MetaHuman Animator Eyebrow Fine-tuning in Unreal Engine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- In the process of fine-tuning the eyebrows of a facial animation captured with MetaHuman Animator in @UnrealEngine
Questions for those using MetaHumans and facial animators:
#1. How much time do you spend fine-tuning facial performances?
#2. Can you list the controls on the MetaHuman Face Control rig that affect the brow area? (hint: there are a few more I did not show at the end)
Thanks to Melinda Ozel (melindaozel.com/) for her incredible resources on facial expressions.
And thanks to @JakeHicksPhotography (jakehicksphoto...) for assisting me in applying real-world lighting techniques to light digital humans.
Powered by a @PugetSystemsPC workstation 😎
#metahumanimator #metahuman #ue5 #unrealengine #digitalhuman #motioncapture #mocap #facialanimation
The eyebrow animation fine-tuning in this video subtly enhances the character's expressiveness, showcasing impressive detail. Amazing job!!!
this is just beautiful
Wow! Very nice!
It's amazing!
🔥🔥🔥🔥
Great work!
Lots of eye corrections, it made a big difference. Do you often work with graphic curves in your process? I saw a lot of wobble in the raw and normally I would use curves to correct
Thank you! When you say graphic curves, do you mean the curve editor? I am using the curve editor to adjust the existing keys for the brows currently. I made a tiny adjustment to the eye movement, just for this short clip. Haven't gotten to the eye section yet.
There is a "bug" where the eyes tilt down when the brows raise up. I am going to also use the curve editor to adjust this strange peak in the Y-axis, but it is going to be tricky figuring out what data is being lost during those brow lifts in the eye Y axis.
Curious to know, how would you approach this issue?
@@FeedingWolves Exactly curve editor 😅
Got it, I saw better now that when the eyebrows are raised the eye goes crazy. To fix it I would do the same as you with the curves, but to debug it I could think of:
1 - The Process step in the MHC may be interpreting different data values for the same shape/control/bone/drive(?), so it is possible that the same data arrives for different controls; Maybe another test to diff the results? (You can see this if you take the frames that have noise and compare them with the eyebrow movement frames)
2 - I don't really like using this idea, but maybe it's a bug in Unreal's attempt to translate it, similar to my first idea but in software way(?); 😅
3 - The footage may have been compromised by shadows, changes in light and quality, making the process difficult to achieve. But knowing your work, I don’t think that’s the case.
4 - At least: nothing is perfect, working with Mocap professionally I never saw perfect results (not yet but I'm working on it) this kind problem is complete normal and always need to clean up.
Note: in Control Rig there are two controls to make this movement "CTRL_R_eyeAim" and "CTRL_C_eyeAim" may have some way to smooth this inside the asset? I'm literally working right now with Faceware's Retargerter and when I retarget the same problems appear, luckily I can change the same parameters that smooth out the curves and reduce the number of keyframes so it doesn't flicker to much. But for a "perfect" animation clean up will be necessary.
@@wallasace This is an awesome reply! Thank you! Let me touch on your points.
1. The Process step - I have seen this with Faceware data as well (skip to 4:03 th-cam.com/video/Yxm9qMo9gyQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=VfVr4AnBbbqisHlN ) so it might be due to the actual MetaHuman itself. You might be onto something in saying something is interpreting data values for the same shape/bone drive. Perhaps the MetaHuman Rig Logic itself is, might somehow be triggering the eyes to look down with brow raises or when a "corrective" is over correcting? Not sure but I like your explanation.
2. I am "debugging" for sure with the brow data as it has a hard time differentiating when there is an outer brow raise vs the release of a brow down/brow lateral. So using those curves as references is helpful.
3. Footage compromised, I am flattered you think that is not the case with me!
4. Yes, there will always be cleanup. I feel like you have to be a very patient person to "want" to clean up, as I actually enjoy doing this with the face, but I dont enjoy it as much with body data.
On your note: Faceware uses the C_Eye that controls both eyes which is very helpful and convenient. MetaHuman Animator animates each eye separately. I can understand why as eyes are not always perfectly even when darting and such. I haven't tried switching to the Eye Aim but...I might be able to see if that jolt in the eye Y-axis is not there and use that as a reference.
@@FeedingWolves Oh thanks, are you welcome! 😊
You took a good result with Faceware Studio, did ever try do this process with Analyzer and Retarget in Maya? I'm facing several problems right now: it's a extreme slow process and I'm not getting good results from this yet. I has been used Faceware Studio only two times and to be honest I didn't explore to much yet.
1 - Are you using the Glassbox ABP? In the video you show so many controls curves, if not might be fair to give a try with that?
2 - Question, the both eyes are having this same issue?
3 - Clean up the face is a meditation, but the body and the FINGERS is really a pain in the ass (sorry). For this nothing like a good music and good cup of coffe/tea to do this hard work.
Note about your note about my note: Could be a good try, but at Process Stage can you change that? Because if not that will be worthless.
Can we use eyebrows hair cards instead of alembic groom?
Do the new 5.3 tools interest you at all?
Which tool? Unfortunately, I have had a hard time with the bugs in 5.3 so I have avoided using that version.
@@FeedingWolvesthey added some basic weight painting tools and skeleton editing tools. Probably not exciting if youre use to bouncing between the best software out there
@@xaby996 Actually that is quite interesting. I haven't tested either of those out yet, but I am sure I am going to need to use the skeleton editing tools at some point. Have you found any good videos that delve into either of those tools?
@@FeedingWolvesnope. Just a few ppl showing that its possible.