Hi! I’m trying to create a face capture animation using Metahuman Animator assets in UEFN, then mix it with a body animation from another source (such as Mixamo for instance).
I was able to follow every step up to the Export Animation from the Performance asset. At this point, it gets complicated…
When I add the facial animation to a Fortnite Character (using the Character Device in the Sequencer), only the facial expressions are animated, and the head/neck is static. I made sure to check the Head Movement box when exporting the animation.
I tried to use the Mannequin Skeleton when exporting, just to see if it would add all the frames, but it didn’t, so I sticked to the Face Archetype Metahuman one.
I was able to make the head movement work by using the generated Skeletal Mesh from the MHID, adding the animation to it, converting it to Control Rig (I chose the FK one and checked Reduce Keys), then copying the frames over to a new Control Rig track in the Character Device in the Sequencer. It worked, but I believe there is a better way to do it (like, a mixed face + body skeleton to choose when exporting the animation). At this point, I baked the tracks back to an Anim Sequence.
Now, for the body animation, I imported a game-ready Animation Sequence directly onto the Character Device, but the animations “merged” so neither the body nor the face were as expressive as they were in isolation.
My solution was to convert each animation to it’s on Control Rig, then copy the head, neck and CTRL_expression frames over to the body track (overriding the existing ones), then delete the head track.
It was a lot of work, and I believe there should be a way that’s quite easier than this. If I’m not mistaken, UE has a blend mode for the animations, and it would make things way easier.
TL;DR: Is there an easy way to merge head + face animations into a body animation, prioritizing the head movements from the former?