I’m putting together cutscenes in sequncer. We have separated body and head for scope purpose.
The body consist of:
body mesh, no neck/head.
a skeleton with neck/head.
We apply mocap data for the full skeleton in all animations for the body.
The head consist of:
neck+head mesh
skeleton for neck+head and morph targets for face
Animation only consist of curves for the morph targets.
What we want to do
Comibne a body with a head.
Body animation drives body and head skeleton (bones)
Face animation drives the face morph targets
Currently we can make the head move as intended by
Put the head as a child to the body in a blueprint
Use the Master Pose Component
However, doing so makes the face animation unable to affect the face.
Attatching the head to the body gives no bone animation to the head, but the face animation works.
Is there ar way to combine body and head like this in another way?
Animation blueprint? ControlRig?
I know the do this in Fortnite, but I can’t find any deeper explanation on how.
Cheers,
Gabriel Flamm
Cinematic Director, River End Games
I think you can use a “Copy Pose” on the head, so that it can inherit the animation from the body, and then after the Copy Pose node you can add the facial animation.
In your BP animation graph you can use an Append (?) node. I’ve used that to add livelink face capture to body mocap. Not sure if that’s directly applicable for you.
The problem is the separation.
If both assets had the same base skeleton the animations would be shared on it, making it much easier to do anything at all.
Assuming the animations play and override each other, the solution is to play the facial animation as a montage in a specific slot set up to override everything above the neck.
This should extend fine for morphs as that’s how I currently have it set up (even if it’s just eye blinking)
