hey everybody in this tutorial I rent
I'm going to introduce you to motion
retargeting so we're going to talk about
the basic UI setup we're gonna talk
about what motion retargeting is how it
allows for stable performance despite
different character scales it allows you
to apply them animation to characters
with different proportions and have the
same solid result we're going to talk
about retargeting limbs and matching
motion boom position and all that fun
stuff in just a moment here okay so on
the screen we have my three helpers that
are gonna demonstrate some of this stuff
here we have Ted on the Left you can
find him under actor character g3 360
and g3 360 human and he's down here at
the bottom
Ted s a 45-degree angle facing Ted there
s two is ninety degrees facing okay and
Martha is up here and the third guy is a
we'll call him Frank okay Frank is from
a Content pack on the content store from
an artist called Frank's pencil and
office workers right here employee
number two again this is for separate
purchase on the content store okay so
what we're gonna do is we're going to
take a look at first at these characters
bone structures to do that I'm gonna
apply an animation first so we're gonna
go to animation here go to motion and
we're going to add g3 human Turner's
male and side-facing motions and there's
a punch combo here somewhere
you know I'll just apply it to all of
our characters apply it to Ted you see
this is cool-looking punch combo go back
to frame 1 here apply it to Martha and
then we're gonna sieve it out we're
gonna save it up and fly through our
third character Frank here okay so you
can see despite the vast difference in
scales between these two characters we
have accurate reach motion retargeting
on both of them now I'm gonna press f3
to go into my timeline here and I'm
going to open up the motion track if we
have object related track selected this
option right here we can select any
character and it will open up that
character's tracks and if we open up the
motion track here you can see we have a
yellow motion clip for called punch the
yellow means it contains motion
retargeting data okay so to do this
let's take let's take a look first at
our character scale we're gonna save our
characters or save our motion so I'm
gonna take my project link slider here
all the way down so we can see it up
here in the timeline here at the bottom
yeah
you can more accurately place it by
clicking in here and we'll just place it
for the duration of our clip so what I'm
going to do is I'm going to save this
motion out from Ted okay if your project
length is only the same length as your
as your clip there it's only going to
save that amount of animation data okay
so if I wanted to save the entire
animation for the entire project
up until this point I can go to my
animation tab with a custom here and
emotions I'll just use this plus key
okay and we'll call this something like
punch combo punch combo you can see a
little Ted there in the in the thumbnail
okay and then we can apply this punch
combo to Frank who has again vastly
different proportions but we'll get the
same accurate results okay no foot
sliding anything like that we're all
good for all the characters okay so this
is all done through the magic of motion
retargeting okay let's take a look at
our character scales really quick
their main bones if we select them we go
to the 2d motion key editor I'll just
close down the timeline for now you can
see Ted has you know fairly short stubby
legs if we click on Martha she has long
slender legs okay this is gonna be
important and Frank over here has you
know fairly a long torso but his legs
are you know proportionally a bit
shorter than the rest of his body okay
so three separate characters three
totally different proportions but the
motion retargeting allows us to get
accurate results for all of them okay
the same motion can be applied without
foot sliding or anything so this is a
huge improvement okay let's close this
down for now and what I'm gonna do now
is I'm going to apply a different
animation to my characters this is gonna
this is called a root motion where our
characters are actually gonna change
position so to do that I'm gonna go here
to animation and template and turn
there's male side facing motion there's
a walking one down here like a sneaky
walk walking sneaky okay now use the one
there's there's two lines behind it at
the character walking here on the icon
because that's going to be the the root
motion this indicates the character is
actually changing their transform
position and supposed apply it to I'm
just a Ted over here and I'm gonna apply
it to Martha you can see Martha will
overtake Ted in just a couple of steps
and we'll talk about why that is in just
a moment
and we'll apply it to two Frank here as
well okay so get these characters like
just you know sneaking along here and
let's take a look at the motion boom
retargeting so I'm gonna select uh
Martha here we'll press f3 and go into
the timeline and I'm gonna just go ahead
and go to the motion track here and
extend my project length up to the
length of this clip here just like this
okay let's take a look at the motion
retargeting panel now there's a few
different ways you can access this the
easiest way is probably just to double
click through your your motion clip
it'll pop up right here you can see
motion retargeting you can also
right-click on your motion clip and
select motion retargeting from the
bottom here ok you can also right-click
on your character and select retargeting
settings from your character alright and
you can also go up here into edit and
motion clip and motion retargeting okay
and that will open it up as well now
you'll see the characters will well
Martha right now has a big blue boned
kind of superimposed over her character
sprites this is called the motion
retargeting poem the motion bill okay
and there's purple points here on the
ends those are the end effectors for
your character and that's what basically
drives your anime animation we use end
effectors you know we talked about end
effectors more in different tutorials
they're essentially used to kind of just
constrain your character's feet nor her
hands in certain areas and those are
indicated by the magenta points right
here okay you can see that her motion
bone is quite large okay
even at the top part here it's larger
beyond her her arms let's take a look at
Ted's motion bone okay so if we select
Ted I'll just go right click and
