Unreal Engine 5 AnimToTexture Plugin, How to Use it to make Vertex Animation Textures for crowds
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- This video shows how to use the AnimToTexture plugin in Unreal Engine 5.1. The video uses an Editor Utility which is available at the link below. Also provided is a basic crowd instancing blueprint which will scatter a static mesh with VAT texture and put a random animation on each instance. The video walks through how to use both of these blueprints and how the blueprints work so you can modify or make your own
The resulting motion has some stepping issue which I have not yet solved. This is mentioned in the video. If you know the fix, please tell me!
The blueprints shown can be found here, free to use and with no support:
github.com/kro...
Hi Viewers, the jitter mentioned in the video is solved by toggling 'Enforce Power of Two' on the data asset. Thanks to Timmy in the comments below for the tip: "It won't create a 16bit texture if the texture dimensions are not power of two, it will fall back to 8 bit".
Also see comment from Alexandre P: For people that won't see the uasset after copying them from the archive to their game folder (operation at time 3:28)
Downloading the zip file and uncompressing them was making bad uasset and they were not appearing in UE 5.1.0.
I downloaded each file separately and then it works. Git 'clone' will also work.
Also more great info on this workflow here: dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/daE9/unreal-engine-baking-out-vertex-animation-in-editor-with-animtotexture
it is cool to. see how far you got with the tool :)
there was a bug in the Texture code that kept converting textures to 8bits if the resolution was not multiple of 8 (if i remember right), this has been fixed recently
Hi) Great video! But it's not working in the last ue5.1 Now need only to textures Normal and position. But "Vat Tools" doesn't make Normal texture. I can't find information how i can do that
A user as updated the tool to 5.2
The demo textures in the video are 68x160. In my UE5.3 they are 68x430. Those textures are not power of 2 and they work as float textures. Perhaps the texture size just needs to be an even number? 😅 (power of two would be 64x512, or 128x256 for instance)
Great video. For people that won't see the uasset after copying them from the archive to their game folder (operation at time 3:28)
Downloading the zip file and uncompressing them was making bad uasset and they were not appearing in UE 5.1.0.
I downloaded each file separately and then it works. Maybe a github issue when git lfs is used.
Thanks for this tip!
Thanks, had the same issue
Btw, when you open the .uasset files with notepad, it even just shows 3 lines inside. The version with a link to git-lfs, a sha256 key and the size.
@@TrashPraxis would be helpful in pinned comment
Good idea, I added this to the pinned comment. Thanks
Awesome video. Thanks!
Pro tip for adding animations to the VAT Tools UI... Instead of creating all those array slots for the animations (under the Motions section of the UI) and then dragging each one of the animation assets one by one to each of the created slots, like you do around the 11:30 mark in the video, you can do the following:
1. Without creating any array elements, select all animation assets in the content browser.
2. Drag & drop them on top of where it says "0 array elements".
Doing that will populate the array with a slot for each of the animation assets.
Thanks for this pro tip!!!
It won't create a 16bit texture if the texture dimensions are not power of two(will fall back to 8bit). Also there is no need to set the compression settings on the texture, this is actually set plugin side when it is writing the various textures in that 'AnimationToTexture' function.
*Edit: How rude of me, thankyou so much for posting the editor util BP, that saved me so much time, I very much appreciate it.
oh this is a good clue. I think there was a force power of two option. I'll go check this out now!
@timmy, thanks so much, this has sorted it. Toggle 'power of two' on the data asset and it no longer falls back to 8 bit and motion is smooth. Thanks heaps!!
@@TrashPraxis No worries, glad it is all sorted.
Thanks for that I was looking at why it was so jittery compared to VertexAnimToolset ... that's really bad that it fall back to 8bit without any log or info.
Just thought I'd throw this out there, but if, after implementing the other suggestions, you're still finding that the animation doesn't look as clean as its skeletal counterpart and/or the VAT plugin from 4.26 (as was the case for me) you can crank up the sample rate in the data asset prior to hitting bake and then increase the playrate by whatever multiple you increased the sample rate. For instance, if your original animation was using a sample rate of 30 and a play rate of 1, and you sampled it at 210, you would then set the play rate to 7. I was just playing around with it today, so YMMV, but 7 seemed to produce a texture that was similarly sized to the VAT texture and had animations that seemed as smooth as the skeletal one they were created from.
In either case, thanks for the video and editor utility!
Very interesting, thanks for this
Hi Butter, i tried to use sample rate of 30 but i don't know how to set play rate. I changed sample rate in data asset
For people finding their textures breaking in Unreal 5.2+, you can manually set your static mesh's Destination Lightmap Index from 1 to 2, and then let your Data Asset aim for UV1. This way, you keep your original UVs and the VAT and Lightmap setups don't fight/block each other
Great tip, thanks for posting it
thanks man :)
Thanks. Could you be a bit more specific. When I do this I get a warning when I BAKE DATA. Invalid UVChannel: 1. Already used by LightMap
This was really informative. The guide was easily digestible, thank you for the plugin too! I was able to animate a crowd doing 5 different animations. There seems to be one issue though, at least in 5.2 using the 2.0 version of VAT Tools. When you bake the data the textures on the static mesh collapse. I think it's something to do with the UVs since the textures on the skeleton mesh are unchanged.
Did you ever find a fix for this? I am having the same issue all looks to be working fine then when I bake data I got no static mesh UV1 and the material is messed up on the static mesh.
