CC4D Tools: Character Creator 4 to Cinema 4D - Animation Tools

in this video I will give you a detailed overview on the new cc40 tools for enhancing and streamlining the process of importing retargeting and transferring animation data to the cc40 control rig as well as the face rig this includes the cc40 import body motion tool the cc40 import Face motion tool and the cc40 bake tool let's start with the import body motion tool this will import an animated joint hierarchy from the fpx file and automatically prepare the CC Ford control rig settings for the retargeting for the first example I'm going to use some data from a Coco Studio I'm using one of their example Clips which are exported as an fbx file in Cinema 4D I have already prepared a character with the CC 4D control rig so let's start by opening up the characters hierarchy and selecting the cc4 control null object in the object manager now we can go ahead and click the import body motion icon in the cc40 tools pallet and in the file dialogue we select the fbx file holding the animation data we want to import this imported only the animated joint hierarchy from the fbx file and placed it inside another object with the name motion Source body for better organization the script also added a character definition tag to the imported joint hierarchy and as we had the cc4 control n object selected during the import process the settings of the cc4 the control rig got already prepared as well so for example the kinematics mode of the arms and legs has been set from inverse kinematics to forward kinematics to ensure proper retargeting if you want to learn more about these settings you can watch my video about the manual animation retargeting workflow for the cc40 control rig where I go over these settings more in depth and last but not least the cc4 control n object got a character definition tag applied to it as well before we can go ahead now and take care of the retargeting setup we need to make sure that both the animated hierarchy and the CC 4D control rig are in a good reference pose as the imported joint hierarchy from roko Studio already has a t POS in the beginning of the sequence we only need to bring our control rig character into a t POS as well now we can set up the retargeting by selecting the character definition tag of the animated joint hierarchy and opening up the character definition manager by clicking the button in the attributes tab here we can manually assign joint references for our hierarchy or we can load one of the character definition presets that came with the asset browser contents of the CC f the tools let's go ahead and click the load preset button and select the roko joint definition preset let's click the extract skeleton button set the reference pose and close the character definition manager let's do the same thing for the cc40 control rig by selecting the character definition tag on the cc4 control null object and opening up the character definition manager by clicking the open manager button in the attributes tab let's click the load preset button again but this time we choose the CC Ford control R definition preset let's click the extract skeleton button set the reference pose and close the character definition manager now with the character definition tag of the CC Ford control rig still selected we click the create solver button in the attributes Tab and as a last step we drag in the character definition tag of the animated joint hierarchy into the source character field of the newly created character solver tag and if everything was set up correctly we should see our character start to move once we hit play now let's have a quick look at animation data coming from the actore library for this example I'm using using the Danse graceful motion and I downloaded the animation as an fpx file with an actor and Cinema 4D as the target application in Cinema 4D I have again already prepared my character with the CC 4D control rig so let's open up the characters hierarchy and select the cc4 control null object one more time and click the cc4 D import body motion icon even though I downloaded the animation data from the actor call library with an actor the motion and the actor itself will be separated so let's first open up the fpx file located in the motion folder of the downloaded contents and again as we had the cc4 control n object selected during the input process the settings of the cc40 control rig got already prepared for the retargeting and the character definition tag got applied to it as well the animated joint hierarchy has also been imported successfully and has also Al been prepared with a character definition tag now the only thing that's missing is a good reference pose in the beginning of the sequence on the animated joint hierarchy to quickly fix this you can use the new CC 4D import joint posst tool which lets you import a pose from a fpx file and will add it at the beginning of the animated joint sequence just select the root bone of the animated joint hierarchy and click the CC Ford import joint posst icon in the tools pallet the only preference for this tool to work correctly is that both the animated hierarchy and the hierarchy you want to import the post from have to be the exact same in terms of hierarchy structure and naming conventions so let's simply go ahead and select the fbx file located in the actor folder of the downloaded ector core contents and as you can see the downloaded actor was in a t pose and this has been added as the first frame of the sequence now we can go ahead and quickly bring our control R character into a t pose as well and move on to the retargeting select the character definition tag on the animated joint hierarchy and open up the character definition