I have ~300 shots captured with Rokoko Smartsuit Pro II + Smartgloves + Rokoko face capture. Rokoko Studio exports a combined FBX containing both the body skeleton and the face animations in a single file. Body retargeting to the Metahuman Body SKM works instantly, but I cannot get the face data onto the MetaHuman face skeletal mesh.
What I’ve tried:
- Importing the combined FBX targeting the face skeleton → fails, the skeleton structures are incompatible
- Import Morph Targets enabled → no change, the morph data shows up in the Animation Sequence but cannot target to the Methahuman Face skeleton
- Every tutorial I can find targets UE5.5, 5.6 or earlier, or livelink workflow
Is there anything I’m missing before pulling all my hair out? All tips are much appreciated!
If I remember correctly, you have to import the animations twice:
For body, you got it right.
EDIT: for face, enable Import Bone Tracks (UE 5.7), because metahuman facial animation works via RigLogic plugin and animation curves only. I can see Rokoko facial uses ARKit blendshapes (your screenshot) so make sure to have the original Facial_ AnimBP setup, which comes with a curve remap node from ARKIT to Metahuman curves.
Thanks for your help, but if I turn off Import Bone Tracks, I got 0 curves and 0 length tracks for the face animation (animation length greys out). It’s getting surreal it’s this complicated..
This is unusual. Have you tested Rokoko studio’s live link plugin or template project for metahumans? If I recall correctly, they used to work great in the past.
Yes in the past.. all the tutorials Youtube has are mostly 5.5/5.6 versions. Now Metahumans has separate body/face skeletal meshes. Anyway here is the fbx file with body + face combined export from rokoko:
Got it, so, ideally, it’s a good practice to start off using the sample project “Metahumans”, it contains everything you need as a good starting point.
Also, take a look at the Learning section in this community, there are several training materials for this matter published by Epic Games and community members as well.
Another “must have” is the sample project “Metahuman Lighting” which shows several lighting presets for rendering digital characters.
This was a good start of the solution. In the sample project I created a Sequence, added the retargeted animation fbx to the body and it works like charm with the 2 sample characters provided. Now I have to figure out the differences in the settings and match them to work with my own metahumans.
Great work, keep in mind Level Sequences are modular and reusable, so you can just duplicate the sample sequence and modify it without breaking the sample project. Most of the metahuman workflows show how to process the sequence part.
I migrated the sample project with the Common folder to my project, and on my Metahumans Face I just set the Anim BP Class to the same as the sample guys had (Face_AnimBP_C). Thank you for everything!