@@AbductionDevlog Any update? I s the only solution to use 5.1? After baking I get a pop-up error Cast to Material Instance Constant failed! and the UVs in the static mesh are messed up. Only 2 channels.
Even I too found the same problem in 5.2.1 Version, Once I get backed UV turn to Single Channel as UV 0 it got messed up. Texture is improper on Mesh, Really every things work properly expect this issue, Can you guys suggest or share to find solution for this issue @TrashPraxis
The issue of the "laggy" animations is the basic uv channel for the object. I've done a lot of tests, and that effect only happens, when the wire is overlapping with the other one. To make it work properly, get a model with no overlapping one.
Thank you very much for your help. I fixed it for version 5.3 and everything works like a charm.
Could you share how you fixed it maybe :)?
Yes great! Consider making a pull request on the repo to help others
Care to share how it was fixed?
Hi please can you share how you got it to work, i tried. and was able to generate the data assets and all but the static is blank. please assist if you can it will be of great help
hello! please share if you can!
Thanks for this awesome tutorial! I found a way to further improve the material. To make it REALLLLLY smooth, you can interpolate the bone positions and normals. Just also get the BoneXFormPositionAndNormal of the next frame and lerp between regular and the next frame one by the frac of the frame.
Great tip!
Sir i have a problem in texture after i press the bake data button the animation is working good but the texture collapsed how i solved the problem i dont know where to ask i upload in cmnt also u done this before so if u know something pls tell me sir( ue5.2 )
can you please share this with screenshot how you do this?
Most UNDERRATED CHANNEL for UE
Thank you so much
Thank you. Really appreciate what you are doing and your generosity in sharing the knowledge. Please keep it up.
Thank you for your comment. I will try to keep it going
Hey man just wanted to echo some of the other comments and show a little support! I really appreciate you taking the time to share your information with the world and provide us other developers with that helpful next step on our journey. Take care and good luck with your projects, it looks like you are poking at some really intriguing mocap to UE pipeline stuff! Would love to have a chat sometime.
Thank you for your encouragement, I appreciate it. It's really helpful to keep this going
@@TrashPraxis if you're working on what it looks like you are, you're going big places i think! Well done having the foresight to pursue that road, you're ahead of the curve!
I imagine you're way ahead, i poked a bit with blendAR mocap and was amazed by the results but haven't had time to implement workflow into UE being rather noob myself. If you're pushing those methods into realtime in UE you're heading for the motherlode i reckon, cheers!
Also hey if you haven't came upon it yourself, a straightforward way to blend animations when using this method you've instructed us on in VAT; added a material layer of the same ML_boneanim i think it's named with duplicate params but a layerblend_scalar; by driving the intensity/mask and varios layer params for the animation it appears possible to emulate the functions of blending poses :D
I noticed you have the vfx background as well, awesome to see others cross-applying the mindset :D
Hey Trash, just wanted to give you props on such a great video and a great job putting this together. I have the single mesh tackled and will go back to your other video to figure out how to use multiple meshes.
Hello! Did you manage to do it? I've been sitting here for two days and can't figure it out.
man... this is GOLD. Thank you for sharing your amazing work. I will give it a try!!!
This is absolute black magic. Kudos to you for going through and recreating these tools for sharing, just what I was looking for!
Awesome video. Thank you for sharing. I got this working pretty easily and the effect is awesome. I was looking for a way of placing tons of animated characters without having to do it myself, so this is sweeeeeeet!
Great to hear!
Hi, as AnimToTexture node has been removed from the UE 5.2. What node/ group of nodes to be used to counter that issue? I'm looking forward to your help.
Did you end up solving this?
@@tryptamedia7375 Nah nah.. I don’t give up unless I have the solution.
How to counter the issues:
Simply use AnimToTexture node in earlier version of UE5 and then migrate that BP to the latest versions which you are using. #issueresolved!!!!!
@@marsh_legit For me when that happens, the BP comes in broken and doesn't work. At least in 5.3
@trashpraxis we are not able work in 5.2 with this method few of the nodes like AnimToTextureMaterialParaNames are missing in 5.2.Can you tell the solution for this problem.
Sorry, I don’t need to use this technique too often so I’m not likely to update this process until I do. I’m not an Epic Solutions Architect, I’m a bedroom creator just like you. Have a go at fixing it yourself. If I can do it, you can do it. I’m not that clever, I’m just tenacious
@@TrashPraxis stop saying "if I can do it you can do it"
if arnold said that to you about a 700 lb dead lift, does it all of a sudden make it true?
@@MasterPiffy Yeah ok. I'll stop. When I say that, it's from a place of care and encouragement. What we tell ourselves matters. If I want the result and put in the time, many things become possible. Complex problems are made of lots of simple problems. This particular thing here took me 3 weeks, nearly full time, to work out. That's like a lot of time. I did it over my holiday for fun. I don't have any special skills. Just tenacity. Lot's of trial and error. I believed given a long enough timeline I could figure this out. Now if I instead believed that I am not the kind of person that could ever do it, I am certain that would be the case. What you tell yourself becomes your reality. Regarding your analogy, for most of my life I would have responded, yes, it's just as true. I reckon he probably did say something like that at some point. And I spent most of my adult life really believing given a long enough timeline, I could do anything I put my mind to. I believed that because it's been true for me. Now that I am firmly in the second half of my life however, some things, like your analogy, might not be possible. I'm still coming to terms with that
This seems to work better with skeletal meshes that already have a low amount detail. I found using the mannequin provided by the plugin that this method actually reduces performance for that high detail model due to the animations breaking automatic lods/nanite.
it make my pipelline more effective，thank you,
What is the difference between EUW_VAT_Utils.uasset and EUW_VAT_Utils_2-0.uasset? The latter does not show up in te folder in UE 5.3.2. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?
