbers and things so just be careful copy with Ctrl C and no goal and now we can do the same for the upper arm twist number two so again the right arm the right upper arm twist 0-2 so right click in your target chain and Ctrl V to paste what we copied and change the one for a two if you miss one of these letters the retargeter is not going to automatically find the bones the bone chains and you are going to match them manually so let's avoid making mistakes because the process will be a lot easier in the next step we are now doing the right forearm twist which in the money is the lower arm so right lower arm twist 0 1 we can copy the name and with the name copied okay no goal and let's do the respawn zero two let's paste what we wrote before change the one for a two right lower and twist two and hit OK no goal and we are going to repeat the process for every single twist bone there are quite a lot so bear with me so left upper arm twist bone so left upper arm twist zero one copy so we have it for later hit OK no goal and next the upper arm to s02 and we can go ahead and copy and paste like before so twist zero two no goal and we can keep on going and we are going to do every single twist bone from the upper body and also from the legs so let's go ahead and go to the forearm twist which is remember the left lower arm twist zero one for the first one copy so we can paste later okay no goal same for the left forearm number two the twist number two so change the two hit okay no goal and we are going to keep on going until we finished with every single twist bone this is quite a complex it is easy but at the same time it is easy to make a mistake so it can not work sometimes so be careful because remember we have that naming convention from the money and if we don't respect it the auto retargeter is going to fail and we are going to have to say Okay so this chain in the actor core skeleton is this chain in the many skeleton so just be careful because it's going to make your life easier let's go ahead and do the side twist bones so again select right click and add a chain and right side twist zero one hit okay no goal same thing for the side twist 0 2 new chain right side to s02 hit OK no goal let's now do the next ones they are all going to be the same that's why I'm fast forwarding a little bit through this because if not it would take a quite a while so let's do the right calf twist bone so zero one copy and then we are going to be able to paste it no goal tough twist zero two we can paste it change the one for a two and hit OK again is a no goal chain and we can keep on going as long as there are twist bones missing we need to keep on going so let's do the left side twist so again left thigh twist zero one and hit OK and copy so we can paste later no goal again hit new red target chain and this time for the thigh twist CO2 hit OK no goal and that's pretty much it we can keep on going and it's going to be the same for every single chain from now on until we finish the twist bones so bear with me be patient this time is the left calf twist the one hit OK no goal go to the left half twist zero two and again we create a new chain name it correctly left cuff twist zero two hit OK no goal and we can keep on going but we are reaching finally close to the end so bear with me as I mentioned before this is quite boring but it is what we have to do in order to get a good retarget so it is what it is I'm sorry that it takes so long but you need to be careful because if the bones don't match if they won't change don't match the retargeter is going to mess up and it is going to take even longer so let's go ahead and turn down the bone size so we can select bones easier and let's keep on going so that's what we have to do let's now do the hands which are going to be more or less the same you just get the beginning of the chain so from the first bone to the Third new red target chain in this case for the left index finger no goal next newer Target chain for the ring finger no goal same for the pinky right click new retarget chain okay no goal same for the thumb right click new retarget change okay no goal same for the middle finger so new retarget chain this one be careful because it doesn't guess correctly so left middle is going to be the correct name so hit OK and no goal and as you can see we did the fingers on the left hand let's now do the right hand and it is going to be exactly the same so let's start with the middle finger which is the one that doesn't get right so right middle is going to be the correct name hit OK and again no goal and for the ring finger so near the target chain right ring now all same for the thumb you're a Target chain okay no goal same for the index finger new chain okay no goal same for the pinky is going to be the same again hit OK no gold so we have now than almost everything so we just have the the ik bones left so it is almost there just bear with me okay so let's do the ik bones let's start with the food root so we are going to select the ik food Road new red target chain and we are going to call it this time it has a different name so be careful food root ik in capital letters hit um okay and then no goal same for the right ik foot so in this case is going to be a little different but pretty much the same so right foot ik capital letters a i k okay no goal and then you just need to check that everything is okay same thing for the left foot so left foot ik again hit okay hit no goal and now let's speed up the process a little bit and let's do the hand ik so let's do this hand wrote ik for the first one the root of the hands no goal next is the handgun so hand gun ik and then hit OK and then no goal let's go for the right hand right hand ik hit OK no goal the left hand ik hit OK and no goal and with that we can save just to be careful and let's go ahead and take a look at the settings for the full body ik solver so we are going to need to tell certain bones to behave in a certain way so that the full body ik node it works correctly so let's go ahead and start with the hip and add settings to the selected bone you go ahead and click the settings go to