Is there simple straight forward way to get mocaps on to APEX control rigs?
Simple and straight forward is not spending 30 minutes per setup following tutorial using bunch of nodes that will or will not sue in case of your rig?
There are two tutorials I've found not a single one I managed to get to work...

Is it really impossible to create tool in Houdini that will ease pain and make this process straight forward and without need to be both animation and rigger but to enable simple animators to get tot work as soon as possible?
Makes sense ?

hello, have a look at the violet tutorial https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/project-violet/ [www.sidefx.com] , chapter 6.1. it uses the rigcopytransforms node instead of he fullbodyik, but both work. the setup are just some nodes, nothing complicated. They explain it really well.
the violet project is anyway a good watch
give it a try

It would be great if this actually worked with the latest versions of Unreal (5.7.4) and the MetaHuman for Houdini plugin 1.2.53 but I'm having a very hard time with it, at least with the facial animations part.
The export of animation data on the Unreal side has changed in such a way i think that at least the project violet setup does not work anymore, names don't match. Just using the add facial animation metahuman sop is not working neither. The dict that is made with python in there seems to work but the naming is off, most controls are now called "something Curve" and I can't find what the Apex add animation from parameters actually expects to change the python so it makes the right detail dict atribute.

Or....I'm just doing the whole exporting part in Unreal completely wrong, even though I followed this: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/metahuman/animating-your-character-with-apex#faceboardanimation-2 [dev.epicgames.com]

Hello,the Metahuman Performance Window to export the facial capture, and the only way that worked was selecting the Face or Face_ControlBoardRig and right click it then You get the right fbx export in the right click menu. You con load this with the latest release of the metahuman houdini plugin.
I struggled first, but this was due to a strange double installation of the plugin in the houdini otl directory. so after cleaning everything, updating everything worked on the first go with the add facial animation metahuman sop

Thanks, I think that is exactly what I did, but I'm going to tripple-check now.

Damn, you're a wizard. In the documentation it is written: In Sequencer, select Export...etc...
But from the MetaHuman Performance window, that's a whole different story. Now it works!
Thanks a lot, you have no idea how much time I wasted on this....

Maybe I know better than You think . Very glad I could help.

sanostol
Maybe I know better than You think . Very glad I could help.

Haha, true, that must be experience talking then ;-)

Now don't tell me that something like this cant be done in Houdini for us normal humans to use

Or something like mgear for maya to have in Houdini to rig if you are not savant

sanostol
violet tutorial

Help me about violet tutorial please~
my issue [www.sidefx.com]

hello, sorry for the delay,
nut sure where to help, did Your find it? Where do You have problems?
there are project files and tons of great videos, explaining everything.
You might get updated unreal hdas now, but for example the face animation part got even easier with the updated ones

Martin

I can definitely understand the frustration. For something as common as retargeting mocap to a control rig, the setup still feels more complex than it probably needs to be. It would be great to have a streamlined workflow or an official tool that handles the mapping automatically for standard APEX rigs, so animators can spend more time refining motion instead of rebuilding the setup every project.

Has anyone here created a reusable HDA or template that speeds this process up?

Actually, H22 made the whole process easier and more straightforward with the recipe. It works fine now, really pleasantly surprised!