Metahuman Animator 5.4 Preview: Combining Facial Animation with Body Animation

General Feedback & Requests
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Unreal 5.4 Preview: Metahuman Animator → Combining Facial Animaiton with Body Animation

I’ve seen some non-official Youtube tutorials that show somehow the process of that.
However, Following all the non-official guides couldn’t resolve the issues I am having using 5.4 Preview.

When trying to combine the facial animation with the body, I have two scenarios:

  1. The Facial Animation Stops
  2. The Face/Head does not attach seamless to the body

Would it be possible to create a comprehensive, non-technical Video Tutorial, that has a strong focus on getting this practically done?

A user-oriented focus that shows step-by-step how to achieve this, from the beginning till the end. A practical guide, not a technical demo, not a pure technical phd documentation.

I would also appreciate it, to watch a practical user friendly video tutorial, that shows the new re-targeting feature with Mixamo, etc.

Announcing all the new features is great, but it’s not practical useable if you have no proper video guidance. As a creator, you are constantly stuck with technical issues, or just the lack of easy to follow informational and practical guides.

I am always surprised by the fact, that users come up first with their own individual tutorials, after reading some documentation and figuring out the gaps in between by themselve.

As a fan from Epic and Unreal, I just do not understand why it would be so difficult to launch precise practical users tutorials, that guides creators thorugh the essential steps.

As a product manager, marketing manager, that would be also my top prioroty.

Especially, once a new feature was released, the video guides should be already produced and ready to watch when the new product is released.

The community could help Epic much faster with that, by testing, reporting bugs, and helping the team with further nuanced development.

Thx for your consideration and would be amazing to see soon such practical video guides.
cheers

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Curious if you have heard back regarding them stating hopefully someone will have a look soon. Your post was spot on and I agree 100%. Thanks!

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I have the same problem, I followed many tutorials, both from the community and the official one. But none of them worked for me, the head is always detached from the body, and if I manage to make it stay in place, it stops the animation. When I change the animation mode to custom, it is solved but when I hit play in the sequencer it comes off again. Unreal engine 5.4

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Same here. I love Unreal and Metahumans but it is a PITA to make it work. Meaning for example using a UE4 or 5 skeleton mesh with a metahuman head to be able to add animations on both part indidually. At the moment it is like lauching a rocket to the moon or a game of hits and misses. I really thought UE 5.4 would have solved this.

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Tagging onto this. Why is this still a thing?!?! It’s sooo horrible and buggy. You find one of the many solutions posted by kind-hearted people online that works. What a relief. Then open the SAME project later on and it’s busted again. It’s hard to justify for a professional workflow unless you want to be driven insane. Where’s the official fix?

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I have exactly the same problem. I can’t believe that such a serious engine has such holes. So much frustration that I started to dislike working with this engine. They present modern methods and great but repairing such basics takes them so much time. Unreal if you are reading this, this is a serious problem and fix it if you are reading this and fix it as best as you can. You brag that you have metahuman and face scanning but the truth is that it doesn’t work in the current situation. You release a newer version of the engine and don’t fix such important aspects and in fact they work even worse. Shame

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I love how on every “impressive” thing Epic comes out with, you can cast-iron guarantee that any attempt to actually use it to achieve some reasonable and obvious thing will always be met, at some point, by an Epic Catch-22. Some reason, some simple issue that has been completely ignored and screws everything up right at the last.

In this case, they still have not demonstrated how to combine a MetaHuman facial animation with the body. There is one video by Gabriella but as per it’s entirely focused on level sequences and is a questionable method in my view (Her videos are actually really good and she explains things really well in general, but what she’s explaining to do in this instance is not useful or the correct approach for most people). From what I watched it involved baking the captured face data into the body anims, but these things need to stay separate and be blended on the fly from their raw form or else we get into situations requiring a LOT of essentially duplicate assets. Not good practice at all, unless I’m misunderstanding what was being shown.

All this should be is a layered blend per bone node in the face anim BP, but this does not work. The face completely ignores any bone filtering you set, either by mask or branch filter, and animates everything and disconnects from the body as a result.

My jewels are bluer than the ocean, Epic. Please stop doing this to me I beg you and just make it easy for me to use your people’s amazing work in something other than a theoretical way. All my impotent rage comes down to that simple request. Good day.

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Play the face animation on the body, not the head. The face blueprint reads the pose of the body & applies animation to itself via Copy Pose from Mesh node.

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Is there a way to combine body animations and at the same time control facial expressions via the control rig?
I don’t want to use the sequencer at all, I want to simply play animation assets and at the same time be able do facial expressions at runtime (say, close eyelids at press of button). No facial animation asset

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Same problem here, here is the official solution that I found so far, a super not convenient hacky solution, that takes time and effort but it works.

I hope there will be something more useful because other videos that promise this don’t work for me and this is just abysmal. But still, if you absolutely need a solution for it try this.

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For me this worked:
Go into the facial animation blueprint and look for the “Layered blend per bone” node. In the details expand the Filter branch array and add 3 more entries:

  • head
  • neck_01
  • neck_02

Then in the sequencer, on the body add any animation (idle or something) and make sure the Animation Mode is set to custom.
On the face, add your facial animation but keep the Animation mode on blueprint.

I don’t know why the other bones are missing in the filter branch but that does the trick. Blend masks did not work for me at all like you see in a million Youtube videos.