details and turn the rotation stiffness up so that the hip has less freedom to rotate and let's go ahead and next do the same thing for the clavicles so add settings to selected bone follow the ik bone settings and rotation stiffness up to one same thing for the right clavicle so right click add settings to selected bone go ahead and turn the rotation and stiffness up and with that we have more or less a good base for the retarget we are not yet done as you are going to see but with all of this we can go ahead and almost be done with the settings so we need to be really careful to not forget anything because if not it's not going to work um right now we are going to adjust some more stiffness but for us to see what is happening let's go ahead and move the ik from one hand to the side and up so that the hip and the waist and the spine rotates so as you can see right now it is been twisted and you are going to see how the settings can fix all of these things so you can see that right now the spine is a mess so a real back would never act this way and we need to fix it so let's go ahead and click on the waste and add settings to selected bone and we are going to fine tune the rotational stiffness and you are going to see what it does as you can see it limits the rotation so that we can arrange the bones as we want and it can they can respect the original position so let's go ahead and add another rotation stiffness to the spine as you can see we are making it straight so it looks way better but the full body ik is still working let's go ahead and do the same thing for a spinal 2 add settings to selected bone and in the full body ik1 settings you can go ahead and play with the rotation stiffness as you can see here uh not a lot of strength is needed in the parameter but as you can see the result is way better after adjusting the stiffness let's go ahead and reset the pose to the a pose that we are going to use for retargeting and right now as you can see our settings are quite okay but don't worry about it if they are not because you can go ahead and switch anything after creating the ik retargeter and see how everything works and if anything is not right you're going to be able to come back and change the settings as you want so let's go ahead now and start creating the ik retargeter right now we have the ik rig so we can go to the animation like a rig ik retargeter asset and we choose the source asset so it's going to be the mannequin the ik rig of the mannequin and we are going to call it RTG underscore actor core and let's call it money to actor core so money underscore actor core so we can understand better what is happening we are switching animations from the mannequin to the actor core character so that's why we called it like that okay so there you have the source we have no target for now because we need to change it so let's choose the ik rig for actor core and we have the skeletal mesh the proper one let's switch money to Queen since our character is female so we are going to try to retarget the female animations and we can go ahead and for now the meshes are in the same place so let's switch the X offset so everything is separate let's turn down the bone size because right now it is horrible you cannot see anything at all so let's go ahead and turn it way down and right now we can start retargeting as you can see on the right you have the chains and the animations let's go ahead and choose the idle animation for the money the female mannequin and as you can see everything is working pretty well as you can see the arms are a little too close to the body but we can fix that later with keys and the animation sequences so for now let's ignore that and let's see if we can improve the results uh choosing several settings that you are going to see that work quite well so for now as you can see everything is looking pretty much okay but we can improve on some things so let's see it from different angles and let's choose some other animations so we can see everything is looking pretty good maybe the arms are too close but you cannot really tell so I'm liking the end result a lot and let's test the Run animation which also looks quite good so right now you can see that everything is working pretty well but let's see if we can improve as you can see the chains right there we need to check that everything has the same name and that it has a matching chain I'm telling you right now that it works we need to switch the translation mode on the route to globally scale if we have root motion I'm just doing it just in case and as you can see there are some other settings that we also need to need to switch like for example the in the foot ik we need to switch the translation mode to Absolute same thing with all of the chains for ik so you can go ahead and switch the translation mode to Absolute in every single one of them and with that we are going to be able to have better results with ik so don't forget to do this step there is also another small trick for the fingers so we can go ahead and see if everything is still working perfectly and in this so that's good right now as I mentioned before we need to take a look at the hands the result is not bad it's quite similar to the auto rig result but we can switch some settings in the fingers so that the retargeting improves so you can shift click to select several chains and change on one with one movement with one click all of the options like for example here we are switching the rotation mode to one to one which is the recommended rotation mode for fingers in the hands so that the results are optimal let's go ahead and Save and for now we are going to try to take a look at the results you can see the hands pretty well without the debug information from the ik and so on and you can see that it's looking quite similar the post is looking quite similar to the queen pose the elbows look fine the wrists look fine the legs look also fine so everything is looking pretty good and we can now test or character with the third person character blueprint so let's go ahead and first of all look for that third person character blueprint which is