Unreal Engine Crowd Setup using vertex animation textures
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- Опубліковано 29 січ 2022
- This is a tutorial video on how to make a simple but high performing crowd system inside of Unreal Engine using the open sourced Vertex Animation Toolkit here: github.com/Rexocrates/Vertex_...
Example project here:
github.com/Rexocrates/VAT_Exa...
Using this and Mixamo characters/anims, you can get a crowd going and it will cost you nothing
This is a very cool technique to leverage your gpu to add complex motion to static meshes all by storing the motion data in textures
Also covered is how to make instanced static meshes and add variation across them using materials
#unrealengine #crowdsystem
This is great, I'm going to need this at some point for sure. Thanks for the new drop of videos and great work here as always!
ua-cam.com/video/u8nCp0oJzmw/v-deo.html this has already been done
@@bgdcofficial1256 Nah, two different things - You're looking to sell some fish. He's offering fishing lessons. Nice fish tho, keep up the great work.
Dude !, thankyou SO much for this tutorial , I was getting stuck with the enclosed documentation, getting this working is a massive step forward for populating my game. A very chilled and clear tutorial. Thanks
Glad it helped!
Really interesting chalk and talk tut - thanks for sharing the methodology. new sub
This is great tutorials. I was looking for this types of solution.
great tutorial, thank u very much. u explained evrything clearly
nice! Many thanks for this - will definitely give it a go on my next project! Subbed
just what i needed :D thank you so much
Great man! thanks, excelent explanation. You have a new suscriptor here! =)
I searched for a VAT plugin in the Epic Marketplace but did not find anything. Was going to write one. Now I have checked out this tool and it's great. But I need to extend it because I want to have static meshes attached to sockets and bones.
Exactly what I'm looking for! Autosub!
Already been done ua-cam.com/video/u8nCp0oJzmw/v-deo.html
This looks great, thanks for sharing
is it for game or can we render this as well ?
i download the plugin and open it but the animation is not showing like on 6:00, how can i make them work ? thanks
Great tutorial, you earned a sub, keep doing this awesome work. Everything went great on my end, but whenever I apply the instanced material it expodes my character. Some animation is being played but it totally deforming the mesh like venom(being destroyed by sound xD ) Is there anything that I am missing?
Yes it sounds like you missed something. This happened to me too initially. In my case it was the MaxValue param on the data object, I forgot to set this. Dont give up, You can get it going
@@TrashPraxis @Trash Praxis I actually checked that value, it isnt the issue. I am noticing some axis issue aswell. Although I am using same mizamo animations. I am gald that you replied. Will you be kind enough to help me a little more. may be to diagnose the issue? Do you have time for that? If not its totally understandable. thanks :)
There is not much more I can do for you like this. Try starting again
Does anyone know how the new AnimationToTexture plugIn in UE5, based on this by Epic, runs? I can't find the bake animation icon (or similar)? Everything else matches up fairly well?
Thanks for the vid, Have you figured out the reason for the choppieness yet?
Yes, see the pinned comment. On the data asset, toggle on 'use power of two'
How to do this in 5.3 With the new Plugin? Cannot seem to get array of different instances with random anims playing.
Hi, I realize this video is a couple of years old, but when I open the example project none of the meshes have their vertex animations and I get a "Failed to load /VertexAnimToolset/VertexAnimFunctions/DecodeVectorHDR.DecodeVectorHDR Referenced by BakedBoneAnimMat". I am still running 4.27 on the project i'm working on which is the same as yours in the video.
does this works in UnrealEngine 5.1 ?
Great tutorial
For some reason, everytime I 'Bake Anim', the generated textures are 64x64 pixels which arent enough.
I tried changing the 'overrider size bone' in the Data Asset to 0 or 1024 - still nothing.
Any thoughts?
The texture resolution is managed by the plugin and this would be determined by the number of frames & verts. So I'd check that your anim length is set correctly on your data asset
I hope you will make tutorial in UE5 also
Hey there Trash Praxis, love your video explanation, very detailed and specific,, whoever made this is a genius.
I am trying to use the plugin, which was recompiled for unreal engine 4.26.1, and the example project looks correct, I made a plugins folder there and added the addon so I could test it within the example project, I attempted to use this with different models, each gave the same result, unreal engine hard freezes. Oh and the model and animations were made in Blender 2.92 if that matters.
If you have any input for a solution to this issue, it would be great if it were not a dead end in my project.
You are on 4.26 and using the github project for the VAT? Does the example project work? At what step does it freeze? When baking the animations?
