Can I use my own head mesh and migrate my own head mesh into MetaHuman?

Development Character & Animation
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1

Now I have a face mesh which is obtained from scanning and registration. Is it possible to use my head mesh in metahuman? I would like to use my own head mesh while still use the skeleton, weights, etc. in order to use the expression system of MetaHuman.

Is it possible?

What I have tried:
I exported the head of metahuman as FBX. I rigidly aligned my own mesh to the metahuman head using Warp3. I transfered bones and weights to my own mesh using Blender. Finally the generated FBX was imported into UE4 and I connected Amination, BluePrint, etc. to the new head. But the head does not move with Live Link. Something must be wrong in this process…

2

I believe you also have to add the live link BP to the body as well because the head movement is driven from there and not the face mesh.

3

Thank you! Actually I only need the expression system. Do you mean that driving facial expression relies on the body? Is it possible that I drive the face mesh only regardless of the head roation?

4

The head rotation comes from the body, I’m using faceware with live link, if I only add the blueprint to the face mesh for the animation mode it doesn’t rotate the head, if I add the faceware blueprint to the body animation as well it then drives the head as well.

5

Now you can! We just release the MetaHuman plugin for Unreal Engine 5 along with the new Mesh to MetaHuman Tool. Check it out: Using Mesh to MetaHuman in UE | Unreal Engine - YouTube

6

Thanks I just saw the update - incredible!

I had one question - what programs/equipment do I need to use to scan a face that can be used in this way?

Thanks again

7

Can I ask what programs/equipment you used to make a face scan?

Thanks

8

We have some cameras and we can construct point cloud for the scanned face. Since this is not done by me, I am not sure which software my collegue used. But there exist many available ones.

For the mesh, we use Warp4D to wrap the mesh to the scanned point cloud.

1 Like
9

Thank you for the reply! Appreciate it!

10

By the way, now I learned to use RealityCapture to do multi-view construction of the point cloud and the initial mesh of the scanned face.