RETARGETING SUPPORT

I’m very pleased to announce that the feature that was originally supposed to be left out from ACS3 development cycle - retargeting support, will now be included (I updated roadmap accordingly)!

Feedback from some of You made me reconsider the original decision regarding this feature. I gave it a good thought and it appeared that the new ACS3 architecture makes the implementation a bit less troublesome than I anticipated.

Overall, retargeting workflow will be similar to the one from ACS2. There will be a dedicated biped rig preset that you will have to use. Just like in ACS2, you will be able to animate over the retargeted motion using both FK and IK controllers.

That being said, there will also be improvements over ACS2 implementation. With seamless IK/FK switching it will be very easy to convert FK poses to IK, to fix legs floating over the ground for example. ACS3 retargeting skeleton includes fingers so retargeting motions with fingers will be supported. Of course, the default retargeting biped rig can be enhanced with extra modules just like any other ACS3 rig.

The example Bolo animation below is made using motion clip from Mixamo. On top of the raw, retargeted FK motion there are adjustments made using ACS3 control rig. The main improvement is converting legs motion to IK whenever legs touch the ground to avoid any sliding that is pretty much guaranteed with raw motion capture output. I also did a few small adjustments to arms and fingers using FK controllers.

The 2nd video shows the process of rigging Bolo, retargeting a motion, doing a few manual tweaks (similar to the ones that were done to the kick animation) and exporting completed setup to Unity. Approximately 7 minutes of work is compressed to 60 seconds.

I am working towards releasing retargeting support with the next ACS3 Early Access build.