Troubleshoot animation retargeting
 
 
 

Jittering motion in one or more limbs

Cause

This may occur when the difference between the orientation of the source and target skeleton’s limbs at their neutral poses is too great.

For example, if a source and target skeletons neutral pose resembled a marching pose, and the source skeleton had its left leg forward and its right leg back and the target skeleton had its right leg forward and its left leg back, then the retarget solver would not be able to compensate for the extreme differences between the source and target skeleton’s neutral poses.

Solution

  1. Rotate the limbs of your source and target skeletons so that they have similar orientations.
  2. Set a new neutral pose for both skeletons.

    See Set a skeleton’s neutral pose.

  3. Retarget the animation.

    See Retarget animation from one skeleton to another.

Arms and/or legs are crossed or at strange angles

Cause

This may occur when your source and target skeleton’s are not facing in the same direction at their neutral poses. For example, at their neutral poses the source skeleton is facing down the x-axis and the target skeleton is facing down the y or z-axis.

Solution

  1. Position your source and target skeletons so that they are both facing in the same direction.
  2. Set a new neutral pose for both skeletons.

    See Set a skeleton’s neutral pose.

  3. Retarget the animation.

    See Retarget animation from one skeleton to another.

A spine joint in the skeleton bends 90 degrees after the solve

Cause

This may occur when one or both the source and target skeletons are missing head or neck joints labels.

Solution

  1. Make sure that there are head or neck labels on both your source and target skeletons. If there are none, then label the appropriate joints as heads or necks.
  2. Set a new neutral pose for both skeletons.

    See Set a skeleton’s neutral pose.

  3. Retarget the animation.

    See Retarget animation from one skeleton to another.

Joints in the target skeleton are rotating on the wrong axes

Cause

This may occur when the joints in the target skeleton do not have the same types of labels as those in the source skeleton. The retarget solver depends on a specific sequence of joints. If you disrupt this sequence, for example, by labeling a series of joints as Spine-Spine-Head instead of the correct Spine-Neck-Head, then the retarget will sometimes produce undesirable results.

Solution

When labeling skeletons, do not skip any joints and make sure that the source and target skeletons have the same types of labels.