I suspect the EUW_VAT_Utils is the one I made for UE 5.1. EUW_VAT_Utils_2-0 came from another user who made a pull request with an update for 5.2. These are binary assets which will only work as expected in the UE version that created them
Thank you so much for the tutorial and the custom plugin! Super easy and super helpful.
Your example only shows a crowd comprised of the one model, but what if you want to use the same method with a bunch of different models chosen at random, like your Crowd scene in the previous video? I assume this would involve adding a random array of models in the BP_Crowd?
Thanks!
Yes, exactly
Excelent work !!! thanks for all the stuff !!!
please help cant open BP_Crowd.uasset in my last version unreal engine 5.4.3
Thank you. Really appreciate what you are doing and your generosity in sharing the knowledge，Can you make a video of the circular array?
I am not sure what you mean
Hi, great Tutorial, congrats! I am creating a project in 5.3, and I hoped, even if the tool didn't work in that version, that I could migrate the created materials to the new version. I copied the Unreal project and converted in place to 5.3 (everything created in 5.2) but the material doesn't work anymore. Could anyone be able to make it work on 5.3? Thank youuu
I see some weird things happen in the materials. The Instance, where it said Animate, now says AutoPlay
And the ML_BoneAnimation nodes are totally changed. But I just opened the project on a new version of the editor.
Really lost here...
@@DavidAcevedoFotos Hi, have you found a solution? I think as this material uses a MF from the plugin the plugin is different to the one in the 5.2 so I guess coping the function from the plugin folder might fix this, going to try this myself as I need this to work on 5.4 >_
Are these instances dynamic? (Able to get hit, take damage, give damage, etc)
With this system you can shoot every zombie with physics or it is just visual?
Looks like some nodes were removed in 5.3 that make the GitHub data obsolete :'( at least on my side.
Thanks for this! I did run into a small snag with VAT widget. I wanted to add multiple animations and I wasn't able to scroll. I had to open the widget and change the detailsView_0 size to Fill instead of auto to get a scroll bar to pop up. Just in case someone else run into that issue.
Hey thanks! I didn’t know how to get the scroll bar
The model UV changes every time I press Bake.(All UV channel change together) ，Just5.2 havethisissue. 5.1 work well.
I followed your video and this worked really well in 5.1. Now I'm wondering if instead of pulling a random animation from the animation list if it's possible to trigger specific animations in sequencer. For instance if in a cinematic you were using the crowd blueprint for a formation of soldiers marching and then at a certain point stop in sequencer trigger them a standing idle animation or attack animaiton.
Great video. Thank you so much. Any tip on how we can add multple static mesh instances to the BP_Crowd? so we can have a variety of characters.
I show that in the previous crowd video I made. Set up your blueprint with multiple static mesh components, then build an array and pick a random one: ua-cam.com/video/CcJv8V-M9zs/v-deo.html
@@TrashPraxis Thank you
Sadly your tool blueprint doesnt work in 5.2 anymore because the struct for CreateVATextures is missing and some other issues
Yeah, just noticing it's incompatible now. Damn.
Have a go at fixing it, you can do it! There are some clues in these comments
no, don't keep your own tool up to date aha
@@TrashPraxis
as of 5.3 your 2-0 version uasset doesnt load at all, the original doesnt work either, so you're dead floating in the water at this point.
how do you get the static materials array from static mesh at 25:20?
I don’t. I set up the material layer manually. I couldn’t figure that out
Hi! does anyone know how the equivalent of Update Material layer function since it was taken away from 5.2? I have not been able to update my instanced materials since it was removed from the plugin, and thus I removed it from the EUW VAT Utils
Iam a problem with the dynamic shadow using VAT in the assets for the animation.. the shadow is stoped.. change the properties of the light the static mesh with the same problem.. Any Idea @Trash Praxis? Using 5.3 and 5.4 versions.
Hey this is amazing thank you. I must be missing something for having the randomised and time offset anims. Using about 5 anim slots on this character, but the populate BP cycles through them sequentially and all at the same time for each instanced mesh. What should I look at first (fairly new to UE so not confident deep in construction script territory). Many thanks!
hello its very useful tutorial .just i have one question . how can i add more then one character in BP_Crowd?its just add one character and one Data asset
Hi! Ive been trying to use the VAT utils but I get an error that reads *No structure in SubCategoryObject in Anim to Texture Material Param Names
only the version v1 only shows up in UE5.4.3 V2 even though in the folder isn't there. V1 doesn't work and can't even try V2, i'm very interested in a 5.4.3 working version
Check the pull requests on the repo. Someone recently forked and made a 5.4.3 compatible uasset. I have not tested it yet
@@TrashPraxis HI, I checked the pull requests on github and there are 2 posts both of which there is nothing about 5.4.3, so I presume its been removed
@@TrashPraxis Yes I couldn't find it, but I'm really looking forward for the 5.4 version :(
@@TrashPraxis i checked but there's no new file.
