Is Metahuman Animator not supporting iPhone 11?

Development Character & Animation
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I have an iPhone 11 with TrueDepth camera and per the announcement of MetaHuman Animator, I was expecting to be able to use this with my iPhone per this statement.

MetaHuman Animator will work with an iPhone 11 or later—you’ll also need the free Live Link Face app for iOS, which will be updated with some additional capture modes to support this workflow

Now the latest release announcement

At its simplest, MetaHuman Animator can be used with just an iPhone (12 or above) and a desktop PC

Have plans for iPhone 11 support been abandoned, or are they still planned for a later update?

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Here is a comment from Twitter:

All iPhone 12 models and newer are officially supported using the updated Live Link Face app.

MetaHuman Animator Capture in Live Link Face also works with iPhone 11 and recent Apple iPad Pro devices with a TrueDepth camera, however, MetaHuman Animator is not officially supported or optimized for these products.

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Hi,

I can confirm that we are treating the iPhone 11 as “unsupported” at the moment. This is because we are not actively testing functionality or quality of results on that device as part of our QA efforts. Because of that we can’t be confident in the results you would get.

As per the comments above, the system should in theory function on any TrueDepth enabled device and so there is nothing to stop you giving it a try. Anecdotally I have heard people using the iPhone 11 are getting decent results, but as it’s not part of our testing right now I can’t be sure how it would compare to one of the actively supported devices.

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Do you know why the iPhone 12 is recommended? I’m curious wether there is a huge difference when using iPhone 12 or 13/14 in quality?

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@ tomaaron872: Good question. This page provides some useful information about 12 vs. 13/14: Truedepth Camera on iPhone13 products - lower accuracy of depth data?.

Rumors suggest iPhone 15 will be released soon. Purportedly, it will include a 48 MP TrueDepth camera resolution. Not sure what increased resolution / sensor quality differences will mean for overall results with Metahuman Animator. 4x resolution sounds awesome, but if the sensor is of a lower quality, compared to 12, the increased resolution might not offer improved MA results.

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D’OH! I was totally wrong about the resolution of iPhone 15’s TD sensor. Maybe I read that wrong or it was wrong where I read it.

It’s been hard to find anything useful about 15’s TD sensor. Same resolution, slightly different max. aperture (f-stop). I reckon it’s using a similar TD sensor as the one’s on 13 and 14. Lower cost of goods sold (every micro-cent counts, when dealing with consumer tech pricing.) Realistically, whatever TD sensor they’re using in 13 and 14, (and potentially 15), is fine for the vast majority of their users’ use cases. FaceID, Snapchat, etc.

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What version of IPADs are applicable to the new metahuman animator last update? And do they offer the same performance quality comparing to the iPhone?

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Hi @Auto-silencer. To use the MetaHuman Animator mode of Live Link Face on an iPad you will need to use a device that supports FaceID (and therefore has a TrueDepth camera). You can find a list of devices that support FaceID on Apple’s support pages.

Unfortunately I can’t comment on the quality compared to an iPhone as MetaHuman Animator has not been optimised for data captured from iPad devices. However there is nothing stopping you from giving it a try as long as your device has a TrueDepth camera.