I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to do this and must have watched every YouTube video out there with no luck. Especially because most deal with metahumans, which I don’t use in this project.
I have recorded a Livelink animation to a face skeletal mesh with its own skeleton (UE4 based skeleton).
I bake it to FK Control Rig.
I have a body with another animation. I bake it to the same control rig.
I’ve tried copy-pasting the neck and face rotations from one control rig to the other with no luck.
After doing that, you need to apply the ABP to your head mesh in sequencer. You can do that by either selecting the Head, going to the details panel and setting Animation Mode to Use Animation Blueprint and set your newly created ABP as the Anim Class.
Finally, if you have an animation track with your baked animation, you will be able to right-click the animation track, and under Properties > Slot, you can type the slot you created for the layer (in this case, FaceSlot). If you’re not going to use Slots for anything else, you should be able to use the DefaultSlot in the ABP and you can skip this last step, as it’ll automatically be set in the properties.
Thank you for the explanation. I have a few follow up questions.
In the Character Blueprint, should the head be the leader bone component? Or does it not matter?
As you can see from my last screenshot, I have a leader bone component (the torso), but I’ve experimented with the head as well, with not luck so far.
Also in the Character Blueprint, after I’ve recorded the live link animation, should I then change the animation from “Use animation blueprint” (here Live link) to “custom” or “asset” - or should it be left as is? Or maybe stay on “use animation blueprint” but set to “none”?
Do I need to bake the live link face animation to control rig? If so, which control rig should I use, since it isn’t a metahuman.
The Torso should be the lead, that way you can set a specific animation to the body and the head will follow it. So, in your case, you would have to reparent the meshes so that the Head is a child of the Torso.
If you’re only using it in Sequencer, it will override whatever settings you have in the character, as long as there’s an animation track. So it’s okay to leave it as is, it really depends on what your goal is.
You can also keep that BP as the recording BP and create a new one for the character you’re going to use in Sequencer, that way you don’t need to change it every time you’re recording a new animation and you can keep it clean.
If you don’t need to edit the animation using a control rig, I’d say it’s easier if you bake it into an animation sequence by right-clicking the character in Sequencer and selecting Bake Animation Sequence (you might need to mute the animation track for the body first, otherwise it would also bake the animation you have there).
Let me know how it goes, and if it doesn’t work, please share some screenshots of your current setup so we can figure it out!
It apparently also drives the body now - but it used to be a default UE4 skeleton. Maybe because I created the Character BP and had the face beat the leader component at some point?:
Oh, and earlier today, I created this, because I wanted to see if it was possible to manipulate or edit all the blendshapes directly in the sequencer (similar to how you can tweak metahuman faces with the metahuman control rig). I don’t know if it’s useful at all:
@FilmDaft My bad, the Leader Pose does not allow you to play animation or physics in the child meshes. For that, you would need to use the Copy Pose From Mesh node in the ABP. You can simply replace the Input Pose node with this one and it should work. Make sure to select Use Attached Parent and Copy Curves.
You would also need to remove the Head mesh from the Leader Pose in your Blueprint and parent the Head to the Body you want to copy the animation from. In your case, I believe you need to parent the Head to the SK_Petite_Female_Tank.
I’m not sure I understand what you said about the body and UE4 skeleton… The live link skeleton drives the body? It shouldn’t be an issue, as long as they’re compatible and can share the animations.
And about Control Rig, you should be able to use it on top of everything. Let me know if the Copy Pose From Mesh works and if you can use the Control Rig you created!
I got it working for a modular character in the sequencer, which didn’t feature a livelink recording.
So I guess, I could do the same with a livelink recorded baked animation track, i.e., apply first the livelink Animation Blueprint (AB) - and then in the sequencer switch to the other Animation Blueprint with a similar setup.
But I wonder if it’s possible to implement the setup directly in the livelink AB? That is, implement this:
They both end in an Output Pose, but I’m unsure where in the node chain, I would have to inject the “Copy pose from Mesh” “Slot body2” and “Layered blend per bone”. Is this possible?
