Unreal Engine 5 Head Reattachment Tutorial | Metahuman Animator

The RIGHT way! Did you capture a performance with Live Link, only to have your head detach? Let's fix it!
Welcome back to Unreal Apprentice. In this video, I'll show you how to get your Metahuman's head connected to its body again. When you capture a performance with Live Link on your iPhone and play that performance in the sequencer, it will separate the head from the body. I finally figured out how to connect them again, and I'm stoked to be able to show you how I did it. Its really easy!
In this comprehensive tutorial, learn how to reattach the head of a Metahuman model in Unreal Engine 5 after applying an Animation performance. Discover the step-by-step process of fixing a detached head, ensuring seamless character animation for your projects. Join us as we explore Metahuman rigging, animation workflows, and effective techniques for resolving head detachment issues. Unlock the full potential of your characters and create captivating animations with this in-depth tutorial. Watch now and master the art of Metahuman head reattachment in Unreal Engine 5!
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Explaining the problem
00:32 Outline of Solution
00:57 Blend Mask
02:11 Face_Anim_BP
02:45 Settings Adjustment
03:23 MOST IMPORTANT STEP
04:19 Add Body Animation
04:54 Note: Try This
05:07 TOP SECRET
Original Intro and Song by me, AJ.
Background Music: "Past Sadness" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Unreal Engine, Metahuman, Head Reattachment, Animation Performance, Face Scanning, iPhone, Unreal Engine 5, Metahuman Animator, Animation, 3D Modeling, Character Animation, Facial Animation, Digital Human, Motion Capture, Rigging, Character Creation, Facial Rigging, Facial Expressions, Facial Capture, Metahuman Creator, Digital Character, Facial Scanning, Facial Tracking, Facial Rig, Virtual Production, Real-time Animation, Motion Editing, Facial Animation Pipeline, Facial Performance Capture, Character Design, VFX, Visual Effects, Game Development, Game Design, CG Animation, Computer Graphics, 3D Animation, Facial Features, Facial Puppetry, Character Rigging, Facial Rigging Techniques, Facial Animation Workflow, Face Tracking, Facial Blendshapes, Character Customization, Character Rigging Tutorial, Facial Animation Tutorial, 3D Scanning, Motion Transfer, Facial Modeling, Facial Texturing, Unreal Engine Tutorial, Metahuman Tutorial, Animation Tutorial, Character Animation Tutorial
Metahuman reattach head to body
Metahuman head detached from body
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How do i fix head disconnected from body
Why is my metahuman's head separated from its body
Make body animation drive head animation
connect head and body animations

[@kylevorbach]

Gonna give this a shot, but I just wanna say, as someone who watches a million tutorials, especially while frantically trying to figure out why a program isn’t working, your whole vibe is very welcome.

[@JARVISTKD6]

Dude! Ran into this issue today. Thank you for putting in the time to make this video. You're the man.

[@Bigfoistchannel]

Finally something that works! A quick tip for anyone trying this tho, if you set the curve blend option to normalize by weight in the anim bp then facial animations will become less pronounced. Setting it to 'do not override' worked for me. The head will appear to separate again but restarting the editor seemed to work.

[@user-ws2mu1tw5w]

How did you do it, please help!

[@zsofinyecz]

Oh my god dude, your mother was right. You have solved this. Thanks my man.

[@EZGVogan]

Thanks, looked a few video before yours, only yours worked out for me !

[@MetaArchitect]

thank you, after countless videos this is the only thing that worked for me

[@FunkyzeitGames]

I was losing my mind with head rotation being off while attached. "Normalize by weight" finally solved it, didn't see that in other tutorials. Thank you very much.

[@UnrealApprentice]

No prob, glad it worked!

[@spavelski]

Agreed: that was the key that got missed in other similar tuts.

[@gc-yb6fr]

This is the video that really works! I didn't need the control rig. Just deleted it and body and head anims worked together without floating. The face anim seemed a little less emphasized but I can work around that with a little exaggeration of the expression and movements. Thanks much!!

[@RemDoz]

A thousand times thank you, I’ve watched so many videos of people explaining how to fix this and it never works. FYI for those who don’t have their rigs on the metahuman to do the last step, I didn’t either, my metahuman was already in the sequencer with an animation on and it still worked for me.

[@pathseven8398]

BROO YOUR A SAVIOUR, ONLY GOD KNOWS THE COUNTLESS VIDEOS IVE WATCHED AND NONE OF THEM WORKED UNTIL NOW 🙏🙏🙏🙏

[@bernard2735]

Always listen to your Mom. You’re definitely smart for figuring this out! Liked and subscribed 😊

[@ArtManSAIC]

lol you're making me laugh through intense frustration. I have like 5% confidence that I'll be able to make your technique work but atleast you made me laugh. I'll update comment if it works. UPDATE Ok I just crashed but it looked like it worked. SUBSCRIBED THANK YOU YOU'RE A HANDSOME LEGEND

[@MichaelHurdleStudio]

Now you got 201 subscribers. I'm going to try this method this weekend. I too have been going crazy trying to fix this issue. Thank you.

