Rokoko Studio 2.4.0

Rokoko Studio 2.4.0 introduces retargeting, character import and much more

 

Updates to Rokoko Studio: 

We're thrilled to announce the release of Rokoko Studio v 2.4.0, bringing you exciting new features and significant enhancements.

Here's a quick summary:

· Import & Retarget Custom Characters (Plus & Pro plans)

· Experimental Livestreaming for VRChat and VMC

· Start/Stop Recording UDP Trigger Messages

· Separate SSP Sensor Firmware Updates for Smartsuit Pro users

· Revamped UI, new animation framework, and much more!

· Also, we've updated our subscription plans. Visit rokoko.com/pricing for details.

Time to set a new (re)target

Our ambition with Rokoko Studio is to continuously update it to improve your motion capture and 3D animation experience and pipeline, and with this release, we're adding an important feature to that process: Retargeting.

With Retargeting and the related Character Import, you can now playback live or recorded motion on any kind of Character and not just our Newton. Previously, you had to do this via other 3D applications, but now it can be done straight from Rokoko Studio.

There's also plenty of other new features to dig into, like the ability to copy scenes (which now allows you to access scenes made by other members of your team), UDP trigger messages for start/stop recording, new experimental livestreaming protocols for VRChat and VMC, as well as loads of improvements and bug fixes.

We hope you enjoy and as always, remember to share your thoughts and impressions

· Discord (general feedback, issues, etc.)

· Productboard (feature requests and upvoting)

IMPORTANT: With this release, we've updated our subscription plans, meaning that some features and functionality is now restricted for the Plus or Pro plans. You can find more information on the new subscription plans here.

New features

• Import Custom Characters
  • You can now import Custom Characters into your scenes. Note that this is a paid feature, requiring a Plus Plan for your team, as of now.
  • You can currently import .fbx files, with one character pr. file, and range of bonemap formats are supported.
• Retarget to Custom Characters
  • You can now retarget your Actor - either the live motion or in recorded clips - to a Custom Character.
  • This is a fairly "simple" Retargeting feature, mainly intended to help you visualize your motion capture on other meshes. There's a few options and configurations to tweak the result, but it's not intended to be an advanced Retargeting feature.
  • When you have Actor retargeted to a Character, only one of them will be Visible at a time - and it's the Visible object of the two that will be included in Exports and Livestreaming. When retargeted, the Character's position will also be relative to the Actor it's retargeted from.
• Copy/duplicate scenes
  • You can duplicate any existing scene, also setting it to a different project or team member as creator.
• Start/Stop Recording UDP Trigger Messages
  • You can now enable UDP Trigger Messages to send and receive notifications when you start and stop recording.
  • This can be used to integrate with e.g. OBS to start and stop screen captures synced with your recordings.
• Experimental livestreaming for VRChat and VMC
  • You can select VRChat and VMC data protocols in the Custom livestreaming settings. This is still experiemental and needs additional testing.
• Sensor firmware info and actions for Smartsuit Pro
  • For Smartsuit Pro's, you can now see and update hub and sensor firmware info and ctions separately.
  • In case your sensors are stuck in different boot states, you can now also force them all to bootloader mode and then re-install the firmware to restore them to their functional state.
• Other new features:
  • You can now see and sort by most recently edited/updated scenes in the Dashboard
  • You can now see all projects and scenes created by any team member and add scenes to the same project.
    • Note: it is not (yet) possible to open scenes created by another team member - but you can copy it and set yourself as the creator.
  • A zoom-level slider has been added to the Timeline.
  • New iClone export skeleton preset (adds and uses a new relaxed T-pose that's compatible with iClone)
  • You can now turn off user feedback UI/questions in Settings.
  • New keyboard/mouse shortcuts for the Timeline:
    • Scroll to zoom
    • Scroll to move frame forwards/backwards
    • Scroll to move zoomed-in view left/right

Improvements

• Several performance optimizations across the application lifecycle, which should greatly avoid performance reduction over time while having Rokoko Studio open, thus fixing the potential stutter every ~3 seconds.
• We have implemented a new animation framework and optimized how we store recorded clips, so they're now 3-4x smaller than before.
• A new and improved data framework has been implemented that should improve performance and reduce errors when creating, deleting, updating and syncing any type of data in Studio.
• User Interface
  • We've revamped the Scene Outliner and the Scene Toolbar to be easier to use, less intrusive and more streamlined. The functionality and UX is also more consistent across all entries in the outliner. A presentation mode toggle button has also been added to the Scene Toolbar.
  • We've revamped the UI/UX for paid, unavailable features to be less intrusive and more informative.
• Camera improvements
  • Camera Follow is now no longer deactivated when changing only camera rotation via e.g. shortcuts, or selecting another scene object, and Camera Follow also doesn't change the existing camera rotation.
  • You can now move the camera around in the scene using keyboard buttons (W, A, S, D + Q, E) without holding down the right mouse button.
• The logic for when the user feedback questions are shown has been reworked, so it's far less frequent.
• You're now being greeted and bid farewell by a random message - be sure to see them all! :) 

Fixed issues

General

• Fixed a low-level issue that caused the application to not launch/initialize for users running in some non-English languages containing non-ASCII characters.

Auto-updater

• The auto-updater now always checks if there's missing or corrupted files upon start and re-adds them if needed.
• The auto-updater now shows download progression accurately.

Rokoko Video

• Fixed an issue with Rokoko Video generated clips, where the time between the start of a clip and the first footlock effectively acted as a footlock.

Scene View

• Fixed an issue with the clip playback state is not stopped/paused when navigating away from the scene or exiting Clip View.
• "Camera Follow" is no longer deactivated when using mouse control shortcuts that only change the camera rotation/orientation, e.g. orbit around selected camera.
• Fixed an issue with a changed Actor position not being saved.
• Updating the position of Actors while in Clip View no longer modifies the Actor's position in the Live View.
• Fixed an issue where the timeline wouldn't properly display the first time you entered Clip View in a session.
• Fixed an issue where the active clip could be deleted while in Clip View.

Export

• Fixed issue with the root motion extract and alignment when using it in Unreal Engine
• You can now no longer extract root motion for .bvh exports, since it's not supported.
• Updated the "Export from time zero" option to be called "Use Clip Start Time as Time Zero" and fixed the underlying logic, to ensure the option is more accurate in terms of what it actually does.
• Fixed a minor typo in the Unreal Engine skeleton naming set (thigh_L renamed to thigh_l).
• Mouse scroll wheel now works properly to scroll the Export section, when it's hovered.
• File paths with non-English/ASCII characters can now be selected as the export path.
• Fixed an issue where exporting a clip with invalid characters could cause Studio to crash.

Actor Presets

• Measurement values in Actor Presets are now constrained within defined min/max values, similar to editing the Actor Profile of an Actor in the scene.

Offline Mode / Sync Framework

• Fixed an issue where the sync status panel will be empty if you open a new scene before all pending changes in the previous scene has finished syncing.
• Scenes that has not previously been synced locally are now no longer available to open while offline; previously, you would just open an empty scene.
• Fixed an issue where starting Studio in offline mode always had the team role for yourself and anyone in your active team set as Viewer.

Dashboard

• The "Add Project" button on the projects page is no longer always disabled.

Device Setup & Configuration

• Fixed an issue with the scanned Wi-Fi networks sometimes containing duplicate, invalid or empty entries.
• Fixed an issue where device initialization would fail on some computers, especially Mac's, since the USB commands were only fired once and didn't retry in case of initial failing.

Command API

• Fixed an issue with the StopRecording command's timecode parameter not trimming the recorded clip.