Retarget Animations: Mixamo to Metahuman Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial #beginnerfriendly #unrealtutorial

what's up guys in this video we'll look at how to retarget animation from mixamo to Unreal mannequin and then to a custom meta human character also you step by step an easy way to retarget the animation [Music] all right to get started what we'll do is we'll select the third person template and then make sure the starter content is checked on and I'll go ahead and give a name of animation retarget and then I'll just hit create and it should create a third person template character and you can see oh sorry I mean a third person template game and I'll go ahead and create a new folder called mixamo and basically this will be a place where I will house all the mixable content so I'll go to mixamo.com go to characters and then I'll save the character I have already selected this Eli so I'll go ahead and click on the download but you can go ahead and select whatever character you want so I'll go ahead and download it on a t pose and yeah basically I'll just download and once that is done I'll go ahead and click that download and drag it to my Unreal Engine make some more folder and I'll pretty much leave the default setting to import so you don't have to do anything and I'll just click on import all and it should import our asset and and what you can see is there like um the skeletal mesh the physics asset and then the actual skeleton so skeletal mesh is where you want to do the animation and stuff um and you can see this is a character and basically you can see the character in here uh next I will go ahead and click on the ad on the content browser click on the quixel content and then practice in here and then go to metahumans and you can actually click on one of the metal human and download it I've already downloaded to my local so I'll just go ahead and click on the download and add to project since I've already downloaded so it's check marked and so I'll just click on the add to project the one of the issue you might run into metal human is it will take a long time so if there is missing plugin just click on enable machine and then yeah and then if it actually to restart go ahead and restart your computer as well make sure you save your project before restarting so you don't lose the project and yeah once that is imported and all the compiling is worked and you go to metal humans go to Ada that's my name of the character and then BP underscore erda when I double click on it if I go to viewport I can see the character and you can see the little stuttering because if you see on the side my shaders are compiling or actually it is being prepared so you can see the era is there loaded next for our retargeting we want to actually get the animation from the mixer mode that we want to retarget to The Meta human so I'll just go ahead and select the dance one of the reason I'm selecting dance is because it is a little challenging and it has some intricate movements of the leg and hand so I'll go ahead and click on web hip-hop and then I'll download the animation without the skin and the reason is we have already downloaded the characters so we don't need the skin so I'll go ahead and click grab this animation and drag it to the same maximum folder and pretty much I'll just leave as it is I'll make sure the skeleton is the same skeleton of the character that we wanted and then I'm pretty much downloading the same animation so I'm not going to play with anything but I'm just showing you everything that should be in here I'm using the exported time and I'll do import all and you can see the web hip obtains animation and it is already playing inside our enemies window so next what we'll do is we'll right click in here go to animation and then we'll create ik rig so basically inside I create it acts which mesh do you want to create the IQ rig of and we want to create further Eli by K skeletal mesh and basically go ahead and make sure you have that maximum character skeleton mesh and rename whatever you want I think I'm renaming here ik rig underscore Maximo and once that is in there uh basically we are going to create the chain of the bones that we want to retarget and for that I'll just talk this in here go to the character up there and then click on the bones and click all hierarchy so you can see the fully rigged bones in here and yeah you should see the bones and pretty much this is the we are creating the uh the chains of bones for retargeting so we'll have the chain name the stock bone and bond and cool I'll start with the spine so and then I'll shift click on the spine too right click on it and then click on the new Target chain from the hierarchy and then make sure it is fine and then click on OK pretty much for the whatever it says add goal I'll just do no goal for this tutorial so we are not going to do into the cool section so we've added a spine chain next I'll do neck by itself the same way make sure it is named neck and then local and yeah pretty much you can see the chain is added on our right side of ik retargeting and also the head by itself as well the name is head I'll do okay no goals the same way um I'm not doing the top or eyes I'll go ahead and start with the shoulder but if you look at the solder the name doesn't come out Soldier