Appreciate you revisiting this, but it's not obvious how you're supposed to add multiple static meshes, to accomplish the outcome of the original tutorial: a crowd shot with a variety of characters. This example seems setup for just a single character mesh.
To do this with multiple characters you could use the same method as shown in the original VAT video I made at 27:55. Have multiple character meshes in the crowd blueprint and pick a random one on each loop iteration
@@TrashPraxis Hi Trash, So I was able to get it to randomize different static meshes an for each added multiple animations, however each mesh is playing the anim loop at the same time. Any tips on how to get the same meshes to randomize their anim. I'm not sure how to randomize the time like you did in the other video
just to note I've tried what you did with the set custom data value off the Add Instance but It doesn't seem to work in 5.1
@@610sailor8 did you figure it out? Not very technical and was trying to find a simple solution
@@610sailor8 5.1 perinstancecustomdata doesn't to work in5.1 ，but in 5.2 it is work。 EUW_VAT_Utils in 5.2 need to change some node。
hi, thanks for the video, unfortunately it doesn’t work even in version 5.1.1 - the engine simply doesn’t see them
it is very strange that even such a small change in the version of the engine makes your method not work
Hi my friend. This tutorial is fantastic and amazing. It is helping me a lot for a personal project, and I wanted to thank you for sharing with us your knowledge. It is wonderful.
I have already managed to instantiate several characters in the same blueprints, although they all play the same animation at the same time, except the first instance which does play randomized animations. I guess I'll have to investigate the construction script. That's the key.
Thanks again my friend. If you update this tutorial to new versions and improvements I'll keep an eye out. I've already subscribed.Hi my friend. This tutorial is fantastic and amazing. It is helping me a lot for a personal project, and I wanted to thank you for sharing with us your knowledge. It is wonderful.
I have already managed to instantiate several characters in the same blueprints, although they all play the same animation at the same time, except the first instance which does play randomized animations. I guess I'll have to investigate the construction script. That's the key.
Thanks again my friend. If you update this tutorial to new versions and improvements I'll keep an eye out. I've already subscribed, from Spain.
Correct, you will need to modify the construction script. You will need to modify the part where the custom data values are being set ua-cam.com/video/vrlFozqB0jA/v-deo.html. And all of your motions will need to be compatible with all of the instanced SKMs
Hello! Did you manage to do it? I've been sitting here for two days and can't figure it out.
Hi. Its not working. When i click "Run Utility Widget" It is not creating anything. Please anybody help
not working in 5.3 :(
This is great workflow to make the crowd spanner. can you add the feature in your blueprint to apply random materials and textures.
No probably not. I think I talked about how to do that in my other video. If that is something you need, I’m sure you can make it happen!
whoaaa! wonderful! ^__^
is it possible using this to be able to use more than only 1 mesh to create a mixed crowd of men and women, to create a dance floor crowd?
The tool is not working on 5.2. The options at the bottom are not being displayed... do you know how to fix it?
I don’t sorry. I have not had a need for this tool since I made this video. Once I do, I will find a fix and share it.
subscribed 🔥
hope it will works with 5.4
Fantastic Video - Thanks ! 2 questions. Will this work for 5.03 ? Could you make a crowd with this like in your other video with people applauding - only standing people would be fantastic ! Because many many people that make a music video could really use that !
Kind Regards !
The technique will work in 5.03 but the helper uassets I offer on GitHub will not work. You would have to rebuild them. The second half of the video walks through the blueprints
My UV in channel 0 keeps getting stomped by the VAT uv and the texture mapped to UV looks broken on the animating model. I did get the prop animating though. Any thoughts on why that may be happening?
I am animating a bird flying. It seems that UseUV0 the bird flaps its wings if I set it to UV! the whole bird rotates as if it has one bone.
Love this video, is there any tutorial to using sockets?
Not from me!
Very interesting! Can I use this also with non-skeletal meshes that are animated? A static mesh? Or can only skeletal meshes be converted?
This solution is engineered for skeletal meshes
I can't import github files into unreal! it gives me this error : Unknown Extension "uasset", how can i fix this?
did you import it directly into unreal?
if so what you need to do is find the content folder in your windows file explorer
drag the files in there and in the corresponding unreal folder the files should be there
does anyone know how to add different character to crowd?
@TrashPraxis can you do another tutorial but using the metahumans crowd models instead of mixamo models, if there is a difference?
Maybe, but I couldn't say when. I've got a busy first part of the year. I had a quick look at using these for this video but it was more complex than a Mixamo character so I kept it simple while I worked out the puzzle with the plugin. The city sample crowd characters is a whole other puzzle
Thank you, is there a way i can export fbx of my metahuman with different animation the load them again and use it with you methods?
Thank you for your tutorial, this is great. But I have an issue in following your tutorial in UE5.1.1, which is when I close the project and reopen it, the animation of the mesh is broken. Do you know how to solve it? Thank you
Sorry I have not used this in 5.1.1 or seen that issue
Excelente Tutorial!!
Is it possible to use this technique with Niagara?
Hi! Liked and subbed! Thank you so much for sharing these resources. I really appreciate it.
BTW, this works on ue5.1 but it doesn’t seem to work in my 5.2 project. Do you by any chance know if there were any changes in the engine?
It sounds like there have been from your experience! Are you able to migrate the assets from a 5.1 project to 5.2, using the asset action menu?
