Live Link Face for Android

Development Cinematics & Media Virtual Production
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Hi all-

I tried my best to search for related info before posting but couldn’t find anything relevant to my experience, so here goes:

I am vetting the Rokoko performance capture gear and opted for their lightweight head cam. Due to it being an external camera, this forces me down the Android path. I just purchased a Galaxy S24 Ultra per the Epic device recommendations for Live Link Face on Android. The app installs and runs, and face tracking mesh appears mostly stable (a bit jittery). The “Live” icon at the top of the app remains grey and has never displayed green like in the iOS version. In my 5.5.4 project, Live Link does not see the phone/app as a source.

If I switch to Rokoko’s face capture app on the same device, I am able to get things working and broadcast to Unreal and animate my Metahuman’s face. However this requires their desktop app run on the same workstation as my Unreal project. My goal is to keep face solving on the Android device and free up my desktop for body capture. I am on an Intel i9 and RTX 4090, so a good setup but I still want to manage work load. Furthermore I have been able to ping the Android phone from my desktop and can confirm open communication between devices.

Can anyone with experience identify if I may be doing something wrong? Or if the Android device may not be up to the task? It is an additional $400 purchase so I’d like to know if I’m barking up the wrong tree so I can return it. Please give the Android app some love.

Thanks all!

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the grey live icon and the missing source are the same problem: the app is not completing the live link message bus handshake with the engine. rokoko working on the same phone tells you the network path and device are fine — rokoko uses its own protocol with a manual target, while live link face relies on message bus discovery (multicast) plus unicast, and that is exactly what android handles worse than ios.

work through these in order: (1) windows firewall is the number one cause — unrealeditor needs an inbound udp allow rule, or the engine never sees the announce. (2) router side: client/ap isolation off, igmp snooping / multicast filtering off for that ssid — phones frequently fail to receive multicast discovery frames on managed wifi. (3) skip discovery entirely: the app’s connection settings let you target the pc ip manually, and the engine side you can add the message bus source explicitly from the live link panel — pointing it straight at the pc usually turns the icon green immediately. (4) both devices on the same subnet, and vpn adapters off on the pc (they hijack routes).

once the source appears in live link, the rokoko desktop app requirement disappears and face solving stays on the phone like you wanted. the slight jitter on the s24 is normal for the android build right now — it is younger than the ios app; smoothing in the face animbp / a light low-pass on the live link curves covers most of it.