Take your Mixamo Character into Unreal Engine as a Playable Character

what up what up wimbush here and today i'm excited to show you guys how you can take a character from mixamo bring it into unreal engine and we could control it in like a third-person view just like an action-adventure game and we could even control it with our xbox controller or any controller that you have around so without further ado let's jump right into it so first things first i'm going to get started by opening up mixamo so i'm going to come down here just open up google chrome and go to mixamo.com and then we're going to find a character that we want to bring in so once you open up mixamo this is what you're going to open up with we're going to have like the animations here on the left and so if you look up here in the top right next to the miximo logo we have characters so i'm going to click on this and then i'm just going to look for a character that i want to use there is a female here that i like she's really cartoony she has big glasses she has some pretty cool hair so i'm going to look for her there she is michelle so i'm going to use her right there i'm going to click use this character and then you can see that we have our character already in a t-pose so if i move around and everything line her up she's already ready to go in the t-pose but the one thing that i found bringing stuff into unreal engine is whenever i bring it in with this t-pose right here sometimes the targets don't really align up so here's a little trick that i figured out that allowed me to align everything in unreal engine so if i come over here to animations then under here under search i'm just going to type t and click enter and then right here under animations you'll see that we actually have a t pose so if i click on this you can actually see that her legs kind of slimmed in a little bit and her arms went up a little bit as well and so i'm going to use this t-pose instead to export out into unreal engine so what i want to do now is click the download button and i'm just going to leave everything here at default i'm just going to click download and while i have this preparing and downloading i'm actually going to open up and real engine so i'm actually just going to go straight to unreal engine i'm using version 4.2 5.4 for this example right here as you can see right there and then from here i'm going to go to once we have the unreal project browser open i'm going to click on games then i'm going to click next and then i'm going to go to third person right here which is going to be like your adventure games like assassin's creed things of that nature so i'm going to click next right there and then i do have a ray tracing card so just for giggle so i'm going to enable ray tracing but everything else i'm just going to leave at default and then down here instead of my project i'm just going to name it maximo tutorial like so and then i'm going to come over to create project click the green button and just wait for unreal to launch back up here boom there we go we have unreal engine open in the lower right hand corner where it says new plugins are available i'm just going to dismiss this here like so and then right here instead of my content browser i'm going to click right here to bring us to like the uppermost hierarchy of our content browser and then i'm going to right click and i'm going to make a new folder so right here where it says new folder click this and then i'm just going to name this folder mixer mode girl like so and then i'm just going to double click on this and right here where it says import i'm going to click import and then i'm just going to look for that file to download it so by default it's just going to be called t-pose so i'm just going to click on this right here and click on open and then down here there's only one thing that we really need to click under miscellaneous right here where it says convert scene unit i'm just going to click this right here but everything else i could leave at default and i'm just going to click import all so if i scroll down we don't need to touch any of this stuff at all import all okay i'm just going to ignore this message log but if i look inside of my folder here you can see we have all of our stuff from mixamo we have our mesh we have our physics asset and we have our skeleton here as well so the way that i like to operate is i actually like having two content browsers open just makes it a little bit faster and easier to get back and forth between my files and so if you look over here on the right hand side i do have a second content browser open and if you want to follow along exactly how i have mine all you have to do is go up to window and then come down here to where it says content browser and you can see right now you can have up to four and so i have content browser 1 which is down at the bottom and then content browser 2 which i put over here right beside the details tab and so what i'm going to do inside of this one here i'm just going to click content let me drag this over a little bit so it's easier to see so i'm at the utmost hierarchy of my content browser right now and you should see a folder here that says mannequin so i'm going to double click on this one and then right here where it says characters i'm going to double click on this double click on mesh and then from here you'll see stuff that looks very familiar we have our mesh we have our physics asset and we have our skeletal mesh so what i want to do here is i want to double click on the skeleton and this window should pop up here if it ever pops up with the skeleton tree right here all you have to do is come right here or it says retarget manager click on that and that will automatically open up this tab for you right here because this is where we want to be and so what we're going to do now is we're going to set up a skeletal mesh inside of unreal engine that we can then use to target with maximum skeletal system so if i come down here to where it says select rig i'm going to click on none and then select humanoid rig i want to click on this and then right here you can see that we actually have everything already imported for us because this is all coming over from unreal engine so like our pelvis joint is connected already the spline joints and so on and so forth and so the one thing you will notice when we bring in our maximo skeleton we're going to have to manually select this because maximum skeletal system has a different naming convention but it's quick and easy it's not too much work so what i'm going to do now is i'm just going to select save right here and i'm not going to exit this out i'm just going to click the minimize button here and i'm going to come down to my miximo folder and where it says tpo skeleton from our miximo character i'm going to double click on this one and now we have our miximo female in here again if you don't see this retarget manager just click on right here where it says retarget manager that should open this up for you in the same process as before i'm going to come over to where it says select