Retargeting Animation to different model

[Anonymous]

Hi, I am currently animating a deer which I have built and rigged from scratch. Now I want to animate it and found some fbx templates I have from a different deer, this one is slightly more realistic and a bit lower but there's not a huge difference. When I have my deer opened and import the fbx animation from the other deer, I just get an animated joint system next to my deer. However, when I have the deer template open that it originally belongs to, it automatically translates the animation to the object.

How can I achieve the same with my deer? 

Thank you very much, if anybody could help me, it would mean a lot to me! 

[cmills7920]

So there are a few problems here. First is the rig the exact same on both deers? Look at the naming conventions on the bones and controllers. If they're not the same you're going to get weird results even if you manually rename them. If the rig is the same click on the controllers individually and copy the keyframes. Then click on the controller's counterpart on the other rig and paste the keyframes. Ensure you put them in the exact same spot on the timeline. If the rig and controllers are not the same then you can't copy paste nothin'. 

[mcw0]

FBX files are interesting in that if the scene contains nodes that are named the same as in the FBX file, those nodes will be replaced by the nodes in the FBX file.  If there aren't matching names, then you get the results you described.  A separate animated joint system.

If you want to transfer animation from one rig to another, you will have to find matching nodes to transfer animation.  But if you don't have matching nodes (different rigs), you can still try constraining nodes that do the same thing.  Such as the foot controls.  Parent constrain the same foot control from the animated rig to the new rig and bake out the animation.  Do this to as many matchable controls as you can.