Using UE5 Retargeter, why is my Horse 3 Pelvis swaying back and forth?

brooks.james

Hi, I am just so close to getting this just right with my IK Retargeting animations, I can taste it. I only have this final hurdle to overcome and I need every ounce of your expertise, Daz to Unreal Community, to figure this conundrum out.

UE5 version: 5.4.4
Daz3D figure: Horse 3
Source animations: Horse AnimsetPro by Malbers Animations
IK Rig: SK_Horse_2 (AnimsetPro)
IK Rig: Horse01 (Daz3D)
IK Retargeter: Content Browser --> (right click) --> Animation --> Retargeting --> IK Retargeter [fresh and new]
Video link of problem: https://youtu.be/kCRtI0Id2Ao

After watching my video above, how can I correct my Horse 3's Pelvis (labeled "Bone" in the skeleton hierarchy) from not swaying back and forth in my IK Retargeter?

My source Horse animation's pelvis on the left is not swaying back and forth, but my Daz3D Horse 3's pelvis bone is and I do not know how to correct this.

Any insight will be very much appreciated!

Thank you!!

brooks.james

With the help of my Discord friends, we have found a solution involving the newer experimental plug-in Skeletal Mesh Editing Tools, which is found in UE5.3 and UE5.4.

Link to working bone animation: https://youtu.be/bpIxMpkRRzA

The solution is to add a new bone right after Horse 3's "Bone" bone but before/above the "waist" bone.

You can add this new bone in UE5 by enabling the Skeletal Mesh Editing Tools plug-in and restarting Unreal Engine, then opening up your skeletal mesh (with the pink underline) and selecting Edit Skeleton.

In my example screenshot above, this new bone is named "joint," and of course UE automatically placed it at the end of my skeleton tree at the bottom. So, I had to click on my new joint bone and drag it up manually so it stayed above the waist bone but directly below Daz3D's original Bone bone.

Then, I had to change my IK retargeting chains in Unreal Engine. One of the most significant discoveries made here is not to use anything that has "Retarget Root" assigned to any of your IK chains. Not too sure what I mean? Then please see my example screenshots below:

My Source Horse:

My Target Daz3D Horse 3:

Notice that my new "joint" bone is assigned to my Spine chain.

Here is my working Retargeted IK:

I have posted these pictures here if you too is experiencing any of these similar problems with your own quadruped animals from Daz3D. You can try following along with the above screenshots and hopefully have favorable results with your own retargeted 4-legged friends.

Cheers!

P.S. We need more awesome quadrupeds in the Daz3D Store!