Got the Meshcapade plugin working in Unreal 4.26.2, would it be possible to supply the rigs, skeletal meshes and other plugin content exported to 4.26.2?

[Nightmask3]

Hello!

I'm currently at GDC and ran across Meshcapade on the show expo floor. Spoke to Alex who did such a good job explaining how Meshcapade worked by the way. I was quite impressed and wanted to do some testing to see if Meshcapade could be incorporated into my workflows.

I created a test animation from a video in Meshcapade and exported it as an FBX with Unreal 4 support. That all worked great. Meshcapade is super slick as a tool, great stuff!

I use Unreal 4.26.2 on my project, and got the plugin working in 4.26.2: Link to Repo

When trying to access the plugin content, specifically the rigs and skeletal meshes that would be needed to import the exported FBX from Mescapade, those folders show as empty:

This is probably because the content was saved in a later engine version, i.e ~5.3.

Coming to my request here finally: Would it be possible to get that content created for 4.26.2 so I can continue my testing?

Meshcapade seems quite promising and I'd love to have a solution that simplified creating bespoke animations for cutscenes/cinematics. Happy to clarify any of this if needed and help with the process however I can.

Thanks!
Sai

[nathan-meshcapade]

Hi @Nightmask3
First, sorry for the late reply. Things were crazy during GDC and this fell off my radar.

I don't think we'll be able to get a 4.26 version of the plugin out anytime soon, but there's good news. The content in those folders is only there to help make retargeting faster. It doesn't actually prohibit you from doing anything. Those folders contain the UE5 mannequin and retargeting assets from our body to the unreal mannequin.

That means for UE 5.3+, with the plugin, you can immediately retarget motions from our bodies onto the UE5 mannequin. Then we'd expect people to either already have retargeters off of the UE5 mannequin, or to build their own retargeter from our body to theirs, using those assets. Getting the .fbx you want off of the platform is the main part of it. Once you do that, you can bring it into 4.26, make your own retargeter, and go from there. If this is unclear, I'd suggest running your fbx through the process in Unreal 5.3 with the plugin, just to see exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not familiar with retargeting before unreal 5.0, but if I remember correctly, it changed significantly in 5.0.

The 5.3 readme is here: https://me.digitesting.meshcapade.com/integrations/unreal