Mixamo Control Rig-Multiple FBX animations on one rigged character

[matthartman]

So I'm slowly getting back into character anim, and I've been playing around with the Mixamo pipeline in Maya 2020.2.

So if I do the standard Mixamo pipeline, i.e. import a Mixamo jointed (not control rigged) mesh and add various Mixamo FBX animations through the time editor everything is perfectly fine and standard as you'd expect. I can import multiple FBX animations, move them around, crossfade, etc. etc. All fine and good.

My issue is if I apply the Mixamo control rig script/UI, obviously I get the control rig as you'd expect. This of course renames everything, creates targets, constraints, splines, etc. It also renames the skeleton joints. So as directed I use the control rig interface to "Import Amination to Control Rig" This too works as intended, it imports an FBX animation and applies it to the rig.

Here's my challenge. I want to import multiple FBX animations to a single control rigged character, much like you would with the standard Mixamo workflow using the time editor. The Mixamo documentation is a bit lacking in this regard and after hours of trial and error I can't faithfully devise a solution to this. And I can't find a single reference online either.

The weird thing is last night I was able to achieve this by experimenting with these steps:

1. Run the control rig script

2. Under the Animate tab select "Import Animation to Control Rig (animation comes in)

3. Select the "Bake Animation to Controls" button. (This action runs the animation twice)

4. In Maya's Time Editor under the File menu I select, "Add animation from the scene selection". This eventually creates a generically named animation clip title, "anim_Clip1". The keys are successfully transferred to this clip.

5. I mute the track and create another one below it

6. I go to import a different FBX animation using steps 2. The character then inherits the new FBX animation without any issues. I repeated steps 3-4 and created another animation clip called "anim_Clip2". I was then able to move both clips around, each with their own respective animation as you'd normally expect. Cool! This is exactly what I'm looking for.

Cool that is until tonight. I'm doing exactly the same workflow but getting VERY different results. Tonight two things are happening. After I create the first clip then try to repeat that process the animation is not coming in properly (Translations are horribly off) or nothing is happening at all besides creating an empty folder in the outliner called "group".

I feel like because I'm getting very inconsistent results that I may be doing this incorrectly.

If anyone knows how to go about this process I'd greatly, greatly appreciate your guidance. I need the ability to have multiple FBX animations with a control rig using the Mixamo pipeline.

I should add that I also tried to first mix my animations and then apply the control rig, but this completely removes all the previous animations.

[matthartman]

Figured out a fix, maybe?

I went into the "AnimData_joint_GRP" folder where the joints have been renamed after the auto control rigging process. I changed the namespace for the joints back to "mixamorig" and now I can add multiple FBX animations to the Time Editor as you normally would.

All the rigging controls stay intact and everything seems to be working exactly as desired so far. This didn't seem to break any connections:

Test

Next step, multiple characters rigged in one scene with the ability to apply multiple FBX animations to each...

I'm posting this for others that might have a similar issue.

[daiduc5F91]

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[matthartman]

Is that an acronym for something enlightening?