@@TrashPraxis Well, I haven't tried migrating my files from 5.1 to 5.2 because I started my project in 5.2, but it definitely doesn't work the other way around. I have confirmed that they took out a node called "Anim to Texture Material Param Names...".
I responded to one of the most recent posts on how to do that if you are still interested @@VonchkynProduction
Hi, I can't see your video on your channel@@adamodimattia
This is great. Thanks
Hey, thanks for the tutorial! I have a question. Will morph targets work with these bone animation textures?
My overall goal is to be able to use Nanite on a 10mil poly tree and animate it for 10 seconds. Ideally I'd also like to be able to morph between different animations (different wind strengths). I'm not really sure if morph targets are the correct solution, but I am just trying to be able to ramp up and down the wind speed by blending between prebaked skeletal animations in Houdini.
I don't know if you've tried doing something like this, but any first thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated as I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing lol (only just getting into animation in general).
Hi, no the bone mode vertex anim would not capture morph anims because they are not driven by bones. You would use vertex mode for morphs. From what you describe morphs would not be best. If your tree is in Houdini and riggged, use skeletal motion. It blends well in UE. My first thought is to not use nanite or 10mil polys or vertex anim. Use skeletal motion and if you need mor motion on the leaves use WPO. Keep it simple
Tried loading up the anims with all my anims and the scroll function isn't working 🤣 Tried to add a scroll box to the widget but didn't work will try and figure it out later. Is there a video reference for adding swarm behavior to each individual mesh? I checked your channel but didn't find anything.
While I was working on this, I had the same issue with the scrolling. I could not figure out how to make it scroll in the time that I had (this was my first go with widgets). I do not have any videos about adding behaviors, I have not done any. This channel seems to be a good one for that: @viperdkue5 www.youtube.com/@viperdkue5
its broken now, i dont know why. "Anim state of Data asset" is red
Thanks for the vid. I tried out your step by step instruction. I had mixed results. I used a default manny as the test dummy of which I was able to replicate your results exactly. However, when I tried to use a metahuman skeleton, the bone rotation texture did not record and remained black. When I tried the metahuman head, all three textures failed to record resulting in 3 empty textures. I couldn't figure it out.
The metahuman is a complex rig made up of multiple skeletal meshes. They way Epic did this was to bake these down into crowd assets that are better suited for this technique. These are available on the marketplace as "City Sample Crowds"
@@TrashPraxis Well that makes sense. thanks again for these great videos
Hey Trash...This tool you made is incredible! thank you so much.
I had a quick question. This blue print allows you to randomise the animation on one static mesh.... How would you go about using this method for adding multiple static meshes and randomising the animation for those too? Say for creating a crowd in a stadium?
Thanks mate - hope you can help!
Chris
Hi Chris, Check out my other VAT Toolkit video where I show how to set that up. Essentially, instead of one instanced static mesh component, you make however many you need. Then make an array out of these, picking a random one as you loop over the grid to layout each instance
@@TrashPraxis Thanks Trash! thats exactly what i did in the end and the results were superb! thank you for all your help sir!
@@chris81738173 Hi man, can you please explain what exactly you change in original blueprint? I cant figure it out for a 4 days :(
I have been trying to get this to work with Metahumans. I can't get it to populate the rotation texture.
I tried it on the City sample crowd and it works fine. I want to use City Sample Crowd, but I modified the outfits to be more casual, by transferring Metahuman cloths and retargeting it to the City Sample Crowd.
I set up the VAT tool and Bake Data and the rotation texture is blank everytime. I am pretty sure it has something to do with how the retargeted skeleton meshes are attaching to the actual bones.
I am trying hard to recreate the Crowd they actually made in the original City Sample, but with different Metahuman cloths. It is turning into an ordeal to get this to work efficiently. Using Mass on its own is so inefficient, you get about 10-15 Mass AI on screen and your FPS drops drastically.
I suspect there is some way to make it efficient, since they had some incredible number of human agents active, like many tens of thousands. On PS 5. I don't know much about how it works though. I am not sure I understand what you are doing. You have a city sample crowd SKM and this works with VAT? But then you modified the clothing and it no longer works? Is that right? You transferred the skin weights in Maya or something and have a SKM with a single skeleton and this is not working with VAT?
@@TrashPraxis With the City Sample project they use Mass AI and then switch to animated static meshes. I believe the switch is done with Niagara, but not 100% sure on that part yet.
They vaguely break it down here - ua-cam.com/video/h_dJtk3BCyg/v-deo.html
Yes, The City sample crowd that is provided separately on market place, VAT tool works on with no problem. I wanted to modified the outfits to a more casual look, by creating a metahuman and making the outfit in the metahuman creator - I added the metahuman to the City sample crowd file - and swapped out the blazer SKM for the sweater SKM for example.
I didn't need to use Maya because the skeletons were the same. All I did was right click on the sweater and applied a different skeleton - the same one the City sample was using so I can use all the animations they have. There were a lot more steps to get the Mass AI Crowd to work, but to get the animations to work that is all I needed to do.
After some digging in your blueprint, I found that it is actually the Weight Texture that isn't populating. Once I do all the steps in the VAT tool and bake Data I get a blank Weights Tex. I have dug through the entire script and the only place I can think of that is failing is in the actual Animation to Texture Node, which is a black box to me.
I did find a work around and modified your script to bake vertex animation and that was successful, so I might just take that route.
