This is our second film where we are getting used to using Modo together with UE4.
With “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” I wanted to test FaceShift to Modo to UE4 workflow.
Mega thanks to Phil Stopford for the great FaceShift Kit for Modo.
Modo: modeling, animation tweaks, general setup of all assets before importing to UE4
ZBrush: character sculpting
UE4: environment creation, scene setup, rendering
Substance: texturing
Mixamo: body animation
FaceShift: facial animation
FaceShift is great. Speeds up the workflow immensely. It took me some time to set it all up though. Intel realsense camera had its quirks that I had to figure out (one could opt for another camera, but still Realsense was the best solution for me). Also FaceShift had no native support to Modo or UE4, so I had to figure out a third party roundabout solution. Phil Stopford was real fast with support for his FaceShift to Modo Kit.
Also I must say support at FaceShift as well has been very good. Relatively fast responses and effective solutions. So I’m having a positive experience, even though there has been lots to figure out.
At UE4 end I had some trouble sometimes with the morph target data. Sometimes UE4 seemed to get confused with the fbx files that I imported from Modo. Animations ended up on wrong morph channels and stuff. Got some crazy face morphs at times. That might be because Modo 801 does fbx2013 only (not sure how modo 901 is), or that I did something wrong at the setup phase. I’ll carry on experimenting, since I’m pretty certain to go for a year licence with FaceShift.