Import Custom Character & Retargeting
MOVIN Studio allows you to retarget captured motion data to custom 3D characters, enabling personalized, natural animations tailored to your character’s proportions and skeleton.
Important Notes
MOVIN Studio supports importing characters in .fbx and .vrm formats. However, please note that materials and textures are not imported—only skeletal data is used for retargeting.
Importing .fbx files may fail in the following cases:
The file does not contain any mesh data.
The skeleton does not include a hip joint.
The skeleton includes a hip joint, but it is improperly named (e.g., multiple joints named "hip" exist in the hierarchy).
The hip joint has no parent joint, breaking the skeleton hierarchy.
The upper and lower body joints are under separate hierarchies.
There are typos or duplicate names in the bone structure.
Other issues related to non-standard skeleton structures or naming conventions.
Below are commonly supported skeleton hierarchies and bone naming conventions officially supported by MOVIN Studio. For best results, download the samples below and modify your character's joint hierarchy and bone names to match these standards:
Import Character
To import a character into MOVIN Studio, go to the 'Retargeting' tab and click the 'Import Character' button.
Your custom character will appear alongside the MovinMan skeleton for visual comparison and retargeting.
Rename / Delete Character
To rename an imported character, click 'Rename'.
To remove a character, click 'Delete'.
Change Character
To switch to a different character, click the 'Character' dropdown and select another character from the list.
To reset to the default MOVIN skeleton, choose 'Default'.
Actor Transparency
If you want to view only the custom character on screen or inspect how bones are mapped, use the 'Actor Transparency' slider to adjust the visibility of the underlying actor skeleton.
Bone Mapping
When you import a character, MOVIN Studio attempts to automatically map bones between the custom skeleton and the internal MOVINMan skeleton. If you notice unusual or missing motion data in certain joints, check the bone mapping setting.
Go to the 'Character' tab, and click the 'Bone Mapping' button to review how joints are paired.
If any dropdown shows a '-' symbol, that joint failed to map.
Click the dropdown and manually assign the correct joint.
If your character uses a non-standard skeleton hierarchy (e.g., includes twist bones, IK bones, or cloth/hair bones), automatic mapping may fail. In such cases, please share your character file with the MOVIN team via Discord—we’ll be happy to help you configure it properly.
Control Offset
Some character models, especially stylized ones like SD characters, may result in awkward poses—such as hands intersecting with the head due to exaggerated proportions.
To fix this, Go to the 'Additional' tab and click 'Control Offset' button under 'Data Adjustment'. Adjust the character's base pose until the posture looks natural.
For more detailed guidance on adjusting the base pose, please refer to the Adjust Mocap Data page.
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