manager by clicking the button in the attributes tab we will again use a character definition preset from the cc4 asset browser contents so let's click the load preset button this time we're going to use the cc4 joint definition preset as the animated joint hierarchy is coming from the actor core Library which is related to Character Creator and iclone and uses the same hierarchy structure in naming conventions let's click the extract skeleton button set the reference pose and close the character definition manager and let's do the same thing for the control rig character by selecting its character definition tag and opening the character definition manager by clicking the button in the attributes tab let's select the cc4 control rig definition preset extract the skeleton set the reference pose and close the character definition manager now we can create our character solver tag and directag the character definition tag of the animated hierarchy into the source character field and if everything was set up correctly the character should start to move gracefully once we hit play but as long as the character solver tag is active the control objects of the cc40 control rig cannot be moved manually but I will show you in a minute how to quickly bake things down to the control objects with the cc40 bake tool but before that let's also have a quick look at animation data coming from mix.com additional to the animation data I also downloaded the character in a t pose as a separate fbx file in Cinema 4D I have again already prepared a control R character but this time I will not select the cc4 control null object during the import process just to show you what will happen so let's click the CC 4D import body motion icon and select the mix Amo animation we just downloaded and again the animation data has been imported successfully and the join hierarchy has been prepared with a character definition tag but this time the control rig settings have not been set up for retargeting and the cc4 control non object got no character definition tag applied to it but we can easily fix that by simply running the c4d import body motion tool a second time as it will also work when the animation has already been imported or copied from another scene just select the animated joint hierarchy and the cc4 control n object and click the cc4 D import body motion icon one more time this time there's no file dialogue opening up as the script already detected an animated joint hierarchy within the selection but as we can see the control rig settings have been set up for retargeting as the FK controls are now visible in the viewport and the cc4 control n object got a character definition tag applied to it as well now let's quickly add a reference post to the animated joint hierarchy by importing the downloaded mix ammo character in a t pose with the CC Ford import joint pose tool select the root joint of the hierarchy and click the import joint pose icon let's select the ybo character fpx and there we have our reference pose now let's go ahead and quickly adjust the reference pose of our controlc character as well and move on to the retargeting let's start with the character definition of the animated joint hierarchy by selecting the character definition tag and opening up the character definition manager from the presets we're going to load the mixo joint definition preset and we're going to extract the skeleton and set the reference pose it is important to note here that the mixam more joint definition preset only holds 51 joint references while the control rig definition holds 53 this means we need to make one small adjustment to the control rig definition in a minute let's select the character definition tag of the cc4 control null object and open up the character definition manager from the presets we load once again the CC 4D control rig definition preset let's extract the skeleton but before we set the reference pose let's make one small adjustment to match the mixer mod definition you can see here that the definition of the control rig holds 53 joint or rather control references the first difference comes from the root definition which is the master control in the CC Ford control definition the mixam skeleton simply has no root joint and therefore no joint is assigned as a reference for the root definition but that's not what we need to adjust to ensure proper R targeting we need to make a small change to the definition of the spine of the CC Ford control definition and let's simply remove the spine base FK control from the joints list as it is not needed for retargeting from a mixer joint hierarchy now we can set the reference pose and close the character definition manager and we are ready to create our character solver tag and drag in the character definition tag of the animated hierarchy into the source character field and if everything was set up correctly we should see our character start to move once we hit play now let's have a look at the CC 4D bake tool when using the native c4d bake objects function through the timeline to bake the control objects there will be key frames added to a lot more rig objects than just the control objects which means the manual cleanup has to be done after the baking process you can also learn more about this in my other video on the manual retargeting workflow to simplify and speed up this workflow the cc40 bake tool is a dedicated tool for the cc40 control rig to only bake the control objects of the rig which means it will only bake objects with the term Ctrl Plus at the end of the names and it will also only bake parameters with a red key frame selection on them you can add or remove key frame selections by right clicking on any of the parameters and choosing add or remove