You can retarget animation data from the joints of one skeleton (source) to the joints of another skeleton (target). The source skeleton is the skeleton from which you want to retarget its animation data, and the target skeleton is the skeleton to which you want to retarget the source’s animation.
Retargeting in Maya is based on the Autodesk HumanIK character solver. Once you have defined your character’s skeletal structure using the HumanIK, you can transfer animation between skeletons that have the same or different skeletal structures and proportions.
The HumanIK retargeting workflow provides a live retargeting process that replaces the retargeting solution in previous versions of Maya.