rig click on none select humanoid rig and you can see that it didn't bring all of our joints over we have to manually put this stuff in like i was saying but just follow along i'm actually going to go through joint by joint so you know exactly what to put in there because the stuff is kind of named a little bit differently and so for our root we're actually going to leave at none and we're actually going to start on our pelvis so if i select this right here where it says pelvis i'm going to select none and then i'm going to connect this to the hips and then spine 1 spine 0 1 i'm going to connect this over to where it says spine and then spine zero two i'm going to connect this to spine one and then spine zero three i'm gonna connect this to spine two and so like i said i'm not going to jump through this i'm actually gonna go through this one by one with you guys just so you can see exactly what goes with what so right here where it says clavicle underscore l which means you're left shoulder actually so i'm going to click on none i'm going to look for a left shoulder click this and then upper left arm right here where it says upper arm underscore l i'm going to click on this and just click on left arm and then where it says lower arm underscore l i'm going to click on this and do left forearm right here and then our hand under square l that's for your left hand so i'm going to click on this come over to left hand and we're not going to do any finger joints yet we're just going to go through the big joints right now so where it says clavicle r i'm going to click on none and that should be our right shoulder which if i scroll down with my mouse you'll see right here so right shorter and then upper arm underscore r i'm going to come over here select this one for the right arm and then lower arm underscore r i'm going to click on this and i'm going to use that for the right forearm like so and then the right underscore r i'm going to click on this and click on right hand and then i'm going to scroll down you can see that we have neck underscore 0 1. if i select this it should just be our neck here so right there select neck and you can see what's funny is for the head it already has head selected and that's because for this particular instance the naming convention is actually lined out for us so it's automatically going to you know connect it where it can and so for thigh underscore l that's actually going to be our left leg so right here where it says left up leg i want to select that one and then calf underscore l that one's going to be our left leg so left leg right there and then for foot underscore l that's gonna be our left foot and then for thigh underscore l we're gonna scroll all the way down here to the bottom where it says right up leg and then for calf underscore r slide down again where it says right leg and then for foot underscore r slide all the way to the bottom for the right foot so what i'm going to do now is i'm actually going to save this right here so actually let me show you that again right here where it says auto map we don't want to select that not clear we want to select save right here it's automatically named bell mapping but i'm going to put an underscore and just put miximo girl in here and i'm going to save it and it's already going to have our folder selected so i have my miximo girl folder selected i'm just going to click save and the reason that i did that is because for any particular reason if i wanted to bring in more characters from mixamo i don't have to go through this process again i just saved out my bonus structure so right here where it says load i can actually load in that bonus structure on other characters and it should properly align everything and then remember we skipped the fingers and everything before so if for any reason you did want to do binding for like the different finger joints all you have to do is click on show advanced here and there you go now we have all the different finger joints and everything there but for the sake of time i'm not going to go through this process because all we're going to really do is make our character run around the stage so we have all the major joints already selected here so what i'm going to do now is over here on the right hand side under mesh where it says apply to asset you want to make sure you select this here like so and then i'm going to come over and make sure i save this and so i'm not going to exit this out i'm just going to minimize this and then down here i'm going to come back to my content browser click content and then i'm just going to go into the search menu here and type in third until we come to this right here where it says third person underscore nmbp which means animation blueprint so we don't have to actually do any type of blueprinting we could just kind of plug and place some of this stuff in so if i right click on this one right here and then right here where it says retarget and then blueprints again animation blueprints the only thing we can select in here is duplicate animation blueprints and retarget so let's select this and if you look right here on our left hand side you can see that we have our t-post skeleton and if we select it you can see we actually you know is connected to our miximo skeleton but the one difference that we do see here is our mannequin from unreal is actually in the a pose and then the one that we brought in from miximo is in a t-pose so we actually don't want to re-target it right now i need to show you one more step on how we can bring our unreal engine character into a t-pose so we can properly align everything and we don't have anything kind of wonky because if we re-target right now you know like the legs and everything are going to be good and you'll get some decent motion in there but it's actually going to be a little bit wobbly in the arms and it's not going to really look that great so let me exit this one out and i'm actually going to come back here to my mannequin my skeleton right here i'm going to double click on this and then right here where is the skeleton tree let's click on this here and then under options right here it says show retargeting options so we want to select this and then we want to we don't want to click on root we want to click on pelvis and then i'm going to right click on pelvis and right here where it says set translation we target a skeleton let's click on this one here and everything under here is going to be retargeting for our skeleton now everything that we need and then our roots going to stay at animation and the stuff down here for the feet and everything is going to stay at animation but everything that we need to be selected as a skeleton is selected so again we want to click on save here and then the next step from here is i want to actually put this character inside of a t pose so over here on my skeletal tree again i'm going to look for my left arm so right here where it says upper arm underscore left i want to select on this and then i'm going to take this and i'm going to select this over about 50 degrees and then same thing for