retarget settings there notice his
motion bone is pretty small and puny
okay and that's because his legs are
actually pretty short and stubby if
there's a little low a smaller distance
between your character's feet and and
the hip the motion bone won't scale is
large alright let's take a look at
Frank's as guys comparison here as well
so if we go Frank and do the same thing
here you know so Frank's is you know
it's larger but not quite as large as
Martha's and again that's because the
motion bone scale is proportionally to
the distance between your character's
feet and the hips because
most motions are gonna be foot based and
you'll knows that for 99% of motions
you're gonna have the left foot left toe
the right foot and right till all
checked okay and the lines of motion
bone recheck we'll talk more about this
a little bit later on but for characters
with like longer feet to hip ratio I
guess you're gonna have a larger motion
bone it's gonna mostly take over your
character sprites if they're you know
disproportional like like most of these
characters aren't that's why I'm
choosing them now retargeting needs a
stable motion source if you export from
a previous version prior to CrazyTalk
animator three point three with foot
sliding unfortunately there's no
solution for this but you need a steal a
motion source so all of the motions that
are created after that in cartoon
animator for will have the ability for
motion retargeting they will contain
motion bone data and again to find out
if they do you can click up just look
like you look at your clip there and you
can see that it's yellow and that means
it contains the motion going data okay
let's take a look at modifying at a
simple example of a line to motion bone
pose okay so I'm gonna use that Ted for
this or not Ted Fred Frank Frank that's
his name right Frank for this one okay
you just named him arbitrarily there and
I'm gonna go take Frank into composer
mode here okay so in composer mode I'll
just go ahead and continue don't worry
about that I'm going to modify Ted's or
Frank's original poster I guess he just
looks like it Ted anyways we're gonna go
ahead and edit the pose now generally
your side facing characters will have
this a pose okay where their arms are at
a 45 degree angle facing downwards if we
edit pose and say that Ted's natura or
Frank's natural state here is a up here
like this
you like to walk around with his arms up
all the time that's that's fun okay
we'll just go ahead and deselect edit
post and see what happens if we go back
to our stage mode here and you can see
right now if we double click on that
motion track clip right there we
deselect align to motion bone post
what's gonna happen is Ted's arms or
Frank's arms rather are gonna be up
there okay so we're not aligning to the
motion bone okay
now the the clip do the walking forward
the sneaky sneaky walk clip that we
applied it
already has the stable motion source but
if we take off that align to motion bone
pose our characters gonna you know have
arms that go up wildly like this which
is kind of weird
a lot of people don't a lot like that I
believe but if we select Alliance
emotion bone pose that's going to
basically align our character his
positions to the motion bone okay you
can see a more accurate result so
regardless of your character's initial
pose what the line to motion both
aligned to motion bone pose option here
can do is align your character to that
motion bone and get better results more
accurate results okay now I think that's
only need to Frank and Ted for here
I finally got their names right looking
that delete Frank there and delete Ted
and let's focus on the motion
retargeting for Martha here okay because
Martha is very unique in that her her
leg to foot to hip ratio there is quite
long so can let's right-click her go to
retargeting settings just a little bit
about the UI as well if you want to
change any of your bone settings you can
go up here to the bone display you can
choose to show or hide your motion bone
you can change the color pink maybe okay
you can I'll just take it back to blue
you can change the size of your bones if
you want to have really large and easy
to see motion bone points you can change
with just 100 from 70 and a passive you
pretty straightforward stuff to change
it to like 20 or whatever depending on
how much you want to see your motion
bone okay I'll just leave it at the
default settings here and let's continue
on now like I said earlier most motions
are gonna be foot based so in general
the foot your foot boxes are always
gonna be checked like left foot left toe
right foot right toe okay let's see what
happens if we deselect one of those
let's deselect the right foot and the
right toe the most it right away they'll
kind of like really mess up the other
sprite there and it'll kind of be all
crunched up so what's gonna happen here
take a look at when we take that step
it's gonna float like between these
frames here we're gonna float up and
down okay you see our character kind of
slide up and down this position right
here on her on her foot let's zoom in on
it really quick so you can see a bit
better so you can see the foot will move
up and down like this
obviously unless her foot is kind of
going into the ground we don't want that
you know up and down motion okay so what
we want to do is we want to make sure
that we select retargeting for the right
foot and the right toe okay and that's
going to put it into an accurate
position and as a result you're gonna
see a solid step on the ground and no
floating okay and that's exactly what we
want we're using those end effectors to
kind of just drive our character's foot
sprites into the correct position okay
using that motion bone data now because
there's so many different types of
characters and so many different types
of emotions this isn't a universal rule
for all motions I'm going to show you an
example here I'm gonna bring in another
character actor g3 360 here in human
actually let's go to g3 here this human
here and we're going to use the elastic
female side facing right here okay let's
bring her in and I'm going to apply
running motion to her okay let's go to
that animation motion g3 human is
Turner's meal and there's side facing
there's a run run why are we here okay
so this time we're going to use run loop
okay notice there's no lines behind the
character on the icon here so it's going
to be a stationary static motion now for
this one if I let's go to our motion