[@skeletonking4119]

I being looking for this! Thank you!

[@JimRobb44]

This is super helpful! The detached head was driving me crazy. I found I also had to delete the Face Control Rig from the Level Sequence in order to get it all to work. And your mom was right.

[@UnrealApprentice]

Haha nice man, I'm glad it worked out!

[@RastRealm]

You're really super smart and handsome 😝 it's 4:00 am and you just saved me with your little trick for the keyframe

[@hjk1945]

Thank you!

[@JamesLuke]

you just saved my life.

[@JonCG]

This is aswesome bro.

[@Ross_Garden]

Mate, I've been up all night. Seriously, ALL FRICKEN NIGHT. It's been emotional. And now I can go to bed. Thanks fella 👍 Oh, if it gets stuck slam the MH BP Compile and sometimes it snaps back, because… why not?

[@evolutionaer2161]

Thx!

[@reubencf]

man you are a genius out of all the videos i found yours solved mine

[@UnrealApprentice]

I'm glad it worked for you! Nothing else worked for me either

[@reubencf]

@@UnrealApprentice this technique works but i noticed one thing the metahuman face animation quality has come down

[@UnrealApprentice]

@@reubencf interesting. If I had to guess, I would say it has to do with something like the LOD (I have LOD bugs related to metahumans), or something similar like the processing power it takes to render everything, texture streaming pool etc. On my PC, the quality is not affected after making that change, but when things get bogged down the character's skin textures will appear lower quality unless you render out the scene because it just can't handle it all on the fly

[@EthanCasner]

Thie helps but unfortunately incase you hadn't noticed, as soon as you add the "blend" the resulting facial animation is actually dampened significantly from it's original. Meaning any character that had it's mouth fully opened during singing is now maybe half as opened, and so forth for the rest of the head. They look drunk or sleepy in effect.

WORKS!

[@BennieWoodell]

Thanks for this, I'm going to have to try this later today. It's ridiculous all these steps to animate something. I've been trying to avoid using metahumans since I read up about them a year ago or so, they look fantastic but I read about the technical issues, but my job wanted me to use them and this is the most unintuitive thing I have ever dealt with. I animate with Maya, Blender, and Daz 3D and aside from how fast UnReal renders, I don't understand why anyone would animate in this program (I get games completely, I'm talking about production animation). Maybe I'll look into how to export animations from Blender or Maya into UnReal for rendering purposes, but I have spent three days now and I just this morning figured out how to record the head movement and facial animation with livelink and then be able to go back and animate the body afterwards to match the facial animation...and that's when I discovered the floating head lol. Anyhoo, your video is fantastic and easy to follow, thanks so much!

[@LPMOVIESTVSofficial]

have a good night my friend

[@polatkemalakyuz2021]

Actually it woked, thank you very much. I just lost the head rotation, do you have any advice to hadle it over this?

[@spavelski]

Saved my ass, homes. Cheers...

[@JohnnyMoniz]

interesting video, have you had any luck getting this to work when the body animation is already applied? (i was able to follow your instructions and succeed, but only in the order you've presented. Meaning, my needed workflow is to build an entire scene with body animation and then come back later and add movement to the head.

[@UnrealApprentice]

DON'T DISABLE THE POST PROCESS BLUEPRINT LIKE THEY SAY IN OTHER VIDEOS!! They're setting you up for failure down the road, and in my case it didn't fix anything anyways. This one drove me nuts!! You might get some crashes when you're in the Face_Anim_BP, but just keep your head up and try again. Let me know if it works for you in the comments.

[@RyansMashup]

Can you explain why that is setting you up for failure down the road?

[@GoodEvilFun]

I love you

[@zungmg2866]

Thanks man. When i use body controlrig to manual head animation it not work. How bugy UE =((

[@prod.jakekarno1765]

This is great info, its the only thing that worked for me too. However, I have noticed that when I add a facial animation to a body like this the facial animation becomes much less animated/expressive - like 50%. I'm guessing this is because the body is blending with the face. Is this something I am doing wrong or is no one else noticing? Does anyone know how to fix it?

[@user-ub8du2rs3r]

I still have this issue. Moving the control rig a bit did not help :S Anyone got ideas?

[@DesignsbyElement]

How do we get rid of the gap between the neck and shoulders on the metahumans?

[@twjohnsontsai]

"When I set the animation below the face to use the animation blueprint, the avatar's head and body are combined. But when I save or create keyframes, the head and body separate again, and the animation settings revert to using the custom mode. Saving also reverts to custom mode."

[@animation4work]

I do not fin Anim_BP_C I have only anim_BP and I am crying 😢

[@one9502]

Hi - thanks for this - but my anim capture - done through unreal 5.3 - does not have Layered Blend per Bone, and nothing is selected when I click on AnimGraph. I have Blend Poses by int ... is this an issue between Unreal 5 versions?

[@sabat-ondutyculprit4559]

I donot have that layerd node at all

[@Garpy40]

didnt work. tried it twice to make sure i didnt miss a single step... but the head still floats :{. I guess i add this to the list of 'this solution really works' vids that didn't.

