Exporting Animation To Unreal Engine to make a cinematic

cstrauss42a

I am learning to use Unreal Engine, with the goal to make short movies, cinematics etc with my Daz Assets. I have sucessfully imported daz assets into unreal and was surprised as how uncomplicated that was. 

I am now trying to learn how to import the animations via fbx files,One of my first question. Is it best to key frame let say a 5 second animtion in Daz and then import that 5 seconds into unreal or is more like I am going to have to import one movement at a time for example going from standing to sitting. export that, then create the next motion for example again sitting to standing?

My next question is what if i have two people interacting with each other for example, two people dancing, fighting, wrestling, etc do I need to animate those people serpeatly or can they be animated together and export the fbx files and they will have the information in that fbx for both figures movements?

Just some questions I have been searchign for and decided to ask on a forum before i go down a rabbit hole where its not going to be possible. 

WendyLuvsCatz

it is much easier to use the DAZtoUnreal Plugin rather than FBX

(it still exports an FBX anyway but imports it as a dtu)

everything is retargetted and set up to work with all your DAZ characters already in there, 

if I don't want a new character I just  make the character invisible without textures

cstrauss42a

Thanks for the info, I just started down this rabbit hole with unreal and I feel like I did back in the early 2000's with Poser 4. A lot to learn but from what I am seeing I think it is going to be a bit easier to do animations  once I figure out how to get it all working from daz to unreal

WendyLuvsCatz

I just blend retargetted animations in Unreal on the level sequencer and bake new ones for what I want.

Can reverse, loop, change speed, interpolation type and in the animation editor edit curves, add keyframes etc on the animations too.

I find it easier than editing them in DAZ.

can make animation composites too.

add notifies like foot step sounds and play particles etc such as dust, magic spell casts, trigger events it's endless and there is always a YouTube tute you can find.

like this I watched yesterday and have yet to try

 

cstrauss42a

Thank you for sharing that tutorial, I have also found some great ones on Udemy. I am progressing. I can bring daz figures in and retarget them(skin looks bad still, and hair does not really come in well). I been making my animations in Daz keyframing and exporting them in to Unreal that is going well. 

I still trying to figure out how to get a figure in that has a geograft on it. The character comes in find but the part that is geograft comes in dark gray. So if you have tips on that that would be nice. Overall I am liking unreal engine maybe someday I will use my C++ skills and make some fun games, but for now I want to master the animation/cinematics part of it. 

David Vodhanel

There's a lot of different ways to do this, and some complications.
For me, I tend to make a library of animations and connect them in Sequencer in Unreal.  I generally make my library in Maya (mostly by converting Mixamo stuff).  I'm switching to using Control Rig in Unreal so I can animate directly in Unreal though.

The biggest complication getting animation from Daz Studio to Unreal is the Fix Rotations problem.  The Daz FBX exports in a way where the joints don't line up right in Unreal.  There's an option to fix that in the plugin on the Unreal side, but doing this will break and animations coming from Daz Studio.

 

David Vodhanel

Rather than trying to do something awesome right off the bat, I recommend making some rough animations and transfering them to get an idea what workflow you like first.

cstrauss42a

Thanks David for the advice, that is what I been doing just doing small animations and getting them into unreal to see how they peform. Most animations I can get from Mixamo, but just need to the ability to make a specialized animation that is not available anywhere else if needed.

On the same topic what about animations in blender to unreal do those work better? For example create the character daz import them to blender then export for Unreal.

The other issue I am having is if I make a character that is in Daz that has geografts those do not play nicely in unreal, so I been searching around on this topic and came across Diffeomorphic plugin that exports from daz to blender and you can merge the geograft in the export to blender and I think I got that to work but now I do not know how to get the character out of blender into unreal. Yet.... This rabbit hole is getting deeper and deeper. I might need the blue pill

Ellessarr

cstrauss42a said:

Thanks David for the advice, that is what I been doing just doing small animations and getting them into unreal to see how they peform. Most animations I can get from Mixamo, but just need to the ability to make a specialized animation that is not available anywhere else if needed.

On the same topic what about animations in blender to unreal do those work better? For example create the character daz import them to blender then export for Unreal.

The other issue I am having is if I make a character that is in Daz that has geografts those do not play nicely in unreal, so I been searching around on this topic and came across Diffeomorphic plugin that exports from daz to blender and you can merge the geograft in the export to blender and I think I got that to work but now I do not know how to get the character out of blender into unreal. Yet.... This rabbit hole is getting deeper and deeper. I might need the blue pill

here you can find some help and ways to work on it:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/489851/tutorial-how-to-work-around-fix-the-double-down-export-issue-of-geografity-stuffs

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/432206/daz-to-unreal-guide-for-newcomers-the-famous-before-your-buy-or-limitations

if you search a little more here on this forum you can find some more posts from me talking about it, however in general geografty elements is a daz work which really can be a big pain the most simple way to fix it in the most "easy cases like the "gens" you just need to create a "hidden material" and apply it on the "extra element, it will fix partially the issue(the mesh will be still there but not rendered which means a little extra performance issue but if you are not trying to make a hugh open world and complex work it not gonna be a big deal.

you must edit the mesh and see what is better to you to work with.