Your Vertex Animation tutorials are amazing! I was able to combine this older tutorial with your new 5.1 one to get random people into the crowd. However, the frame offset for the animation no longer seems to work with the random people stream. Would you have any hints as to how to get that aspect to work again with the stream instead of a single static mesh? I'm also trying to offset each row of people up by a certain amount in the Z-Axis (as that will help with placing a field of these crowds on bleachers), but haven't been able to figure out how to add that function into your blueprint. If you, or anyone else have any suggestions for that, I would be most grateful!
Well not sure. For this you would have two loops, one for the ‘characters’ and the other for ‘num instances’. The first thing to check is that each character are getting their own random number as they step through the ‘character’ loop
For the adding Z, use a variable for the offset and adding that value when the location is set for each row. You could check my earlier video with the vertex anim crowd I think I show that there
Awesome thanks@@TrashPraxis Let me try that later this week! For the Z variable, you just had the X and Y values set in that first video, but let me see if I can figure out a way to get the location of each row and add a Z variable to each one. I feel like I'm 95% there, but the last 5% is hard. Thanks for the insights and suggestions man!
@@MuratHadji oh yeah right, I didn't offset in Z in the video, I forgot. You set the Z offset in exactly the same way as you set the X and Y for each instance. You just need a consistent value for each row. So similar to the the X value is set by using the row number, you get your offset amount from a variable and multiply that by the row number for the Z. You are really close.
@@TrashPraxis Thanks for the help, Praxis, I was able to offset the height of each row implemented. Now I just need to figure out how to implement the frame offset of the animation for each of the instanced characters in the loop as you had mentioned! But the stadium crowd is looking pretty good even without that detail.
I'm not able to use it in UE 5.0.2 any suggestions?
Great man but when i copy bluprint in content, this is not showing
hi, thank you for ur execllent work. I would like to use on my project, but I have a problem, if my skeleton tranfroms contain scale change, I wiil need to create a scale texture. Is there anyway to realize it, hope u can help me
Sorry I can not help. Scaling the instance would probably be something you could do, but it's unlikely that's the kind of scaling you are asking for
hello Kevin is there are a way to add more than 5 anims ???? or should i make another material for it ?
I think yes, you can add more anims, it's controlled by an array variable. Look for the plus + next to the trashcan icon
@@TrashPraxis yes but u cant add more than 5 anim in same material right ?
@@momomadi2 The material is set up for 5. To get more inputs, you have to modify the material, and specifically the BasicSelector Material Function. Go into that and just follow what is there and add another input. On the VAMAT_Master then also add the inputs needed there
@@TrashPraxis ill try this thanks for reply
Thank you for this tutorial. Is this still valid and runs in 5.3 maybe..?
No. Needs modification to run in 5.3
I wish there's a plugin like this for UE4 version 4.27.2
Can anybody tell us How to import this plugin into unreal. Because it is showed failed
Thanks for the video, it is really amazing. But, After
Rebuilding it now, it says modules are built with different engine , don't know how to fix that. Any help is appreciated.
You can ignore that message, just continue and you will see it works as expected
@@TrashPraxis Thanks for the reply. And i already tried but Unreal exited but dont know how or what , i tried it just now again it worked. Amazing Thanks 😊
@@TrashPraxis where to find and download that example project?
@@sakattodesign9927 github. Go to where the plugin is, it's an adjacent repo to the plugin
I added a link in the description
What does it mean by Full Bone Skinning?
I can't recall exactly. I have not used this in a while and I am not the author of the plugin. I think this could be the option that saves skinning and joint rotations into the textures, instead of vtx positions
Everything’s perfect but why’s the animation glitching, the vertex anim doesn’t have a smooth animation as the fbx sequence.
possibly the 'max value position bone' is not set correctly? check the values on your material match the data object. or possibly you need to record more frames?
@@TrashPraxis thanks for the reply, i meant on your viewport. Compare the converted animations with the official ones you had
19:35
@@yusha1933 I believe that is related to the interpolation. In my example I have only stored a subset of frames, one third. I could be wrong, I've not tested this. If the steppy-ness is a problem for your situation, I'd try recording all the frames first
Any chance it works with LODs?
I didn't have any LODs, so I can't say for sure but I think I saw in the docs that it does. It's UV based, so it seems like that it should be supported if the plugin adds the VAT UV set to all the LODs
dose not work for me with unreal engine 4.27.2, any help please 🙏🙏
Find and checkout a commit from around the date of 4.27.2 release
Nice plugin, but тhe audience cannot be displayed in the sequencer.
I'm not sure what you mean. At the start of my video I'm using the sequencer to change cameras. Can you elaborate?
Is it working with ue5 ?
The plugin doesn't seem to work in UE5 unfortunately
you can go to the UE5 engine/extras/3Dmax Scripts and find the vertex animation tools for using.