[@jonos138]

Yeh man, it's driving me F****** crazy. I seem to have tried every tut out there. Some don't work, some attach the head but lose face and neck movement. Some attatch but the neck is at a weird angle, so they stand like a raptor in jurassic Park. BTW, I notice after you hit compile it crashed. Mine does this everytime. How did you get around it?

[@kingderpygoat]

I dont have an animation attatched to the head, just the body

[@emdo.unlimited]

I noticed that "Normalize by weight" made the facial animation less "expressive." Did you notice the same?

[@siblingelijah]

Yes! For anyone else troubleshooting, I found "Do Not Override" allowed the facial animations to be fully expressed whilst keeping connected to body.

[@UniqueGeese]

I'm working through this right now and "Do Not Override" detaches the head again for me. Going to have to keep playing with it. @@siblingelijah

[@siblingelijah]

@@UniqueGeese Hey - I have no idea what I'm doing really, after I re positioned the metahuman, the head detached. I've found that re-opening my project reattaches it, so it may be a bug, though likely just my inexperience

The more tutorials I watch about Metahumans, the less I want to work with them. Every little issue gets crazily complicated to manage. Metahumans seem more a gadget for tech nerds than a useful tool to work with.

[@UnrealApprentice]

It definitely could be more streamlined. Took me like 2 weeks of watching other tutorials and reading forums and failing before I figured out what worked for me

[@MichaelHurdleStudio]

100%. Me too.

[@shashwatkauraw8085]

Agreed. Nothing but marketing.. no actual use of metahuman that filmmakers can have

[@artistsunny4]

you look like metahuman . 😀

[@Trevenium]

Thanks, however no matter what I do, starting from scratch and following SO many different tutorials, nothing works for me, so frustrating. I can follow and get other things in Unreal Engine working so far, except this whole metahuman head to body :( So many tutorials and so many days wasted... anyone else experience this too or is it just me? Im using 5.3.2

[@malte9614]

tried it a couple of times and it didnt work :/ this cant be a "real" solution tho, can it? i mean there has to be a better way than moving the control rig and hope for the best :D anyway thanks for the vid

[@UnrealApprentice]

There's more to it than that (as shown in the video), but if you follow all the steps I definitely would call it the "real" solution. The control rig is just the final trick to get things working. Real quick, the main things you need to do besides that are: make a blend mask with the adjustments I noted, change animation mode to Use Animation Blueprint and make sure it sticks by using a keyframe, change Layered Blend Per Bone node to Blend Mask and select the blend mask you created, under Curve Blend Option select Normalize by Weight instead of Override. If you follow all the steps in the video besides adjusting the control rig, this will not work. If you follow all the steps in the video AND adjust the control rig, you'll be good to go.

[@malte9614]

@@UnrealApprentice Thanks for the reply. I will for sure try it again in the net days :D I did it the way you do it in the vid but maybe i am still missing a step. Creating a Blend Mask and all does make sense but the fact that you HAVE to move the control rig (randomly?) confuses me. Dont think that that is the way it was intended is all i am saying. But if it works, it is fine with me :D

[@lotuswork]

If set to "normalize by weight"，the facial animation will become weak.

[@DjFernNj]

wtf.. you did it.. this is the only shit that worked for me.. so guess your mom is right about you also lol

[@elvismorellidigitalvisuala6211]

There's a faster way , just use same head animation in body, check (allow incompatible skeletons) and you have fix it

[@ScottBarrettihq]

not enough info here in your 'faster fix'.

[@user-js2tm8pr9w]

it doesnt woooooooork

[@Kozlov_Production]

It's wrong method. There is a simple solution I made 1 minute video about it

[@UnrealApprentice]

Sorry you couldn't get it working. There are multiple ways to skin a cat of course. It is tested working and repeatable for myself, and presumably the others who have liked the video. But it is a combination of multiple steps. Refer to my other comment for a brief overview of everything involved. If you skip through the video and don't follow every step, this will not work. If you have the same specific problem as I did, and just creating a blend mask (without adjusting additional settings), or retargeting, or baking to control rig, or disabling your post process volume etc. does not work, then I'm confident this will.

[@Kozlov_Production]

@@UnrealApprentice 1 minute long

[@wondernexus3d482]

@@Kozlov_Production Yours didnt work for me, and looks like it doesnt work for many people

[@Kozlov_Production]

@@wondernexus3d482 kzbin.info/www/bejne/sH_Xq5WueZV2fJo - it works for everyone

[@shashwatkauraw8085]

Yours did not work for me in a scenario where my character was animated. Sadly even this video did not help me as the problem still exists 😢 F*** epic games

[@siblingelijah]

Edit: Having issues with no longer working if I move the body and head. Edit: Found experimenting with "Curve Blend Option" results in different levels of facial expression YES Thank you so frickin' much!!! Been mindlessly trying tutorials like why isn't this working - yours hit the spot. You are special and handsome, just like momma said. Thanks again.