Makehuman - Blender - UDK

[Supersonic]

Hi folks!

I'm exporting Makehuman character to Blender via MHX addon, motion animate in Blender with the MH Mocap addon and export to UDK via FBX file, converting the file to the latest version with Autodesk FBX Converter first. Things work fantastic as long as I use the Makehuman Simple rig.

But if I use the Makehuman MHX rig everything works fine up until importing to UDK, which fails with the "Import failed" error. I can import that mesh as a static mesh to UDK, but I can't import it as a skeletal mesh. Must be something in the MHX skeleton that UDK importer doesn't like; I load that FBX file into FBX Converter and it appears to be fine. Maybe you could give me advice on what I could fine tune to make it work.

Would appreciate your help!

[Spoof]

I haven't looked at the MHX rig, but I suspect it contains a lot of control bones.

A general rule of thumb is that the rig should contain a hierarchy of bones specifically meant for export to UDK, and these bones should be marked as deformers (they directly influence vertex groups). Any other bones used as controllers, IK targets and mechanics should have the deform flag turned off to distinguish them from the actual bones meant to be used in UDK.

When exporting to FBX ensure that "Only Deform Bones" is ticked, and the control bones should then be culled from export, leaving just the intended mesh-deforming bones. Note: animations using control bones will automatically bake down to the deformers on export, so you can animate with just IK targets and everything will still work.

However, there are some potential problems. If a control bone is the parent of a deformer then it will still get exported regardless of its deform setting, and for this reason I favour building the base skeleton hierarchy as a separate chain to the controllers. I think Rigify has this problem because it interleaves controllers with the deformers, but I haven't used it much.

It may also be that you're simply exporting too many bones if they're all being exported.

You can check the link in my sig for more info.

[Supersonic]

Thank you, Spoof. Yes, the MHX rig contains a lot of control bones for sure. I can't tell you off the top of my head if they are interleaved or not with the deformers, I only remember deform flags of the deform and control bones are ticked correctly, and there are under 75 deform bones, so shouldn't be too many bones. Will play with the rig tomorrow, see if I can get it into the UDK.

I actually read your posts before on blender/udk subjects, very helpful

[vblanco]

I did a tutorial about that, complete and everything with photos and a customized rigify. Got no responses and about 30 views
Dont even try to use MHX rig, its for animation, not games, simple rig can work, but the best is to just rig it with rigify, i can send you the Game-ready rigify if you want.

[Supersonic]

Oh yeah, vblanco, I found your thread "Character and animation FBX pipeline in blender" with the link to the game-ready rigify. But I use the MH Mocap addon (from Makehuman authors) for motion-capture animation import to Blender, and that addon does not support Rigify for target rigs. It does support Makehuman MHX and Simple rigs, this is the reason I'm trying to make MHX rig work.

[vblanco]

ok, but keep in mind that the normal Mh skeleton is impossible for games, simple rig should work, but it has not that amount of controls and ik stuff, i recommend you to use rigify and attach the simple mocap rig to it, so you can bake the anim from one rig to the other

[Supersonic]

Got the MHX rig into UDK but it's ugly, not for games indeed. In case you are interested:
1. Blender 2.62 FBX exporter does not have "Only deform bones" option, so the reason UDK couldn't import the rig was too many bones in it.
2. Blender 2.65 FBX exporter does have "Only deform bones" option, so I exported the rig from it and it imported fine into UDK, with shapekeys (morph targets) from Makehuman too. I didn't try the animations cause the skeleton is awful, no point using it in games, like vblanco said.
3. Makehuman addons I need seem to have been tested with Blender 2.62. MH Lipsync and expressions are disabled in 2.65.
4. I'm also going to take the character to FaceFX for face animations and I need MH lipsync and expressions for that purpose, therefore I need Blender 2.62.
5. MH Simple rig is fine for UDK but it's bad for animation tweaking in Blender after I import motion-capture, cause the rig doesn't have any control bones.

i recommend you to use rigify and attach the simple mocap rig to it, so you can bake the anim from one rig to the other

Could you please detail on this a little bit, how would I attach the simple rig to the rigify and if it's easy to reuse when importing new motions for new characters that come to Blender with the Simple rig from Makehuman?