All this is easy to recreate; you can just try it out on a stock metahuman character and it will give the same results. Either way I think I might reach out on UE forums and see if anyone knows.
Hey-. Thank you for the tutorial! That helped me so so much! (: Any idea how we're able to get Nanite to work with this technique? Or shadows? Or any clue why only some of the meshes are animated when simulating / rendering?
Shadows worked for me. The other things I did not try
@@TrashPraxis thanks for the answer. I know there's no official support. But any chance you could tell me how to get rid of the randomization every time I hit simulate / render?
I don’t have the project open but here is something you can try, look through the construction script for any time a random is used and make sure it’s getting set with a seed value.
@@TrashPraxis thank you. :)
hi Thanks to ur amazing work! I am new to UE, I would like know if animtotexture plugin can simulate animation blending, like layered blend per bone and so on
I do not know exactly what you need, but something I have done is to make a sequencer with a bunch of kit bashed anims blended, then saved this as a new anim sequence to use in the VAT tool
@@TrashPraxis I want to blend two animation sequences using VAT tool at runtime, Is that possible? using two baked animation sequences and blend them
@@kishi5815 No doubt that is possible. VAT is used in the city sample for the pedestrians and they very likely are doing that. But I don't know how that works, I've not looked into it
Man, this is all great and stuff, but if I want to make them move and fight, especially move across a landscape I face the problem that updating positions of each instance every frame drops framerate at.thr amount of 1000. How do you move them?
you would need to develop a tool that can convert these instanced static meshes during runtime to an SKM with its own BP which can be destroyed and converted back to an HISM when no longer interacted / player context
Niagara particle approach could be the way. Mass AI is another way
You are God
In Unreal 5.3, even if you run the VAT tool, the window for entering motions, animations, and assets does not appear under the Bake data button. I really need this tool, but is there any way?
Yes! ‘The way’ is to figure out why it’s not working and then fix it. When I really need the tool that is exactly what I will do! You can do it too!
The missing ui element is called the details view. Or that’s what it was called. Have a search and see if it changed in 5.3
tried to fix it but there[ is anim to material parameters struct missing] in ue 5.3....making a lot of errors in the compiling
@@TrashPraxis what a fucking ignorant thing to say. keep up with your own plugins. not everyone is good at scripting, hence why they grab plugins and tools.
Is it possible to use liquid alembic animations for this method?
Everything I talk about in this video is specific to skeletal meshes driving by bone animation and using linear skinning. The general technique of vertex textures to store an animated mesh with changing vertex count is possible. Here is an example using houdini ua-cam.com/video/BaKNjIC66_8/v-deo.html
Hello my friend
Thank you for the great effort you put into this channel
But the BP_Crowd does not work on version 5.2
Please solve this issue if possible
And thank you very much
I hope I can find the time to do this and update the repo. Until then, have you tried migrating the asset from 5.1?
Anyone knows if this works on 5.1.1? Thanks
I wasnt able to bake vertex animation textures in the last step...Everything else worked except for the baking process.
How did you bake out Romeros animation onto the same skeleton before you imported it into unreal engine?
Nevermind! I got it! Thanks man, this is awesome
YOu took the time to reply to yourself and still didn't think to mention the fix for anyone else?@@matthewhardaker3359
anyone know what this AnimToTextureMaterialParamNames struct is called in 5.2?
interested too
I think we should be able to recreate the structure locally on a file, trying out now
No need use struct， three name use just like ：BoneRotation BoneWeights BonePosition
@@pm-fv8mz yeah how this go, also in the EUW_VAT_Utils widget the material layer function is not working sadly
any chance to use it on 5.2? just when i download it wont open on 5.2
There are just a few tweaks you need to make. One I can remeber is that the struct with names that is used just to name the created textures is no longer available in blueprints, you can name it your self and throw it away altogheter. The other one is that "SetBonePrecision" is now simply "SetPrecision". Then if you mesh already uses up UV01 channel for lightmap, then where in VAT bp code the static mesh from skeletal mesh is created you need to add a step with calling `StaticMeshEditorSubsystem` and add additional UV channel for sampling the data from the animation textures, function is "AddUVChannel". Then in Data Asset for static mesh change the UVchannel index to 2. I Also used the BP_AnimToTexture (you run it by right click and `Run Editor Utility Blueprint` and it will write to the textures set in data asset) from plugin content, I only sustituted the data asset for bone animation to the one I created and modified by using Thrash's utility.
Thanks so much for these notes. I have not had to use VAT animation, so I've had no reason to update these tools on github, but many many people come to this video and try to use what I've shared in newer UE versions which are not working
Hey ! Thanks for the share, very useful !
I've been messing around with the plugin a bit, I'm making a VR game where I have a conveyor belt and I figured that using AnimToTexture was going to be cheaper than running a skeleton to animate the belt.
So far it's working fine except for one part I cannot figure out and it's the play/pause of my animation.
I have a BP talking to the layer scalar parameter "Playrate" of a dynamic instance of the already instanced materials, so far so good, it starts when set to 1 and stops when set to 0....
But the playrate doesn't play nice. Instead of pausing/resuming the playback, it looks like it's falls back to the first frame of the animation when set to 0 resulting in a jump in the animation. Same goes for resuming...
Anybody got an idea?
