Retarget animation from one character to another

Using HumanIK, you can retarget animations from one character to another. This is useful for sharing common animations like walk cycles.

To start, open the scene for the lesson.

In Maya, open the scene fight.mb.

This file can be found in the GettingStarted2020LessonData\HumanIK directory that you set as your Maya project.

A character named Sven appears in the Maya scene. Sven will be our target character.

Set up a source character

1. Select Skeleton > HumanIK to open the Character Controls window.
2. Under Character, change the selection from Character1 to None. The Start pane will appear.
3. In the Import Samples section of the Start pane, click Import Animation Example.

4. This loads the Dummy_Fight character into your scene.

5. Close the Visor window and zoom out in the workspace (if necessary) until you can see the Dummy_Fight character in the scene.

   

6. Select > Rename Character and rename the character as FightSource.
7. Open the Definition tab and note that the FightSource character already has a valid skeleton definition.

Retarget from the source to the target character

To retarget from the source character to the target character

1. In the Character Controls, select the target character (Character1) from the Character menu.
2. Select the source character (FightSource) from the Source menu.

   The target character snaps to match the position of the source character, and retargeting controls appear in the Controls tab.

   To see the retargeted result clearly, Character1 needs to be offset from FightSource.

3. With Character1 selected as the current character, click the Reference cell in the Definition tab.
4. Use the move tool to move the model so that the two characters are separated.

   

5. Play back the animation to view the retargeting result.

In the next section you learn how to adjust the retargeted animation to account for size discrepancies between your source and target characters.