Zeroing

As you have probably noticed the weapon is not sitting right in the hand. You may be surprised to learn that after centering it, your not guaranteed it will look right. That's where Live Retargeting Comes in. A lot of people assume that if the Skeleton is the Same and the characters come from the Same Source, that retargeting an animation will just work. This isn't true, Retargeting is so simple that you could explain it to a 4th Grader and they would understand the principle behind it. There is nothing Sophisticated or Mysterious about how Retargeting works, and because it's so simple, it doesn't do a good job when it comes to Precise Hand Placement. This becomes more apparent when two-hands are needed to be very precisely placed on an object. Anatomy differences will inevitably result in offsets that are in no way avoidable and regardless of how sophisticated the Retargeting Technique is, it will never be able to overcome this obstacle, at least not until AI Completely replaces the need for it altogether. First off start the game and toggle the Aim so that it stays aiming and eject by pressing F8 on your keyboard. If your unsure how, go to Content->DAO->Input and open the IMC_Sandbox_DAO At the very bottom you will see an Input Action named IA_DAO_Debug_Aim, this will toggle Aiming On/Off Go to your PDA_HeldObjectSettings File for this weapon, you can also navigate too it from the Chooser that is assigned to your character which holds all these References. Open the PDA_HeldObjectOffset file and adjust how it's held in the hand. I usually try to orient it so that the top of the gun is parallel to the top of the hand. Open up the PDA_LiveRetargeting Asset that is Assigned the DAO.HeldObject.Stance.Aim Gameplay Tag and Expand the Right Arm Section. For this part you will want to have an Output Log Opened that doesn't close Automatically. (You May Want To Right-Click And 'Clear Log' As Well) Fire your Weapon towards the Horizon (Try to not offset the aim during this), you will see a Line Trace as well as some numbers print out into the bottom of the screen. The Blue Line Trace = Direction The Gun Is Actually Facing. The Green Line Trace = The Center of The Screen. The Numbers = The Angular Offset Between The Two. Copy The Numbers As Shown, but Invert Them. For Example 5 would be -5, -5 would be --5 (since two negatives make a positive). You can do arithmetic operations in the vector fields. For Example if the value in the Vector's Z field is -5 and you enter -5 + 10, the resulting value will be 5. If this causes the gun to aim further away then it may be that your character's bones are retargeting funny and something may be wrong. So far I have only seen characters from 1 source have this problem and they turned out to have Rigging Problems. I usually fire two more times, you'll see now I am aiming closer to Center....In Some cases I have had to do this several times but that normally has to do with Retargeting and if you Matched the Base Poses or Not. Another cause of this can be the Weapon's Orientation, if you didn't fix your Weapon's Orientation then rotating it a lot and offsetting it's Roll in the characters hand will lead to some amount of Error in the Debugger Calculations that are printing out. I personally have decided that Matching the Base Poses in a lot of case will cause those characters to take on the POSTURE of the other Character. If you want to Preserve your characters posture you may not want to try and Match the Base Poses any more then they already are. I would reserve this only for character's that absolutely need it or the retarget will really jack things up. After your satisfied with the Accuracy towards Aiming Center, you can move on to correcting the actual Static Local Offset. (DO NOT ADJUST THE STATIC OFFSET, IT WILL CAUSE THE HANDS TO OFFSET IN SUCH A WAY THAT WHEN YOU AIM UP THEY WILL BE FURTHER FORWARD OR BACK AND WILL DESYNCHRONIZE THEM.) After you are satisfied and have reduced clipping issues you can move on to the Left Hand. It's Important to Note that an Ant can not hold an Airplane up off the ground with his left hand on it's Nose and it's Right Hand on it's Tail.....Neither Can A Short Character hold the Barrel of a Sniper Rifle if it's Really Huge.....so you can either try to make your own modified version of these Poses that are more appropriate for characters with short arms (I'll have a video on creating custom poses, but I'll have a section here where I show you how to add them to a Linked Anim Layer Child Class) or you can scale it down from the PDA_HeldObjectOffset file. After your done you may or may not be satisfied with the Fingers. I will Document the Process for Addressing that Later. Basically though you will use the IK Retargeter Assigned to your Character to Retarget the Animation's from the UEFN to That Character. You will make your Modifications on that using the Control Rig or the Animation Software of your Choice (iClone/Maya/Cascadeur/Etc). Then you will Retarget it Back to the UEFN and Assign those to a Linked Anim Layer Child which you will Link to your Character's ActionData Asset for that Weapon.