Babylon.js

Verified with Babylon.js 9.33 on every sample export (spike 1, reports/spike-1.md), headless: on a NullEngine under Bun, so nothing was rendered. Skinning was checked by computing it on the CPU from Babylon's own bone matrices.

Babylon's own glTF loader (@babylonjs/loaders) reads a Dramatis export as is: one skeleton of 65 bones, every mesh skinned to it, the face units as morph targets, PBR materials, and a third-party clip moving the bones and the skin.

(The creator itself runs on Babylon through tosijs-3d. This page is about loading an exported character into your own Babylon scene.)

Load

import '@babylonjs/loaders/glTF'
import { SceneLoader } from '@babylonjs/core'

const { meshes, skeletons } = await SceneLoader.ImportMeshAsync(
  '', '/characters/', 'hero.glb', scene
)
const skeleton = skeletons[0]                      // 65 bones
const body = scene.getMeshByName('body')!

• Bone names are kept exactly, Mixamo's mixamorig:Hips included.
• Babylon is left-handed: the loader puts everything under a __root__ node that converts from glTF's right-handed axes. Leave __root__ alone and move the character by parenting __root__ to your own node.

Facial expressions

The 59 face units are morph targets, named as in the export format. One unit can live on several meshes (the body, teeth and tongue all carry JawDrop): set them together.

function setUnit(unit: string, value: number) {
  for (const m of meshes) {
    const t = m.morphTargetManager?.getTargetByName(unit)
    if (t) t.influence = value
  }
}

Playing UAL animations

The skeleton has UAL's rest frames, so UAL's clips play by bone name. Load UAL's file into the same scene, then clone its animation group onto your character's bones. The glTF loader animates the transform node linked to each bone, so map to bone.getTransformNode(). Keep rotations for every bone and positions for root and pelvis only:

const ual = await SceneLoader.ImportMeshAsync('', '/anims/', 'UAL1.glb', scene)
const source = ual.animationGroups.find((g) => g.name === 'Walk_Loop')!
const byName = new Map(skeleton.bones.map((b) => [b.name, b]))
const walk = source.clone('walk', (old) =>
  byName.get(old.name)?.getTransformNode() ?? null
)
for (const ta of [...walk.targetedAnimations]) {
  const keep =
    ta.animation.targetProperty === 'rotationQuaternion' ||
    ['root', 'pelvis'].includes(ta.target?.name)
  if (!ta.target || !keep) walk.removeTargetedAnimation(ta.animation)
}
walk.start(true)
ual.meshes.forEach((m) => m.dispose())           // UAL's own mannequin

UAL's pelvis keys hold the mannequin's hip height. On a much taller or shorter character, scale the pelvis position keys by the ratio of the hips' heights or the feet will float or sink (on the 2.2 m sample the head travels 55 cm during the walk unscaled, 11 cm scaled: the body sinks to the mannequin's hip height).

For clips made on other skeletons, tosijs-3d's retarget-babylon module retargets by bone map.

Materials

Every mesh gets a PBRMaterial. Hair, brows and teeth are alpha-tested (glTF MASK). The creator's skin scattering does not travel.