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Re: Errors after retargeting existing ue4 animations

PostPosted: Wed Jan 20, 2021 12:42 pm
by fortuna
I found the cause of the problem myself. Unreal's Automapping for two bones of the Skeleton Mesh was wrong.

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 9:52 am
by fortuna
When it comes to importing the FBX into blender, it is crucial for the import of morph keys to set the checkbox in the import manually. it is deactivated by default and double-collapsed in the mesh section. I updated the workflow documentation.

<edit: moved addional question out of this post>.

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 7:39 pm
by punkduck
Shape Keys:

what is worse and was not as obvious as the "hidden" UE importer options:

You will get rid of your shape-keys when you select the apply modifiers box in blender fbx-export.

This is not a special fbx feature, it happens for all types of export I meanwhile noticed, And in a way the reason is simple: A shape-keys is a second mesh inside blender (not joking, all vertices are copied, even when you change a single vertex only). Applying only works on one layer.

These are the exporters:

https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.ops.export_scene.html

when looking carefully, for bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx, option "use_mesh_modifiers" you will notice:

"Apply modifiers to mesh objects (except Armature ones) - WARNING: prevents exporting shape keys"

Be aware that blender shape-keys can be created from -10 to 10 (afaik) but Unreal accepts only -1 to 1. So they must be normalized, when they are bigger than 1. In this case: if you use a bone driver in blender and you create the animations you need to adapt it to the other norm also.

Materials usually work rather good, as long as the principled node is used. For eyes I use two materials, so a glass layer to reflect light. Of course this only makes sense when the face can be shown from a near distance, but it looks rather good.

I use own animations and standard skeleton (no toes). It works as well, but I can't use pre-made animations. On the other hand, my model can talk without shapekeys and without modifications after I created the 11 phonemes with a poselib. :)

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:56 pm
by AssetDK
fortuna wrote:I would like to notify the community about my suggestion about the eye material setup:

http://www.makehumancommunity.org/wiki/ ... them_there


Thanks I will update - and I will share how I made a very diverse skin material!

The page is now updated, please check if there is any more that we need to update and feel free to change the page if there are more things to tweak!

http://www.makehumancommunity.org/wiki/ ... _materials

As you can see I made a character customize interface, it can currently modify/randomize the shape keys, and you can update the base tint color, but all the other parameters should be in there as well. 8-)

Cloth and other stuff..

PostPosted: Sun Feb 14, 2021 2:51 pm
by AssetDK
I also made a guide and a small tool to "hack" the shape keys - in such a way that you can import all targets to UE4. The next step is to add cloth to UE4 and I just found that this can be done, you need to transfer the same morph targets to the cloth and the cloth need to have the same skeleton as the base mesh. The entire thing will be in a package that you can use for handling the MakeHuman characters in Unreal.

One of the things I am missing it the expressions, it would be cool if you could "export" these - as well as the customize sliders - as shape keys. Please can someone show me how this is supposed to work work with MHX2?
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=19293

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 5:57 pm
by nomorecookies
Is this character creator you are working on going to be free and open, or a product you will be selling on the UE4 marketplace?

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 11:54 am
by AssetDK
nomorecookies wrote:Is this character creator you are working on going to be free and open, or a product you will be selling on the UE4 marketplace?


Sorry I did not see the question. It is going to be free, I have the thing working, but now have a few problems regarding the skeleton. (I don't have enough time for this, to make it pro. :o )

By the way - edit: I re-read the posts regarding the A-pose etc. and I will add these instructions to my page. It looks like this works fine for (most of) the animations I tried them on. Using the rig/skeleton called Uengien (and probably Uengien BB). 8-)

I also see that two other attempts have been posted, so perhaps there is a need for a separate section for that.
MH_UE_Poses.png
MH_UE_Poses.png (11.91 KiB) Viewed 19685 times


http://www.makehumancommunity.org/poses.html?order=changed&sort=asc&page=4

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:57 am
by nomorecookies
AssetDK, What sort of issues with the skeleton are you having?

I am very glad to hear you are keeping it Free :D

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:53 pm
by AssetDK
nomorecookies wrote:I am very glad to hear you are keeping it Free :D


Well Epic is making metahuman for free, but I guess that it will not run on your standard pc. For me it's taking a bit of time to get things working, and I keep finding small tings that needs to be improved. Anyways I am now posting some basic documentation so it should be a bit more easy to work with:
http://www.makehumancommunity.org/wiki/ ... Unreal_MHC

Re: MH2UE4u

PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 11:42 am
by AssetDK
nomorecookies wrote:AssetDK, What sort of issues with the skeleton are you having?

I am very glad to hear you are keeping it Free :D


Please check the DM.

In summary I want to move on using the MetaHuman head on MakeHuman! This makes some sense since the body and cloth of the MetaHuman are not very useful. As-is it is good for NPC characters but they would all look very much the same. Taking a look at various examples I believe we can make this work and more or less give people want they are missing... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oCS4wYGsV0