 

the most problematic and complex figure to work is without any doubts the centaur and it's variations, because of how it was created.

Ellessarr

cstrauss42a said:

Thanks David for the advice, that is what I been doing just doing small animations and getting them into unreal to see how they peform. Most animations I can get from Mixamo, but just need to the ability to make a specialized animation that is not available anywhere else if needed.

On the same topic what about animations in blender to unreal do those work better? For example create the character daz import them to blender then export for Unreal.

The other issue I am having is if I make a character that is in Daz that has geografts those do not play nicely in unreal, so I been searching around on this topic and came across Diffeomorphic plugin that exports from daz to blender and you can merge the geograft in the export to blender and I think I got that to work but now I do not know how to get the character out of blender into unreal. Yet.... This rabbit hole is getting deeper and deeper. I might need the blue pill

here you can find some help and ways to work on it:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/489851/tutorial-how-to-work-around-fix-the-double-down-export-issue-of-geografity-stuffs

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/432206/daz-to-unreal-guide-for-newcomers-the-famous-before-your-buy-or-limitations

if you search a little more here on this forum you can find some more posts from me talking about it, however in general geografty elements is a daz work which really can be a big pain the most simple way to fix it in the most "easy cases like the "gens" you just need to create a "hidden material" and apply it on the "extra element, it will fix partially the issue(the mesh will be still there but not rendered which means a little extra performance issue but if you are not trying to make a hugh open world and complex work it not gonna be a big deal.

you must edit the mesh and see what is better to you to work with.

 

the most problematic and complex figure to work is without any doubts the centaur and it's variations, because of how it was created.

cstrauss42a

Ellessar, Thank you for the links it is starting help, but I followed your steps to use the geometery tool to fix the geograft issue however Unreal Engine did not like that one bit. When I went to send the character to unreal from daz all the textures imported but the import failed saying something no geometery found. I was trying with Meipes Golden Palace. 

The other option I have read was using Diffeomorphic Plugin to merge the Grafts in Blender, I think I figured that out, atleast got my Daz Character into blender using that plugin and selected the merge Geograft option, but have yet to figure out how to get them out of Blender to Unreal. 

Do you have any idea why the import failed? Do I have to export a different way?

Ellessarr

cstrauss42a said:

Ellessar, Thank you for the links it is starting help, but I followed your steps to use the geometery tool to fix the geograft issue however Unreal Engine did not like that one bit. When I went to send the character to unreal from daz all the textures imported but the import failed saying something no geometery found. I was trying with Meipes Golden Palace. 

The other option I have read was using Diffeomorphic Plugin to merge the Grafts in Blender, I think I figured that out, atleast got my Daz Character into blender using that plugin and selected the merge Geograft option, but have yet to figure out how to get them out of Blender to Unreal. 

Do you have any idea why the import failed? Do I have to export a different way?

 hmmmm i would need to know what the produte are ou trying to use? it is here from daz? or other places, and based on the name it's it's seens something from a "more adult oriented site which we know...

if it's work exactly like the genitaly from here daz then all you really need to do is normally apply it to the figure then inside unreal you create a "hidden/invisible material, then apply this invisible material in the "extra mesh appearing in gray", it will make it totally invisibe and only one appearing.

 

to create a invisibe material in unreal you must create a new material then with unreal open you choose a folder(like the character materials folder) to save it then on that folder you right click and choose material then it generate a empty material for you to name, like this one:

then open the material now with the "material selected in the window you gonna look in the left side where it's say blend mode it's by default opaque, click on it and change to or translucente or masked, it will enable in the other side in the window the option opacity or opacity mask based on what you choose

and also to make sure everything will work right mark two sided, then after that in the main window with the material node you will press 3 then left click it will generete a new black node with 0,0,0

then connect it to the main material node as in the image

it will make the material "invisible" anything you apply this material will be rendered as invisible, then apply this material to the "mesh which is appearing in gray inside unreal which is the "extra mesh it will turn it invisible.

 

any extra help would be better by pm since what you are trying to work is something which can't be showed here without breaking some forum rules(since it seens being "adult content"), if i'm not wrong.

 

then a private talk would be more fine.

 

cstrauss42a

I am definatly making progress, using your hidden/invisible trick worked. I had to do some Photoshop work to use the object with out shells to basically flatten the image and put it on geograft with out the shells. Then imported it into unreal and made the hidden/invisible material to get rid of the grey left overs. The only issue now is that the area with the geograph is a much lighter skin tone then the rest of the body and does not blend with the rest of the character. 

Any idea on how to blend the skin colors to make them match.? I sent you a PM earlier if you wish to respond there as well. 

David Vodhanel

For animation in Blender or other programs, you may want to try exporting out of Unreal instead.  The reason is I rename the root bone when the character gets imported into Unreal.  This is so male and female characters can share a skeleton \ animations.  Here's the Maya setup I used to use for reference.  Hopefully the instructions will give you an idea how to make it work with Blender.
https://davidvodhanel.com/2021/05/19/daz-unreal-to-maya-humanik-setup/