Hmmm interesting. Adjusting Playrate will not pause time, it scales (multiplies) time. Time keeps marching on, so going from 0 to 1 will just pick up at a different point in time. To play/pause you would need to store the evaluated frame at the moment you paused, then put that back when you unpause
@Trash Praxis I thought about starting a timer synchronized with the duration of a full animation loop with no luck... How would you query the info of the evaluated frame? Some sort of elapsed time since begin play divided by the sample rate, maybe?
I'm not sure. You would query the value that is calculated in the material but I don't know how to do that. The city sample demo is doing something like this because they swap in the VAT based on distance and it's picking up the correct frame at the transitions, so it's passing receiving the evaluated frame ua-cam.com/video/h_dJtk3BCyg/v-deo.html
how to do this for each lods in a single staticmesh？
I am not sure. I have not investigated this
@@TrashPraxis thinks for replay,in ue 5.2, i modify the blueprint that you made , each lod have a set materials and VATs, and I put Animation info like Animstart ,numframes, into a pixel, Animations in data assets make up another texture , you can use flip book materials function, select one pixel set material param, forgive me bad english.hope useful.
@@李华强-q2l hello, this sounds good! Can you elaborate more on that please? I'm trying to set VAT animations for all my LODs and dont know where to start. Or can I reach out to you privately somehow? thank you!
We need a tool that can convert these instanced static meshes during runtime to an SKM with its own BP which can be destroyed and converted back to an HISM when no longer interacted / player context, just imagine the amount of life you can put in a game using this method and I'm sure big studios like CD Projekt Red or Assassins creed will do this.
thanks for the tutorial trash
Did anyone manage to get this working in 5.2?
I did， no use struct just use three name ， update material layer functin delete
@@李华强-q2l do you mean delete the material function ?
@@李华强-q2l Same question. Will bake animation button work after deleting update material layer function?
@@recsund in 5.2 Anim to texture plugin haven't "update material layer functin" node.
@@李华强-q2l 🥲
I was able to adjust the blueprint so that rather than pulling a random animation I can input exactly which animation by using an absolute integer parameter and setting a range on the slider, so i can adjust the slider and it will switch animations. The issue now that I'm tryin to resolve is being able to key frame the switch to animation in sequencer. I set the absolute integer parameter to "expose to cinematics" and the parameter shows up in sequencer, but when I Render or click play in sequencer, it doesn't actually change animations. Also you got a like and a subscribe from me. Your video was incredibly helpful and very well presented. A few other videos that I've watched on vexture animation textures will gloss over some very important steps, and I appreciate that yours was very detailed and step by step. Here is my test of the modified version of your blueprint. ua-cam.com/video/-VlXMO5k9PY/v-deo.html
excellent asset for the example, well done
The reason it does not play or render from sequencer is because your blueprint is not ticking in sequencer and therefore doesn't evaluate. You need to make an event track in your sequencer. Your blueprint needs to have a custom event, like 'eval in sequencer' or whatever, that the event track can call to evaluate. Your blueprint will need the custom event to drive everything, instead of 'Event Tick' or 'Begin Play'. There must be a video out there on how to do this. If not I'll make one
@@TrashPraxis Thank you for responding! I had come to a similar conclusion looking at other videos last night that some kind event needed to trigger it. Now I just have to figure out how to add it since I'm still a novice when it comes to blueprints.
@@TrashPraxis ua-cam.com/video/YUS_NRysB_g/v-deo.htmlsi=2kxIeb6dJyaDPgcQ so far the only way I have gotten it to successfully run when rendering out a cinematic was to compress the construction script down to a function, create a custom event that runs the function, and then in sequencer trigger that custom event. And that works and changes the animation where I want it to, but it leaves multiple still frames of a frozen animation in the same place.
My latest video show how to tick a bp in sequencer but it sounds like you have already figured this out
hey @TrashPraxis, awesome video! Question, is it possible to make the VAT animation compatible with more than 1 LOD? I feel I need to adjust the script in order to make it work. For instance I had a similar tool running at another DCC which preserves original points from LOD0 across all LODs and by doing that, VAT animation would work fine. I just dont know how to do it with this tool. Any piece of advice would be helpful.
Cheers,
Jose
Fantastic Video, thanks for this practical demonstration of such a powerful technique. One thing to mention for anyone trying this: Make sure the scale of the mesh matches the scale of your animation or it might come out warped.
Same here
Anim to Texture Material Param Names error in BP on Unreal 5.2.1
okay EUW_VAT_Utils_2-0.uasset-(second file) is working
always blown away at what UE users manage to pull off. Nice work.
Thank you
is the plugin work for 5.4.4 ?
Can you explain how to change the playrate? Playrate under Layer Parameters doesn't do anything and even when I change the playrate in the master material it still stays the same. Confused!
I don't really know without looking into it. Have a poke around that material. There is a section on the far left that is where the frame number to evaluate gets constructed
Nice tutorial, good insights.
Thanks!
Thank you for your tutorial!! I spent a substantial amount of time learning and trying the old VAT animation, but it had terrible mesh tearing problems that I couldn't solve.
I just needed to comment on the jitter you mentioned, I think you were right about the texture, and I think there's a workaround which I'll describe:
First I followed your tutorial right to the end, we will need the BonePosition Texture and Material Instance(s) created
Export the "BonePosition" Texture to PNG
Open Blender (I used v 3.4.1)
Delete camera, box, and light (probably not necessary)
Open "UV Editing" on the menu
Image -> New -> Alpha "checked", 32-bit Float "checked" (other settings don't matter)
Image -> Replace -> open the PNG exported above
Image -> Save As -> File Format "OpenEXR" -> RGBA, Float (full), Linear
In Unreal drag the new EXR file into your project
Open the EXR Texture, change: Texture Group to "UI", Never Stream "checked", sRGB "unchecked", Filter "Nearest"
Drag the new Texture into the Material Instance "Bone Position" slot to replace it
Tada! Much smoother.
