IK Retargeting with HEAT

Easily use Unreal Engine's IK retargeter with HEAT.

Last updated 4 months ago

UNREAL ENGINE 5 IK RIG AND RETARGETER

After installing and activating the HEAT plug-in to your current UE project you will have access to a custom IK Rig for our in-house avatar, T69H, as well as a custom IK retargeter built between T69H and Unreal 5 Manny.

Using these assets you can easily retarget any HEAT animation to UE5 Manny or Quinn with IK enabled bones eliminating any possibly feet sliding. You can also build your an IK rig and retargeter for your own user model and instantly IK retarget any HEAT animation from T69H to your own character.

Below is the official Unreal Engine 5 documentation on building an IK rig and retargeter:

IK RETARGETING YOUR OWN USER MODEL

Once you have built your own IK Rig asset for your user model as described in the guide above you can easily build an IK retargeter between T69H and your own model to IK retarget any HEAT animation.

In the content browser right click and navigate to and select 'Animation -> Retargeting -> IK Retargeter'.
Name the newly created IK Retargeter asset and open it by double clicking.
In the 'Target IK Rig Asset' section select the IK Rig of your custom character.
Just below, in the section 'Target Mesh Offset', it is very helpful to offset your target character on the X axis by increasing the number in the first field. This will make it so the characters you are retargeting with will not be overlapped.
As described in the Unreal Engine guide above match all of the bone chains under the 'Source Chain' section to the corresponding 'Target Chain'.

Now any animation that you have pulled into your project from the HEAT plug-in onto the T69H character can be immediately retargeted to your custom character.

Drag and drop any animation from HEAT into your scene with T69H selected in the 'Import As:' drop down field.
Open the IK Retargeter asset that you created in the Content Browser.
In the lower right side of the IK Retargeter asset window you will see the 'Asset Browser'. Select it to see all of the animations you have pulled in from HEAT so far.
Select any animation and see how it is immediately retargeted to your character.

UNREAL ENGINE 5 IK RIG AND RETARGETER

Below is the official Unreal Engine 5 documentation on building an IK rig and retargeter:

If you would like to reference the IK rig or IK retargeter that we include with HEAT it can be found in the content browser file path 'All -> Engine -> Plugins -> HEAT Content -> IK'. If you cannot see the 'Engine' folder in the content browser open the 'Settings' button () in the upper right corner of the Content Browser and select the option 'Show Engine Content'.

IK RETARGETING YOUR OWN USER MODEL

Once you have built your own IK Rig asset for your user model as described in the guide above you can easily build an IK retargeter between T69H and your own model to IK retarget any HEAT animation.

In the content browser right click and navigate to and select 'Animation -> Retargeting -> IK Retargeter'.
Name the newly created IK Retargeter asset and open it by double clicking.
In the 'Source IK Rig Asset' section select the 'T69H_v20_IK_rig' asset ().
In the 'Target IK Rig Asset' section select the IK Rig of your custom character.
Just below, in the section 'Target Mesh Offset', it is very helpful to offset your target character on the X axis by increasing the number in the first field. This will make it so the characters you are retargeting with will not be overlapped.
As described in the Unreal Engine guide above match all of the bone chains under the 'Source Chain' section to the corresponding 'Target Chain'.
Click the 'Save' button () in the upper left hand corner of the asset window.

Now any animation that you have pulled into your project from the HEAT plug-in onto the T69H character can be immediately retargeted to your custom character.

Drag and drop any animation from HEAT into your scene with T69H selected in the 'Import As:' drop down field.
Open the IK Retargeter asset that you created in the Content Browser.
In the lower right side of the IK Retargeter asset window you will see the 'Asset Browser'. Select it to see all of the animations you have pulled in from HEAT so far.
Select any animation and see how it is immediately retargeted to your character.
Click the button at the top of the asset browser labeled 'Export Selected Animations' () to easily export the newly retargeted animation as an FBX file.