found in third person Blueprints and right there we can go ahead and duplicate it with Ctrl d we are going to call it BP underscore actor core and let's go ahead and move it to our characters folder we can go ahead and move it to retargeting so that everything is in one place you can see the ik rig and the ik retargeter and our character blueprint that for now has the mannequin but let's go ahead and create a blueprint an animation blueprint for our character let's call it ABP underscore after core and with that we can go ahead and double click we are going to make a really simple animation graph which is going to use the retarget post from mesh that is going to allow us to retargeting runtime then managing the mannequins animations we can compile it's going to give us an error because we need to switch in the details and choose the ik retargeter so we chose money to act our core we can go ahead and compile and Save and right now if we used the characterizes it's not going to work but I'm going to teach you a little trick so that you can retargeting runtime instead of trying to retarget everything offline and then creating a new character blueprint so let's go ahead and open up our new blueprint and add a skeletal mesh component with that component we are going to make it a child of the already present skeletal mesh so let's go ahead and just drag it and drop it on top and right now we have a child skeletal mesh in which we are going to choose our character so our skeletal mesh right now you can see that it doesn't match the money so first of all we need to choose the new animation blueprint that we have created as you can see right now it is copying the animation from the mannequin but it is not quite ready yet because it has an offset and so on and it does and doesn't have the proper rotation so when we switch to rotation zero and we fine tune the the height so the C coordinate so that it matches up with the mannequins position as you can see it doesn't have the same proportions so this is quite a difficult character because it has really long legs and really short torso it is going to be quite a difficult character to Red Target and for it to work properly let's go ahead and we need to choose one more setting because we need to hide in-game the money skeletal mesh the queen skeletal mesh but uh one more thing if we don't set another option it's not going to work so we need to look for a tick in the details of the money of Queen and we need to look for visibility waste an empty option and choose instead of holistic pose always tick pose and refresh bones this makes it a update the bones when it is hidden so right now if we go ahead and selector blueprint with our character using World settings so Window World settings and then just go to the game mode override and expand default Pawn class and switch third person character for actor core PP actor core with that we have our created blueprint and we just press play and you can see our character working perfectly even ik is working really well without doing anything at all we haven't rigged the character and we haven't animated the character and as you can see we have a working Locomotion Loop so as you can see we have saved a lot of work and the results are quite good so as you can see from different points of view the ik is looking really good and the animation is looking pretty pretty sweet and with that you can see that if we have other characters we just need to import them as usual but this time choose the skeleton as the one that already exists so we go to the my authoric actor skeleton which is the other character and use this reverse ref pose and as this character has morph targets we need to check morph targets with that we can go ahead and import all the materials have a small bag so let's go ahead and fix it real quick we just delete the sampler for the opacity and then we just choose instead of translucent opaque and save and more or less the material should should be fixed and right now we can go ahead and see that just switching in the retargeter to our new skeletal mesh you can see that if we now retarget if we run the retargeter you're going to see how it works pretty well so let's go ahead and choose another animation like for example the idle one and you can see that everything is working well and without having to do all these tedious processes again you can see that for other characters the process is going to be a lot more simple and by the way if the animations don't fit well like in this one here that the arms clip a little bit you can go ahead and browse to asset for the desired animation and we can go ahead and edit the animation with the animation editor so we just have to go to the skeleton choose the proper one in this case the clavicle you go ahead and rotate it we are going to look for the red clavicle and we go ahead and also rotate the clavicle right now we just need to add a key so add the key and that's pretty much it right now if we go back to the retargeter you're going to see that the arms are not clipping and that the animation has been modified in our character and also in money or queen in this case so as you can see it is quite easy to modify animations to suit our characters if they don't fit right away well so that has been it for this video as you can see we have learned a couple of tricks that you may not know from other tutorials now you can use your actor core characters without much travel in Unreal Engine 5. if you have found the video helpful please remember to like And subscribe we'll see each other in the next videos [Music] thank you

Channel: Unreal Gems

Views: 4,578

Keywords: Unreal Engine, UE5, UE4, Game Development, unreal engine 5, unreal engine 4, unreal engine 5 tutorial, epic games, game dev, unreal engine 5 beginner tutorial, unreal engine tutorial, game development, unreal engine 5 beginner, unreal, ue4, ue5, autorigger, autorigging, actorcore unreal engine, accurig unreal, actorcore, accurig, retargeting, actor core to unreal, accurig to unreal, fullbodyik

Id: D37yXxp6po4

Length: 37min 1sec (2221 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2022