it comes as arm so make sure you are changing the name the same Boon or rig that we are sucking and I'll go ahead and do that for the left arm I'll click on the left arm and then go up to the hand and then shift select and then we'll again do the retarget from the bones and then the arm is correct on this case we will leave as is will not do the thumb for now who will do them later because it's easier to by using Ctrl select and then do it at once so we'll go ahead and do the same thing for right shoulder make sure you're changing name to right solder and yeah so pretty much um I'm not actually doing this video and uh fast I'm keeping it at a normal speed so that you can follow through so right arm if right arm so basically mapping it next we'll not do the fingers we'll do at the end we'll do a left leg and then go up to the left foot so left leg up to the left foot and then the name should be left leg and just go ahead and click on OK and the no goal we'll do the same thing for the right leg so right up leg and then go up to right foot uh shift click and then basically new Target retarget and then click OK and then no you can see that on the under ik retargeting use and see all of that um another thing very important is in our hips we have to select it as a retarget root um although technically the mannequin has a neck as wood so for the fingers what I'll do is I'll control Click on each of this sections so basically I'm going from middle hand so for each finger I'm starting only three three bones basically and then I'm control clicking each right index three right middle one two three right ten one two three right pinky one two three so we can do is do it this in a batch a new retarget chain from the circuit so yeah I don't think this is left arm this should be left thumb the naming so we will have to basically rename it you can see in there it just left thumb so we'll just do left and then thumb and then I'll do okay and then no goal do the same thing for the left index make sure you're renaming it appropriately so that it's easy when you do the ik retargeting later which we'll do here in a minute or so once this is done this is this is the hardest part I want to say so make sure you're selecting the proper name so it's easy um and another issue that we might run into is the pose but I found an easier way to match the pose usually this is the issue because Unreal Engine has uh ape so basically the mannequin is an a-pose but the downloaded asset from mixamo is in typos so we'll have to do some adjustment but I found an easier way so you don't have to do the whole manual work of you know changing the angle so basically here make sure you are basically just it comes to automatically the one will after another because we did this in a batch so you don't have to do anything you just have to rename and click no call and all of this is added into our ikey retargeting you can see in here and yeah pretty much our whole chain is mapped not mapped but it is basically we have added it into a change so basically we have defined hey these are the bones for the structure next we'll go to animation and then we'll go to i2k rig and then retargeter and it asks what do you want to copy animation from so we'll go ahead and select the the ik rig that we just created so that would be I can mixer Moon make sure it is mixer mode and nothing else and then go ahead and change the name to whatever you would like I'll just say I can retarget her I think I was struggling with the spelling here but whatever name you feel like comfortable let's go ahead and make sure it is something you can understand and yeah uh this is the ik retargeter there is a source and then the target iqrix for a Target we'll go ahead and click on the mannequin so Unreal Engine 5. by default comes with the the ik rig so we you don't have to do all of that work at least for the mannequin it is already done so we are just retargeting it to mannequins so if you go under control and click on the fill ik rig filter you'll see that but even if you you don't need to see it so if you go under that IQ retargeter section you should be able to select right there under Target so go ahead and select the I key mannequin and then you see this is very confusing a lot of Bones and two structures are right there on place so what I will do is go to the character and then bones and then I'll just do none on the bones so that you can see there and then if they are in the same place what you can do is you can put an offset on the X Direction so you can see the two character but the problem is uh the mannequin is in a pose and then the rig is in the teeples and these are the mappings for the chain so if I double click on this the animation if I go and ask the browser and click double animation you can see that there is some issue and then that was the reason I was saying because it's they are in different pose and also the chain mapping is not correctly done so we'll have to do something here of course the first thing is they are not in the same pose so let's go ahead and change the pose what we can do is it's pretty easy I'll go ahead and click on the create make sure you are on a Target source so basically for mannequin we are changing the pose so I'll go to import from animation sequence and then I think it it is m m underscore T pose yep