Who is this article relevant to?
This article is for anyone who wants to know how to retarget their exported Rokoko Studio animations to their custom characters or custom Metahumans in Unreal Engine 5
Which plans is this article relevant for?
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Requirements
- A Rokoko Studio animation in FBX format
- A custom character or a custom metahuman in FBX format. You can find our own custom character for testing here and a Default Metahuman Ada in FBX format here.
When importing your character make sure to NOT import other animations with it. You can check or uncheck this setting during the character import process in Unreal Engine
Important
- Both skeletons need to be in the same Rest Pose. They must both be in A-pose or T-pose. In the video tutorial, you will see that the custom character and the animation have different Rest poses. This is easily fixed inside Unreal Engine and we go through that in the video.
- Rokoko Studio offers many export options for your animations. If you want to retarget an animation onto an Unreal Engine character or an A-pose character, we recommend the following export options using the Custom preset (premium setting)
- In this guide, however, we will use a custom character whose Rest pose is in a T-pose using the Mixamo preset (not the Custom one). Our Youtube video used the Custom Preset with Mixamo and T-pose options. These options are similar to what we are using so there will be no issue.
Process
Unreal Engine 5.5
In order to retarget an animation in Unreal Engine 5 we will just need to import the Rokoko animation and the custom character in our Unreal Engine scene.
- Import your Custom Character
- Make sure the T0 Ref pose is selected
- Import your Rokoko animation. In this example, we will use a Mixamo animation exported directly from Rokoko Studio
- Make sure the Import animations option is selected, otherwise the animation will not be imported
This is what you should see after importing the animation
- Right-click on your imported animation, and click Retarget Animations
- Here you can choose the Target Skeleton. It can be either an imported custom character or a Metahuman
(Metahumans need a specific process to be exported in FBX format from Unreal Engine. (Consult Epic Games to learn more)
- After selecting the target skeleton, you should see the target character in the View.
Double-click the animation on the right side list to start playback. Both characters should move in sync.
Select the animation and click Export Animations
- Select the Destination Folder and click Export
- You should see a new file with the Custom Character or Metahuman with the new animation
- Drag and Drop the Animation Sequence file and Click Play in the scene