I don't know enough to know how many of those settings are strictly necessary, but it worked quite well for me. For the imported EXR texture I used the same settings that the unreal VAT animation uses: docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/vertex-animation-tool---timeline-meshes-in-unreal-engine/
Thanks again, J
Thanks so much for this! Really great to know that it’s the texture bit depth. The asset tool ‘create asset’ is making an 8 bit texture and has no option to create a 16 or 32 bit. I will look to see if there is another way to create a texture asset in the Editor Utility so I can make one that is 16 or 32 bit, maybe with python
@@TrashPraxis Your tool is amazing, you have no idea how much time I've banged my head against the wall with the VAT animation using MS_VertexAnimationTools_MorphTargets method.
On the Blender texture, I think it also has to do the "wrapper" for the file format.
Originally I got it to work with opening an EXR texture from my old VAT project, then "Image -> Replace" with the PNG. That worked!
I didn't think that was a very friendly workaround (to start with an old VAT project), so I tried the Blender UV Editing "Open PNG" then simply "Save As" EXR, and it didn't work.
So then, creating a new texture in "UV Editing" then replacing with the PNG did work. It even works saving it EXR with half float, although in my mind having more precision is always good (maybe not for framerate on mass crowds, might have to test that as a tradeoff).
The strange thing is, the working texture looks lighter or slightly washed out compared to the original. A simple "Save As" from PNG to EXR looked exactly the same as the original (but didn't work). Weird.
Have you guys tried the function "Export to Disk"?
I tried half the day, but no success. I can save it in exr format, re-import and it will display the correct format (FloatRGB), but it's still jittery.
Maybe you find more. :3
@@yonjuunininjin I did try this but never saw FloatRGB like you. Are you re-encoding after you have a texture of the type FloatRGB? if not, try that
To elaborate further. I'm using UAnimToTextureBPLibrary::AnimationToTexture to generate the texture, then UImageWriteBlueprintLibrary::ExportToDisk, where I specify the export format with a compression quality of 1 (because that's what Unreal suggests). However, I can't call these 2 functions in the same frame, otherwise I get a blank 32x32 texture.
After that I manually import the texture again by dragging from windows explorer into unreal editor or using the re-import button inside the texture editor tab. That is giving me FloatRGB.
What do you mean by re-encoding?
I see some Source Color Settings inside the texture editor tab. There is an encoding override, but all 17 options lead to no success.
Thank you for sharing this awesome tut. Subscribed!
Hi! I followed your tutorial and used your asset and they all work really well!
I made a change to your script by adding 3 additional instanced static meshes for more variety; which also works fine.
The problem I'm seeing is that they only appear to be playing about 2 seconds of the animation (which is more like 20 seconds in total)
It seems like when I have the "Num Custom Data Floats" on each one set to 0 each instance plays the whole animation, but now each instance plays the animation with the same timing instead of being offset from each other. Setting this value to 5 offsets everything properly, but again, only plays a small portion of the animation.
Any idea how to fix this?
Thanks!
Hmm, well I’m not too sure but I think it’s possibly your custom data floats are not getting indexed correctly, like it’s offset by one. The anim length is one of the custom data floats if I recall correctly. I think you can inspect these floats but I don’t recall how. I have not touched this in quite a while. Sorry I can’t help more
@@TrashPraxis Thanks so much for getting back to me! Much appreciate the possible clues :)
@@TrashPraxis After some tinkering and reviewing your video again, TIL that I forgot to put the data asset on the Crowd BP 😅
Hope this helps someone in the future!
Hi, I'm trying to use more variety of static mesh for the crowd as well. Do you mind sharing how you did it?
@@easyonair_official Sure! Hard to explain without showing but I'll do my best:
I did it with 4 different models. Repeat the process of doing the animated static mesh for each model. Then in the BP_ Crowd you need to make an different Instanced Static Mesh for each mesh you want to include. In the construction script, where he has set static mesh, I made an array variable "Instanced Static Mesh " and using add unique nodes, I added each of those meshes to that array. Finally I copied everything connected to the 3rd execute pin of his sequence node and made 3 more copies and connected them to the 4th, 5th and 6th pins of the sequence node. Then go through and assign each of the models and data assets where necessary.
I know it's hard to parse how to do it with this vague description, but basically you're doing what he did, but you're scripting it to do it 3 more times, all at once. Let me know if you have any questions!
Hello, any update for 5.3, the newest update are not appear in UE, thank you.
Hi, as noted in the github readme, what I made and shared works in 5.1 and can be used as a guide. I have not needed this since then and therefore have not updated this. Best of luck!
Thanks for another cool video! I always love learning something new in unreal!
the problem with the extrange movement it's the division of the frames you have to divide 1 /24 if you have your animation in 24 fps and you will have it right
Where does 1/24 go?
Utility widget the one you provide and the one you show in video are completely different
I suspect you did not use the same engine version I was using. A generous user has updated it to UE 5.2. You could try again with that version and see how it goes