key frame selection under animation to use the cc4 debake tool you have to either select the cc4 control null objects to bake all the control objects of the rig at once or select just the control objects you want to bake so let's go ahead and select the cc4 control null objects to B all the control objects in one go when you click on the cc40 bag icon a small dialogue will show up where you have the option to decide if you want to bake position scale and rotation as well as additional parameters as long as they have a key frame selection on them you also have the option to remove the motion Source objects from the scene automatically once the baking is done click the start baking button to initiate the baking process when the baking is done you can close the bake dialogue and as you can see the motion Source objects as well as the character solver tag have been removed from the scene and when we hit play and open up the timeline we can see that the animation has been successfully baked down to the control objects now now let's have a look at the CC 4D import Face motion tool in Cinema 4D I have already prepared a character with the CC 4D face rig but before we import and retarget any facial animation data to the rig let's first have a look what data can be imported at the moment the retargeting setup of the cc40 face rig only supports animation data exported from character creator or mainly iclone on a cc3 plus character with an extended facial profile even though your TR R character may have a different facial profile on it the animation data does not necessarily need to be exported on your actual character as it is only the postm strength data from the exported fpx file that gets transferred over to the control ring and more retargeting presets will be added in the future to also support data coming from different sources for example from Roku Studio or the Maxon moves app so for this example I will simp simply go with character Creator's neutral base character as it has a extended facial profile on it by default and I will send it over to iclone to apply and export my animation data and for the animation I'm going with the full face calibration motion from character creator which I saved as an it talk file via the content browser to get it over to iclone to export the data simply go to file export and choose export fbx for the export settings select Cinema 4D as the target tool presentent and choose all frames or the desired range on export range to import and retarget the animation data in Cinema 4D the face control n object which is the root object of the cc40 face rig needs to be selected in the object manager so let's open up the hierarchy to find the face control null object at the bottom of the master control and select it when I click the CC Ford input pH motion icon now a file dialogue will open up and I will go ahead and select the fbx I just exported from iclone Once you clicked open it may take a while to import the data depending on the length of your animation if everything was imported correctly you will find a null object with the name motion Source phase at the top of the object manager holding the CC based body mesh from the fpx file with the animated POS Mo tag for the facial motion retargeting there are actually no more manual steps involved as there are for the the body motion retargeting the script automatically connected everything to the new facial retargeting espresso setup and activated it under the retargeting tab of the face control null object and as with the other tools you can get some additional information by opening up the console under extensions but let's go ahead now and see the result of the retargeting by hitting play or scrubbing the timeline as long as the retargeting is active the controls of the face rig cannot be moved manually but to have some level of control already at this stage you can find some multipliers for each pose morph under the retargeting tab of the face control null object with those you can dial in the strength of each post Mor to your liking before baking everything down to the control object and like the CC 4D import body motion tool the import pH motion tool will also work when the animation data was copied from another scene here I have the male emote test animation directly exported out of character creator again on a cc3 plus character with an extended facial profile so let's select the CC base body mesh and copy it and paste it into our scene now simply select the pasted in body mesh together with the face control null object and click the CC Ford import Face motion icon this will again put the body mesh inside a null object and establish the connection between the animated post Mo tag and the CC for the face rck let's go ahead and bake everything down to the controls of the face rig by using the cc40 bake tool to do that you have to either select the cc4 control null object which will beg all of the characters controls at once the face control n object which will bake all of the face controls at once or the desired control objects you want to bake let's select the face control null object and click the cc40 bake icon I want to bake the position rotation and scale of the control objects but no additional parameters and I want to remove the motion Source objects from the scene once the baking is done after closing the bake dialogue the motion Source objects will be removed from the scene and the retargeting on the face control null object will be deactivated and when we hit play now and open up the timeline we can see that everything was backed down to the control object successfully for

Channel: CC4D Tools

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Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2024