This plugin contains retargeting assets for converting animation output from RADiCAL Studio to an Unreal Engine editor session. It will receive data from a local RADiCAL Studio session, either on the same computer or over the local network.
To install, download the latest release for your engine version from the Releases section. Unzip to your project /Plugins or engine Marketplace folder, then enable the plugin in your project.
After starting the Live Link stream from Radical Studio, open the UE4 editor and go to Window -> Live Link. Go to Source -> Message Bus Source -> select the RadLiveLink source. You can now close this window.
We have provided two mannequins, one with the Epic skeleton and the other for the Radical skeleton. The Radical skeleton can be used as ground-truth for verifying animation data.
The Live Link data can be previewed inside the Skeleton, Skeletal Mesh, or Animation Blueprint windows for a given skeletal asset.
On the right side, go to Preview Scene Settings, under Animation, change the Preview Controller to Live Link Preview Controller. Then, change the Live Link Subject Name to RadicalPose.
For Retarget Asset, select the corresponding Remap Asset file for that skeleton. For example, for the Radical mannequin, choose the RadToRadRemap asset. For an Epic skeleton (either the provided Epic mannequin, or your project-specific character), choose the BP_RadToEpicRemapAsset. Assuming the target character uses an Epic skeleton, it should look as follows:
To apply the incoming animation data to the characters in the scene, go to the AnimBP for the character and create a Live Link Pose node. Select the a) Live Link Subject Name and b) the Retarget Asset, like so:
Because of the difference between the RADiCAL skeleton (which defaults to a T pose) and the Unreal skeleton (which defaults to an A pose) we have to apply some rotations at the shoulder. Refer to the AnimBP_EpicGames_Mannequin AnimGraph and copy these transform nodes to your character:
To account for some of the differences between the Radical Studio coordinate frame and Unreal, we have flipped the incoming LiveLink data's rotation and position axes. If you want to delve into the source C++, you can inspect the conversions at the RadicalLiveLinkRemapAssetBase class and its child classes. We expect that other skeletons will require different rotation adjustments, including swapping axes. We exposed three overridable methods to implement the root bone position, root bone rotation, and non-root bone rotation conversions. Please note that the AI output in Radical Studio uses the hip bone as a root, so position data should be mapped to the hips (or pelvis) in the target skeleton.