the right arm so right here where it says upper arm underscore r and what we're going to do from here is actually make this 50 degrees as well so we're just pretty much aligning this up for a t-pose so if i hold down the alt key left click and just drag up so i'm looking kind of from up above you can see that the arms aren't really aligned out straight so all we have to do is click on this joint right here just move it over i believe it's about yeah 20 degrees there same thing here move this out about 20 degrees and if you want to mess with the you know the wrist joints you can but it looks like everything is pretty straight to me so from here we're going to come back to retargeting manager and then down here where it says modify pose we want to click on this and then we want to use current pose so we select this and now that's going to make our t pose the default pose for our character here so if i click on hide pose you can see it goes back to the a pose but if i view the pose is going back to the t pose and that means that's the one we have selected as our default so what i want to do now is just make sure i select save then i'm just going to minimize this and then i'm going to come back here again so we have our third person animation blueprint right click this and go up to retarget animation blueprint duplicate animation blueprint and retarget and then now you see that our mannequin is in the t pose so now if we select our t-post skeleton all we have to do now is click retarget and now you see that it made duplicates of all the blueprints down here so we have our jump motion we have our run our walk and we have our animation blueprint here as well so the one thing that i'm going to do is just so i can tell the difference between this duplicate and the original i'm just going to click on this so that it pops up with this blue bar which means we can actually rename it so i'm just going to hit the right button on my keyboard the right arrow and then i'm going to do underscore and i'm going to just type out miximo and that way just renamed it because that's going to be important that we can find it later on so from here what i'm going to do now is i'm going to type in third again person and then character so c-h-a until you get this blue box right here where it says third-person character so i'm going to double-click on this one right here and then you'll see we have like this blueprint window pop up but don't worry we don't really have to mess with anything in here what we want to do is come over to the viewport and then we're going to select the mannequin and then right here on the right hand side where it says mesh right where it has like this pink bar we're just going to select the mannequin here and then we're going to select the t-pose which if you look in the real tiny window you can see our miximo character so now that we have that selected it actually replaced it with our miximo girl in here and she's not in the idle pose like we have with our other character and that's because we have to bring in that blueprint animation so right here where it says animation class click on none and then we just want to scroll down here to about the bottom so remember when i did underscore mixer mode this is exactly why i wanted to do that because now what we have is we're able to tell the difference between what is what so if i select this now she's in the animation idle stance here and she's going to be connected to our keyboard and mouse and our xbox controller right off the bat so the next step from here is click on kapow and then we're going to click save and i see we have a star right here so i'm going to select this real quick select save there we go just make sure everything's saved out and then i'm just going to click the x here now and now you see that we have our girl inside of our stage here instead of unreal engine so what i'm going to do from here is let me move this over a little bit so we can see the play button so i'm just going to select play and then select the viewport and now it's just going to work like any type of video game that uses the keyboard or mouse so the wasd keys on the keyboard is what's going to run around and then you'll use your mouse to control the camera and then we can use the spacebar to jump so if i click on my keyboard i'm hitting the w now and i'm just using my controller you know to move around my camera and everything and if i want to jump just hit the keyboard like so and there we go so now we have a third-person action adventure game you know like assassin's creed like i always bring up we could just you know create some platforming levels and make something really cool so this is the beginning of it and what's also cool is it's automatically mapped to our controllers i use an xbox controller like i have my project scorpio xbox controller right here and if you plug it in it's automatically going to map it so the a button is going to jump and then you just use the left and right triggers here to control the character so let me actually plug this in because i don't have any batteries right now so i just have it plugged in usb but let me select my there we go i just want to make sure this is activated so i'm gonna hold up the xbox controller and now you can see i'm actually controlling my character so it's just like playing the video game there and everything just moving around hitting the a button to jump and this is really cool because this is something i've been wanting to do for a while now i don't know if you guys seen my epic games project that i recently did with the pug dash intro kind of looks like a mario kart type environment and we have those pugs in there i actually want to make that into a playable level so this is exactly how i'm going to go about making those pugs playable so they can run through the obstacle course so hopefully this helped you guys out i know when i posted this up on social media this morning a couple of people asked me to do a tutorial on it and you know i came back and that delivered i know there's a lot of tutorials out there but it felt like the information was just kind of spread across the internet nothing was really like a step-by-step process on how exactly to do this and so i was happy to figure it out put it together for you guys and hopefully it helps you out and you guys can start making your own action adventure games and if this did help you out make sure you leave me a comment down below if you're new to the channel make sure you click that subscribe button and as always stay fresh keep praying and i'll catch you in that next video i'll see you guys soon take care

Channel: WINBUSH

Views: 25,856

Keywords: motion graphics, winbush, tutorial, immersive, school of motion, mograph, creating the unreal, create the unreal, mixamo, 3rd person, character, playable character, mixamo to unreal engine, ue4, ue5, unreal engine 4, unreal engine 5, xbox, series x, controller, keyboard and mouse, video games, game dev, epic partner, controllable character, hip hop, dance girl

Id: Komsb3itAIo

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020