that was it and then go ahead and click and then import as retarget pose and there you go makes a lot easier to retarget and then if you were to run still I think it's better than the previous but not quite well especially in the hands section and then also on the feet so we'll we'll go ahead and improve on this by using the uh chain mapping one of the issue that we can see is on the root it says neck but the our character doesn't actually have a root we basically have retargeted route so you need to change it to none for the root for the Target so chain mapping go ahead and select the none for the root and make sure you're saving it and for the spine it is spine here is head see the naming convection came pretty good when it says clavicle it basically we are referring to Soldier so go ahead and select the soldier left on his left arm anywhere it says twist go ahead and click on the none we don't have that and same with the metacarpal we'll just go ahead and click on the none and make it much easier so that it's easy to follow so if it's same if check to share make sure the names of the mapping are correct anywhere it says twist go ahead and click on none if it says metacarpal to go ahead and select none same here we found the metal carpool none you know for each bone so I'm keeping the video at the same speed so you can follow along because I know it is very confusing especially if you're a beginner you know trying to follow along and get this animation retargeting correct so if it says right clavicle that means right shoulder right arm is left right arm twist anything twisty go ahead and select none okay and same with the fingers too if it's right pinky then right pinky is correct but if it says right ring metacarpal then just go ahead and click none if it says anything purple none and yeah pretty much uh you follow along and do that for all of the chain mappings and and this is what will help you in mapping those animations accurately to the mannequin yeah so anyway I see twist I have gone and sorted none same with the left calf twist so we have a left leg but not the cuff twist not the tight twist either um and anything which is we don't have food root I guess we'll basically will go and do none on a pretty much uh the hand root ik the handgun ik we don't have a gun ik either so we don't need that so pretty much I'll do none for the the eye case as well yeah so that should be all make sure you're saving it and yeah if you go in the asset browser and double click now now you can see your animation is accurately mapped not bad at all look at the dance animation working properly this time um do what you can do to export is basically go to acid browser click on that and then do click on the export select animation and yeah go ahead and save the animation to whatever folder you want I went ahead and I think I created a new folder called animation and this is for many animations so I said hey man I need to make some more animation this is basically a prefix that gets added and yeah there it is if you double click on the now you have many animations so basically your dancing animation from any um now what we want to do is we want to use the same retargeter I'll just rename it and then I'll just say this is for mixamo you know um so that we don't have to do double work so I'll go ahead and duplicate this and make this yeah for The Meta human character basically that's what we're gonna do right here I'll go ahead and click on meta human IQ retargeter and then since we want to go with the meta human retargeter I'll go ahead and select the target um ik rig asset to the The Meta human meta human also by default comes with the ik rig and then for this preview mesh I think you have to do F underscore or mad underscore nrw body and it is kind of weird that you don't see all of this rendered but trust me it works so basically you can click on the animation and maps and then what I did was I basically went ahead and exported the animation for The Meta human too so the same way as a browser export selected and then I went to metahumans and probably create a new floor called animations the same way and then I did I added a perfect saying hey this is meta human make someone to meta human animation quite a long prefix actually and yeah export it and then I think the next thing that I did was I went ahead and added a level sequencer and then in pretty much the level sequencer I imported the two cassettes of this part I kind of skipped a little bit so that a video won't get too long so I basically added the animation to the sequencer and then rotated the my character so it matches but you can see the character and then the metahuman both have the animation hopefully this video was helpful and you were able to understand how to accurately map the animation if you feel like supporting this channel then I will add this to the patreon account basically I will provide you with this project file so you can study and also play with it and yeah keep learning and yeah I'll see you in the next one

Channel: sappydev

Views: 4,711

Keywords: mixamo, animation, retargeting, unreal engine 5, mixamo to metahumans, metahumans, beginner, beginner friendly, unreal engine tutorial, ue5, ue4, ue5.1, ue5.2, animation in unreal engine

Id: urSbRvyFjH0

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023