Your Daz3D character using a Mixamo animation in Unreal Engine
I am using Unreal Engine to create a game. I’m also using Daz3D to create characters. One of the first challenges I overcame was importing a Daz3D model into Unreal Engine. I’ve now figured out how to animate it with Mixamo animations. Before following these instructions, you will need to make sure you followed the instructions in my previous Devlog Animating Daz3d Characters with “Epic” Animations
Download First Animation
The first step is to download animation from Mixamo. I like to select the plain “x-bot” or “y-bot” as the body type. But it doesn’t really matter which body type you select because we aren’t going to use it.
The first animation you download doesn’t really matter, but there are a couple of options you need to make sure to select. If there is an option for “in place” make sure to check it. Unreal Engine works out better if walking and other moving animation are done in place.
For the first animation that you download and import into Unreal Engine, you will need to make sure that you download it “With Skin”. Also,using FBX format and 30 “Frames per Second” seems to work best.
Once you’ve downloaded the animation the next step is to import it into Unreal Engine. Pretty standard import options for the most part so I won’t bother listing them all out. The only 2 things that I want to call out are: Make sure “import animations” is checked and make sure “T0 As Ref Pose” is Not Checked.
Map to Humanoid Rig
Once you’ve imported it, you’ll have to retarget the bones. Open up the Mixamo Skeleton. Its name will be [name of animation]_Skeleton.
Make sure to select the Humanoid Rig before mapping the bones.
After that its time once again for the mundane task of mapping all of the bones from the mixamo rig to the humanoid rig. I found this site that already lists out the proper mapping. Unlike the Daz3D Genesis 8 mapping, you will only have to do bone maps and can skip changes to the Skeleton.
Run Conversion
An animation retarget can be done by right-clicking the animation and going to Retarget Anim Assets->Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget.
You’ll get this box which can have the same setup
Repeating the steps from my last post, just fill in the information. One thing I want to note though is to make sure the poses match. For instance, they do *not* in this picture:
If you followed my post on importing Daz3D characters, you made your character’s pose come in as a T-pose. But if you followed my last post, you temporarily made it an A-pose in unreal engine. To undo this, you’ll have to open up your Genesis 8 character. At the bottom of it click the “Modify Pose” button and select “reset”. That will put it back to the T-pose. If you ever want to import a Epic animation, you’ll have to change your character’s pose back to an A-Pose.
Once you do that, you can go back and rerun the importer and you should have a new animation. I chose the samba:
The Next Animations
Once you’d imported 1 animation, the subsequent ones will be easier. For starters when you download your next mixamo animation, you can now download it “without skin”. That’ll make your assets smaller and faster to download and import.
When importing, you will need to specify a Skeleton for you animation. In my case, since my first is “Samba_Dancing”, the one to choose after that will always be Samba_Dancing_Skeleton”. Consider this a warning for how you name your first mixamo animation ;)
After that, you can skip all the mapping and go straight to Right-clicking the animation and going to Retarget Anim Assets->Duplicate Anim Assets and Retarget. Unless you changed your pose, you won’t have to worry about removing a pose either.
Conclusion
That’s everything. I won’t go into putting these animations to use inside your game, that’s another topic. But if you know how to apply animations in Unreal engine, you can now use Mixamo animations with Dz3D Genesis 8 characters.
This is probably all I will need for my game, but if you’re using a different Daz3D character you will only have to (possibly) change some of the bone mapping. I would either Google it to see if someone else figured it out, or you’ll have to do some trial and error.