CP77 Tutorial Retargeting Animations in Blender

Summary

Published: April 2023 by PinkyJulien (original link) Last documented edit: Jan 2025 by manavortex

This guide will teach you how to retarget game animations for other armatures. It assumes that you're generally familiar with the process.

Wait, this is not what I want!

To learn about making animations, check the Animations category, such as

• Poses/Animations: make your own

• AMM: Collab anims/poses

You can also check the Retargeting Tutorial by Halkuonn, which uses a different plugin. This is most useful for single frame poses, but won't work for animations!

Requirements

• You need to have a Wolvenkit Project

• The guide requires a Blender plugin and a pose template; the steps below will walk you through that.

1. Installing the Rokoko Plugin

As of January 2025, the plugin is free, but requires you to have a Rokoko account.

1. Download the Rokoko Plugin from its official website

1. Install it like any Blender AddOn (for a step-by-step guide, follow the instructions under Installing the Wolvenkit Blender Plugin -> Step 1: Install the plugin
2. Create an account This is completely free and you can sign in via your Google account

Once signed in, you can return to blender

For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll focus on the Retargeting tab

Close up everything else 👀

2. Gathering Files

This tutorial will retarget Alex's dance to the MaleAverage rig. If you retarget something else, download the necessary files.

The pose template

You need to download Angy's pose templates. You can find the most recent link under Easy IK based Posing -> Requirements

Download the desired template and open it in Blender.

The animation

1. Add the .anims file that you want to your Wolvenkit project. This guide will use alex's dance: ep1\animations\quest\main_quests\q304\q304_04e_alex_heart_to_heart\body\q304_04e_alex_heart_to_heart__alex.anims

2. Export the animation (see WKit Blender Plugin: Import/Export -> Animations)

3. Import the animation into Blender

see WKit Blender Plugin: Import/Export -> Animations

For the sake of this tutorial, I renamed the MaleAverage armature to MA and Alex' animation to ALEX

3.1. Selecting the animation

1. Select the source armature (Alex)

2. Open the CP77 Modding tool

3. Open the Animation Tools menu

4. The Animsets list will be populated with all animations available for the current armature

1. Click the Play button of any animation that you want to retarget

2. You should see the armature bones move to the chosen anim (the model will not move):

1. Press space or the pause button ⏸ on the timeline to stop the anim

4. Actual retargeting

4.1 Configuring the Rokoko Plugin

1. Select your Target Armature, in my case MA

2. Open the Rokoko tab

3. focus on the Retargeting menu

   1. Source: The source armature (Alex)

   2. Target: The target armature (MA)

1. Press Build Bone List

4.2 Double-checking and cleanup

Since we’re retargeting a CP77 anim to another rig, the bones share the same names between the armatures, making this step really easy - However I still recommend reading through the list and verifying that everything does match!

I recommend leaving the Root, Trajectory and Reference_Joint empty regardless of the type of animation you’re retargeting

Adjustments

For example, we can see that the LeftUpLeg and RightUpLeft doesn’t automatically match; to fix that, simply click on the miss-matching bones names and select the right ones

4.3 Push the button

1. Check the Auto Scale box

2. Make sure that Use Pose: has the Rest pose selected

1. Press Retarget Animation

1. Your Template model should automatically get into a pose

2. press space or the start button ▶ on the timeline to see the animation!

You might see some deformation or bones breaking; that’s ok! It won’t happen in game (don’t ask me how, it’s Engine Magic ✨)

4.1 Optional: Delete all animations

This will make it easier to keep track of your animation in Wolvenkit:

4.2 Adjusting the time frame

If your animation loops or is cut off in the middle, change your timeline frame zone with the exact amount of frame in the animation

From there, follow the regular Pose Making workflow (you can find step-by-step instructions under Poses/Animations: make your own -> Step 2: Creating the animation)

5. Importing into Wolvenkit

We still need a container (.anims file) to import into.

For male average anims, I recommend using this file:

base\animations\npc\generic_characters\male_average\interactive_scene\generic_male_average__stand__2h_on_sides__02.anims

since it has a single animation and is easy to clean.

TODO: Port the second half of https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nHPQvkK6ijwb8iQ8y1X8CBG-wnNUCTYCjrdUCGMenW4/edit?tab=t.0 (the importer shat itself, so it's a carbon copy anyway)