Animation Editor: Bone Transform set by Numbers not working properly

I’ve done a couple of Animation changes in 4.17 and earlier versions but in 4.18 I get a strange behaviour when trying to change the Hip bones location by entering the numbers in the details panel in the animation editor.

When I move the bone in the viewport by hand, everything works as intended but by entering one number (location X) all other numbers (location Y and Z) changes too, as they try to compensate to something (perhaps to the root bone?)

Is this intended? Is it a bug? or am I doing something wrong?

Screenshot 1: Entered the number 10 in Location X:

Screenshot 2: Pressed enter and clicked in Location Y: (Location X changes from 10 to 5.8xx)

Hi,

I’ve taken a look at what you’ve described above and see the results you are speaking of. What are you trying to accomplish with this/what is the use case? If you are trying to transform certain bones, I would recommend doing it in a similar method using Blueprints as this documentation displays.

-Thank you

Hi,

Due to how long this thread has remained inactive, I will be closing it out. If you have any other questions regarding the issue above, feel free to reopen it.

-Thank you

Sorry for the late reply. I have a semi complicated situation. Imported a Mixamo character, made with the old Fuse software. The skeleton has no root bone, just the hips one. I also imported several animations from Mixamo. Some of them don’t play “in place” (meaning the hips bone moves away from its start location.) Then I used Mixamo Retargeting Plugin to retarget said skeleton to the ue4 maniquen, which adds a new root bone as well. This disallows me to use root motion, because the root bone stays in place, while the hips bone moves. I tried to compensate that problem with an aditive layer track inside the animation and some keys so the animation looks smooth again when played in loop (its mainly the walking animation). I was trying to set the bone translation manually by numbers, so the bone, at the end of the animation, is in the exact same place as in the first frame. I hope, this is understandable. sorry for the bad english!

I’m not sure if I can solve this with Bone Translation in the BP because I think I need a curve and not just a fix translation for the whole animation. Or I’ll have to use anim notifies or something like that, to control the alpha of the BP Bone Translation over time. I’ll have a lok a it or try to find a better solution (or maybe better animations). Thank you for your help!

Hi,

Having a root bone is necessary for characters in Unreal, due to this is how it is used to find the location of the character as well as for the root motion. If you can link here any plugins/software that is third party that you may be using and I can take a look at it. However, we do not support certain third party plugins. I can also take a look a the character itself if you post it here(the FBX or how you have it set up in engine is fine so I can see the results you are getting). If you can give me some screenshots of what you are seeing on your end that will also be helpful. This way I know what result I am looking for since I have more information to work with.

-Thank you

Hi,

A root bone is necessary due to this is how Unreal finds the location etc. of the character. If you can post links to what plugins/software you are using, your project/character, and a screenshot of the results you are seeing, I can take a better look at the issue since I have some more information to work with now. I don’t believe notifies would really help you in this case, but I’m not sure of what type of setup you have in mind. It sounds like this issue is occurring due to how the root bone is set up(I would need to see the layout of the skeleton) or due to the retargeting.

-Thank you

Hi there

I’m using the Plugin from the Marketplace [“Mixamo Animation Retargeting”][1]

Here is the Skeletal Mesh including an Animation: [Jenny_Walking_notInPlace.fbx][2]

The workflow is like this:

  • Importing Skeletal Mesh from Mixamo with Hips bone as root bone.

  • Import Animation which plays not “in place”

  • Retarget Skeleton to UE4 Manequin to use Animations from UE4 too. This adds the missing Root bone as the main root (Parent of Hips bone). Now in the Animation, the Root bone stays in place, while the Hips bone moves along the Y axis.

  • fortunately we can add layer tracks for the Hips bone. This needs some tweaking and aditional keys but in the end, the first and last frame should be the same, so I try to enter the transform numbers from the first frame in the key of the last frame which ends in the above described problem.

Found some better animations that play in place so I don’t need to transform bones anymore. I also noticed, that the numbers in the layer track don’t fit the numbers in the details panel. I guess some are in “world location” and some are in “local bone space”. I believe this is why the number changes after entering them in the details panel.

Since no one else was interested in this thread. lets close it. thanks