How to export Metahuman to other DCCs like Houdini for cinematics?

Development Character & Animation
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1

Question1:
Hi guys, my purpose is to export metahuman to external 3D software like houdini to use metahuman’s facial animation feature. It is hard to do that with a custom-hand-made model.

What I have tried:
So currently if we use the Quixel Bridge plugin in UE, we can export it into UE, and then export form UE to houdini. In this case I can see the character’s skin and skeleton. I can animate its skeleton but not its facial skeleton. It has nearly thousands of skeletons and it looks like the actual metahuman face is driven by morphs so I don’t have any method to use the character’s facial animation

How can I access the facial animation potential in houdini just like that of the control rig (control board or simple face control rig) in Unreal?

2

Hi buddy :slight_smile:

If you use the external version of Bridge, you can download the source files for MetaHumans. Those source files are fully skeleton, with skin, for use in Maya. They also include a full facial rig AND the facial GUI control board - the same as in UE itself.

Obviously MetaHumans can’t be rendered outside of Unreal, so you then will need to export any animation you make back to the Unreal Editor for rendering.

Hope that helps!