Maya tutorial: Retargeting the Animation

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In this lesson I will show you how to retarget the animation from one skeleton to another. This can be used when you need to copy the same animation onto many characters in the scene to perhaps make a crowd. You can offset the animation by a few frames and your characters will act like a real mob.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maya Tutorial: Retargeting the Animation

STEP 1:

Select your animated skeleton and at the frame 0 or -1 set the bones to the T-Pose position. If your animation has been done correctly and the animator started at T-Pose (as it should be in any case) you can achieve the T-Pose easily by zeroing the joints. Just select each joint separately and put a 0 value into the channel box for all rotation axis. This will work only if the animator started in T-Pose! Make sure that you hit the automatic keying button before you start or alternatively manually key each joint after you will reset it.

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STEP 2:

Select the root joint of the skeleton and duplicate it (Ctrl + D). Now you have two skeletons with exactly the same amount of joints. On one of the skeletons is your plotted or keyed animation and the other one is completely clean.

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STEP 3:

When both your skeletons are in the T-Pose select them and go into the Animation menu. Under the Skeleton choose Retargeting>Set Neutral Pose. Do that for both of the skeletons.

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STEP 4:

Select the skeletons and make sure that the labeling of the joints are exactly the same. This is essential as the retargeting will use the names of the joints to copy the animation from one skeleton to another. You can use the Maya labelling facility in the Skeleton menu. Choose Skeleton>Joint labelling>Show All Labels.

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STEP 5:

Make sure that the joints which are labeled with the name NONE will be renamed. You can again use the Maya labeling system. Select the joint that has no name and select Skeleton>Joint labelling>Add Retargeting Labels>Finger. In my case I needed to change the name on the feet and hand fingers. Again make sure that both of the skeletons are properly named in an identical way.

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STEP 6:

Now, once the labeling is done, you can switch off the labels again in Skeleton>Joint labelling>Hide All Labels. Now select the root joint of the skeleton with the animation, press and hold the shift key and select the root of the skeleton that is not animated and choose the Skeleton>Retargeting>Retarget Skeleton option box.

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STEP 7:

When the option table for retargeting appears, choose: Neutral pose > Pose, Maintain offset ticked, Lower body solutions > Joint rotations only, Upper body solutions > Joint rotations only, Time > Time Slider (of course make sure that your time slider covers the whole animation that you want to copy).

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And that’s all folks. Your copied skeleton has now got same animation like the original skeleton.

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