Copy animation from one character to another

[forton]

I'm looking for a way to copy animation between two characters, ideally I would like to make a script that looks for the same objectnames in the two characters and copies the animation from one to the other (old version to a newer version).
Working with external references to be able to finetune and adding to the charactermodel doesn't do the job, scenes are crashing on loading etc.

So what I'm asking here, is there a good way to do this with existing tools or do I have to cook something of my own?
Can I use actions for this? The 2 characters have custom facerigs and are not exactly the same.

Cheers, Wim

[EricTRocks]

You should look at using MOTOR. You do a Rig to Rig transfer I believe and it compensates for different bone lengths.

[mirkoj]

if characters are built on top of same rig, meaning rig is identical and only geo mesh is different than you can easily store action and transfer to another character.
for example if you have two characters rigged both with GEAR or Species then no problem at all.
Can you give a bit more details on rigs?

[forton]

The rigs are basically the same, motor seems to expect a predefined set of controls but I want to use my own custom controls (including my facial animation etc.), I can't find a good way in the help files to copy the animation on all these controls.
But I found my own way to do my stuff with this little script I made:
Just create a group in your characters with all the controls, so you can them select easily, select the controls on the target, then run this:

Code: Select all

#couldn't add these to a group
Application.CopyAnimation("Vampire.RHand.Rhand_sliders")
Application.PasteAnimation("Vampire1.RHand.Rhand_sliders")

Application.CopyAnimation("Vampire.LHand.Lhand_sliders")
Application.PasteAnimation("Vampire1.LHand.Lhand_sliders")

#the loop 
oAllObjects = Application.Selection
for oObject_A in oAllObjects:
	oA_fullname = oObject_A.FullName
	oB_fullname = oA_fullname.replace("Vampire1", "Vampire")
	Application.CopyAnimation(oB_fullname)
	Application.PasteAnimation(oA_fullname)

Vampire is the animated character, vampire1 is the new version where I want to copy the animation to.
I know I have to study actions and motor much more, but this does the job for the moment.

Thanks, Wim

[forton]

But maybe someone can answer this:
I understand how to transfer animation from one hierarchy to another with an action, but how do you turn this action back into normal keys on the new rig?

[mirkoj]

no need for animation clip at all.
there select whole rig hierarchy and under Animate -> Store there are couple option, try for example with Keyable Parameters - All sources.
That will store all key able parameters animations under that model Mixer -> Sources-> Actions if I remember correctly.
Turn off remove keyframes when storying in that box.

Then you can easily in explorer drag and drop that stored action from that mixer to mixer in another model, or even under Animate -> Import/Export -? Export action you export that to file, selet your other model and then import that action.
After that just find that action under 2nd model Mixer and Animate -> Apply -> Action it will put action and al keyframes to your new model...


Uf does sound a bit confusing but let me know if you have problems I can screen grab process or something.

[mrmostafa]

Hi 3D artists,

I really like to know how to use this too, and i will be really glad if somone can link a clip from somwhere or make it by him self and add it on youtube, just to show that it works.
I am making 3 frogs sing and dance, and i wanna do a fast job then working on the animation on each frog at the time.

Alex

[mirkoj]

See if this is what you need, if this helps you at all.

[mirkoj]

embading problem and in a big hurry check it out here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-LglRyfFUQ&feature=youtu.be

sorry
gotta run

Moderator edit: embedded version below - HB

[forton]

Thanks

That's a very good and straightforward demo.
I think many people are confused with the amount of choices there are for storing actions!