The joy of transferring animations
Although it is not a task that is usually foreseen, transferring animation between rigs can be a very significant step to integrating animation into the game build. Usually animation transfers are done due to the fact the animated rig that is either has more capabilities or does not meet the requirements for export. In our case this was the latter, the rig that was animated was constructed before a proper pipeline was created for rigs and animation.
I have a few pictures of the steps that I took in transferring animations to give you, the reader, a glimpse into this tedious task.
there are two rigs and meshs in the scene both in bind pose
As scene in the picture to the right, The are two rigs, each with a mesh attached in the scene. The rig for export will be parent constrained to the animated rig. The parent constrains allow the constrained rig to follow the movements of the other.
The process is broken down to constraining each joint to its counterpart on the opposing rig. A parent constraint allows the ‘child’ to follow all the actions of its ‘parent’ without there being a direct parent-child relationship. I have found that the majority of the work in this process in done in the outline, due to ease of joint selection.
In this picture you can see the outliner, and how joints are selected, Ctrl + selecting the joints that need to be constrained is much easier than attempting to select the joints in 3d space when both rigs are directly on top of each other.
If I were to play the animation midway through this process it would can cause complications that create a difficult work around to fix these complications.
This image shows just that. That the joints that have not been constrained float out on their own. If this happens the constraints involving those joints must be deleted, both rigs set to bind pose, and re-constrained.
All and all, transferring animations between rigs is a tedious process that make take a few times to become experienced with, but the work process speeds up over time. Thanks to this process, it has been possible that animations done by our teams animator did not have to be re-done and can be implemented into our Game Build successfully.
