Metahuman Animator - Combine Face and Body Animation (UE 5.3)

[@itsyigitersoy]

Tested on 5.3.2, it's working. Thank you very much bro, after watched tons of tutorials about this, obviously this is the best and the easiest one.

[@grit-mike]

Great video. Appreciate the summary of the steps as well!

[@magnetvfx]

after so many tutorial this makes my day thanks man

[@FizykaOdPodstaw]

help! everything worked and is connected with brilliance. Even in the camera preview (in sequencer). But when you include the recording of the scenes in an "avi" file (in same sequencer), suddenly the head is separated from the body, which is revealed in the film. What to do?

[@FizykaOdPodstaw]

problem solved. it was necessary to move the green "playback range" line slightly to the left to times below zero 😂

[@snehildiwan3236]

Thanks a lot!! I was looking for the solution from last 2 days

[@KharyFiler]

I love, love, love this. Thank you for sharing!

[@davidvideostuff]

Tested on 5.4.2 !!! It works !!! You rock Dude !!!

[@giovannispano1537]

I'm going to try your metohd! If it works you're a genius!! :)

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Sooo.... Am I a genius?

[@MatthewWarnerVA]

Fantastic!

[@OMGITSGB]

this is.... this works... holy fuck. I have been trying to get this shit to work forEVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Thank you so much for explaining where the neck rotations were, that is such a life saver! Your awesome!

[@ulasonat5042]

can I use this obtained animation in a animation montage, without the sequencer?

[@davidvideostuff]

Thx dude !!! Excellent !!!

[@SadPanda449]

This is fantastic! Thank you. One thing, though-- When I do this, my control rig disappears following, which sort of removes my ability to easily update my animations after. How do I bring this back?

[@emdo.unlimited555]

The control rig disappears following what? This might be convoluted but if all else fails, export the animation at the stage you like and re-bake it to the control rig.

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Tested on the livesetream, click on the control rig layer in sequencer and the control rig should re-appear.

[@sergiogonzalez2611]

@@emdo.unlimited555 wonderfull tutorial man, i have just one question if i want to make and aditive animacion for the eyes so they can focus in one site i coudl make that?

[@im4999]

Thanks. It seems to work.. I think. Couldn't make it work with other methods (version 5.3.2).

[@michaelmuhlen3253]

Did you test it also with 5.2? I can´t make it work there- The head rotation isnt´ baked to the body control rig. the keyframes stay empty.

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Not specifically, sorry. I had already upgraded my projects to 5.3 by the time I made the video

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Just tested on the livestream. Works with 5.2.

[@asaadalshahin6519]

is there any SIMPLE way to find more "headless" animations that we can use on the metahumans? instead of just the stock "3rd person" ones?

[@emdo.unlimited555]

I'm not sure, I motion capture my own. I used a stock animation here for people to follow along more easily

[@AstraWorlds]

Love this! Do you know how to get body and combined facial animations onto Fortnite characters to use as talking NPCs? I'd be happy to hire you to do it and show me how!

[@emdo.unlimited555]

I haven't played around with UEFN yet but I can't see why not in principle. Also, if you're asking about Metahuman Animator-level fidelity on non-Metahumans, I don't think that's possible yet for non-expert hobbyists. Throw me an email and we can explore!

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Played around with it and it looks fairly straighforward to add animations to imported MetaHumans. Hit me up if you still want to connect.

[@artemryakin6214]

Tell me what to do if in version 5.4, when adding facial animation, the head flies away from the body?

[@emdo.unlimited555]

@@artemryakin6214 flies? Or is detached? For detached heads, one thing to ensure is there are no gaps between the animation sequence and the beginning and end (green and red marker lines) of the camera cut. I went through it somewhere on a livestream. Let me know if that works

[@arampity6048]

Hi bro how I can speak with you

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Drop me a line at [e-mail]

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Drop me a line. My gmail is emdo.unlimited

[@josiahgil]

Which i phone was used here ? The results are nice

[@emdo.unlimited555]

IPhone X and above for live face mocap, iPhone 12 and above for the offline Metahuman Animator's more realistic renders. This one's the iPhone 12 Mini. I've found the trick is syncing the audio and video. Video captures typically have a delay relative to the audio captures and guesswork is needed to get it just right.