track here you can see the clip here
okay can yellow again so it contains the
emotion bone retargeting data if we go
into our motion retargeting panel here
notice that for this particular one we
don't have left toe and right toe
selected okay and that's because on this
particular character if we take if we
pay close attention to her feet with
your feet are positioned here everything
looks fine okay the retargeting is
working as planned okay and we don't see
any errors but if we go to like a frame
like this for example and let's go ahead
and try to click on left toe of right
toe rather where is it down here there
we go
so we click on right tall notice that
the the motion boom will kind of in this
case it'll kind of squish the foot up a
little bit and the result isn't as good
so this is an example of you know one
particular combination where you may not
want to have the the toes
okay because it'll look like it's kind
of squashing the foot spray right there
this one over here and that's not the
result that we want to go for so if we
you know take it like this and we
deselect that right toe
we're gonna have a better result just
like this okay the easier to see are
just not as not as stretched or not kind
of squished all all together and
everything like that so that's basically
an example of when you may not want to
have the toe retargeting on okay so
let's go ahead just delete this
character and we're just part that she's
trying to sneak away so the last thing I
want to talk about here is hand
retargeting and forehand retargeting I'm
going to apply a different motion to a
Martha here we're gonna go aside facing
as well okay Turner's side facing for
male and there is a climb Pole
alright this one right here climb Pole
there we go
now again we're just gonna apply the
second loop motion here alright pretty
easy let's just bring our project link
slider to the correct position here okay
so let's actually get up bringing us
something a prop here as a reference and
we did props a basic iconically we have
a line in here somewhere there we go so
we can drag that in and let's rotate it
to 30 degrees or not 30 degrees 270 will
do or else 90 degrees this Internet
value of 270 here there we go okay in
this position this correctly right over
here and I'm going to right click on it
and remove object animation so we're not
we don't have it moving it'll be added
again at frame 33 32 here okay so here's
our character climbing this pole now
what we want to do is if you take a look
at our hand position here the motion
clip here oops if you take a look at her
hand position like one's kind of way
over there her seems like her left hand
is okay but her right hand is guy he's
crowning something else okay so
obviously not an ideal scenario we want
both hands to be positioned along the
line where the pole would be okay so
what I'm gonna do is you know again go
into the motion retargeting now let's
take a look at the retargeting for the
hands now for the hands what we can do
is select the left hand
okay if we select the left hand it'll be
like way over there we can select the
right hand and it'll be way over here so
you're wondering like you know why
what's the deal here
we want to do here is we want to make
sure the left hand is it a value of 100
okay so it's 100% accurate as to where
the the end effector is here on the
wrist
okay and the right hand the same thing
so one over your like a hundred just
like this okay and now you're gonna see
accurate positioning of those hands in
relation to the position of the motion
bones so right there okay so all we had
to all we have to do is basically just
kind of reposition that pull maybe a
little bit to the to the right here just
like the pull here and you just press
our right arrow key to move it over a
little bit and get into that position
there and again just right click remove
animation and there we go okay so
that'll be our character climbing the
pole with the hands in the correct
position and that's what we're going for
okay now one thing I wanted to mention
is well here let's reapply that
animation because that's the the micro
that's applying a motion bone scale for
the individual hands we can do it for
the entire body as well and to do that
let's just apply that same motion that
sneaky walk okay here we go when we get
rid of the pole here since you don't
need that anymore now for the sneaky
walk again we'll just expand that length
of our project slider there okay so what
we can do is if we go into the
retargeting settings here we can scale
the entire bone itself and what what
happens when we scale the entire bone is
if we take it down to like say 60 for
example and press Enter
you're gonna see the bone get a lot
smaller but it's still gonna be centered
on the character's hips it's just that
the legs are now gonna be a lot shorter
on the motion bone and the result that's
gonna have on our character's movement
is she's gonna take smaller steps okay
so you can notice that now she's just
taking smaller steps which was maybe a
bit more appropriate for someone in high
heels doing this motion
we can you take it even smaller so we
can do something like like 30 for
example okay and I'll have our carry our
motion will be super small again
centered on the hip again but you'll see
that you just kind of very small steps
we can take that up the opposite
direction as well to like maybe 120 okay
now generally is not recommended it's
gonna you know scale your motion bone
way up and you'll see that you know
certain results like this with the ankle
there it's looks like she's breaking her
ankle or she's walking okay so you know
be careful with the scale that you that
you use for your motion bone but
definitely you can scale down a lot of
motions and have them take smaller steps
or have more miniscule movements as
compared to the original motion itself
let's just take it back down to a
hundred there there we go and this is
the result that we want okay so that's
really about all there is to it guys
that's kind of scaling different parts
scaling the hands retargeting the hands
scaling the entire character motion bone
and that's the basics of the motion bone
in cartoon animator for so hopefully you
enjoyed hopefully you learned a lot in
this tutorial here make sure you check
out our forums over at forum volusion
calm and all the other videos on our
youtube channel as well as our learning
center on the product page for a cartoon
animator for and I hope to see you in
the next video