[@josiahgil]

@@emdo.unlimited555 thanks, I'm happy to hear i can get good results with u phone 12 mini

[@brigu88]

What would happen if my body animation has a head rotation? Will that override things? I have a walking and talking animation and i want to add my facial animation with head rotation. Im not sure if it will keep the head live link rotation or it will use the rotation inside the body animation? I hope i explained myself

[@emdo.unlimited555]

As the neck rotation from the facial mocap is put on an additive layer, the motions should be combined with the body's head rotations. Although make sure the body animation and head animation aren't making extreme moves in the same direction!

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Tested on the livestream, I can confirm the motions will be combined. So if the original body animation has the head moving left and right and the facial animation has the head moving up and down, this method will yield an animation that has the head moving left and right while moving up and down. One will not replace the other. The livechat comments and timestamps on the transcript will help

[@valoulou]

Dude you are a genius, thank you so much! Great solution for an annoying problem. However, It seems that if I move the character to another location in the scene, then it breaks the animation (the face is not moving, the head is floating above the body) Any idea how to move the character without breaking everything?

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Keep an eye out or try: 1. When you get the combined animation just right, export as a (singular) animation sequence and apply this sequence to the Metahuman to work with rather than moving a Metahuman with a collection of facial animations and stacked control rigs 2. In the level sequence, make sure the camera cuts encompass the beginning and end of the sequence (i.e. the green and red markers). Basically, if there's no camera view to record/render, floating heads can happen 2. Close and restart the Engine (not just the level sequence). Sometimes, the Level Sequencer bugs out, c'est la vie. If i figure you've done this already....

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Tested on the livestream - restart the sequencer and/or Unreal Engine itself. It's known to be wonky when it's all free.

[@aryabaha2567]

İn my case I can't bake body anmition in cantoral rig

[@emdo.unlimited555]

What happens when you try?

[@FraserMalik]

Simple! Dont suppose you have a way to make a gun shot animation in sequencer haha.

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Unfortunately not. I imagine a mix of Niagara and a bullet static mesh keyframed should do it? I'm a n00b!

[@jonos138]

I found a shorter way that achieves the same thing.👍

[@emdo.unlimited555]

Tell me more

[@jonos138]

​@emdo81 I don't claim credit for this tip, but came across it in another video. Watch from around 8.22. Baking head and face to control rig but with another way of getting the same result. I found it worked for me. kzbin.info/www/bejne/on-qhZ-Np9WZp8ksi=AdKhuEtA2PMPOuPR

[@Vindicator_9]

Why say this and not elaborate?

[@johnathonvought7407]

This was more or less my method. No tutorial quite put it all together, I had to assemble what I did from bits and bobs of various tutorials out there from months ago. The only difference between us is that I exported only the level sequence so that includes audio. I added the other two metahuman actors to that sequence to copy and paste CTRL animations across in sequencer. There is a head switch track you can key on and off when you open an anim, so instead of saving 2 ways I only saved with head movement. So you can use it one way, then alter the key back if you need. Because of my animation habit, dealing with keys worked fine until I had to do things in 5.3. The problem is that 5.3 has a nasty freeze crash sometimes for doing *anything* with head switch keys after opening up that animation. Other times, UE would just wink right out if I tried to change a key from 1 to zero. So the use of two separate tracks in this way is actually more reliable. You have both. This would have been a great idea to help me avoid the keyframe change crash.

[@emdo.unlimited555]

I toyed around with sequencer exports but found this way to be a little bit easier to do for simpletons like myself. I saw methods with the head switch control but threw my hands up "too complicated!" so I didn't get to the point of the sequencer method breaking. Glad I could help put minds at ease!

[@johnathonvought7407]

if only I had seen this weeks ago, you would have given me a great idea around my crashes. I should have thought of doing 2 animation exports like you. But I am going to do it this way at least until the crashing is fixed. @@emdo.unlimited555

[@azzeddindouakha3403]

somehow noone seem to show how to back all that shit after we are done thanx

[@emdo.unlimited555]

you want to be shown how to back up what?

[@azzeddindouakha3403]

@@emdo.unlimited555 i mean bake the animation in one animation sequence

[@asaadalshahin6519]

works great... but any time i move the metahuman at all, the head detaches from the body and everything breaks. i have to restart ue to fix, any ideas?

[@emdo.unlimited555]

The level sequencer can do weird things sometimes. Restarting UE is a standard step when doing this kind of stuff with Metahumans and sequencer. As long as it works upon restart, there's not much more we can do currently. It doesn't happen often but often enough.

[@asaadalshahin6519]

@@emdo.unlimited555 thank you brother