Unreal 5.6.1 free items:

• MHofUE56_BodyHideMask_Kit.zip (free MetaHuman Body Mask PSD and PNGs) (Sept 27, 2025)
• T_VF4Kcolorcheckerboard.png (free checkerboard texture 4K)

• Free casual MetaHuman resizable outfit for Unreal 5.6 (Gumroad link) https://tobyvirtualfilmer.gumroad.com/l/vfhorizoncasual

How do you cleanup animation in Cascadeur?

This is a guide to how to cleanup the following animation types, supported by Cascadeur as of March 2025 (version 2024.3.3):

• UE5 Manny or Quinn
• UE4 Mannequin
• UEFN Mannequin
• Move AI
• XSens MVN_PUPPET
• Rokoko

NOTE: If you don’t already have Cascadeur, the best option IMHO is to get the INDIE version, for $96 (as of March 2025). After you pay that, after a year it becomes “perpetual”. That is, within a year you will get updates, and then after that you can keep the software but won’t get updates. Make sure you read all about the features MISSING from the Indie version before you buy it.

STEP 1. REDUCE TO 4000 FRAMES

The FBX you end up with in Cascadeur MUST BE LESS THAN 4000 frames. Otherwise it won’t work. So either:

• Make/record your animation to be less than 4000 frames, or
• split up your animation into separate FBX files that are each less than 4000 frames

How to reduce to 4000 frames in Maya

If you’re using Maya, here’s a quick rundown of how to reduce an animation to 4000 frames.

• Import the FBX of your animation
• Change the timeline FPS to be the correct one
  
• In the Outliner, click “root“.
  
• Go to the top SELECT menu and click HIERARCHY
  
  
• In the Timeline, you need to decide which section you want to keep, and delete all other keyframes. To do that:
  • Select all the frames BEFORE the section you want to keep. To do that, hold down shift and left click drag on the section you don’t want.
    
  • Right click on the selection, and choose “Delete“.
    
  • Maya will freeze, but that’s normal. It usually takes between five and twenty seconds to begin responding again.
  • Now Select all the frames AFTER the section you want to keep. To do that, hold down shift and left click drag on the section you don’t want.
    
  • Right click on the selection, and choose “Delete“.
    
  • Maya will freeze, but that’s normal. Again, it usually takes between five and twenty seconds to begin responding again.
• Now you have only the keyframes that you want in the Timeline, but we need to move them so they start on frame 0. To do that:
  • First, have a look at the first frame that you want to keep, and make a note of the frame number.
    
  • Open up the Graph Editor if you don’t already have it open (WINDOWS > ANIMATION EDITORS > GRAPH EDITOR)
  • You should have the entire “Root” hierarchy selected. If not, select “root” in the Outliner, and go SELECT > HIERARCHY.
  • Press “A” on the keyboard to frame everything up.
  • Marquee-select all the key frames in the Graph Editor. Maya will freeze for quite a while.
  • Once Maya begins responding again, the keyframes will all have tangents on them, so the Graph Editor will look like its full of gray bristles.
  • At the top of the Graph Editor, on the left side it will have the word Stats. Just to the right of that, there is a text field. Click in there, and type in negative, equals, and then the frame number that you noted before.
    
  • Maya will freeze once again. Wait for it to respond again, and you will see that your keyframes now start at frame 0.
    
  • You can now close Graph Editor if you like.
• Now in the Timeline, you need to double check that you don’t have any keyframes after the section you want. So make sure that the entire Root hierarchy is once again selected, then in the timeline, just scrub through and make sure.
• Now its time to export the animation. So to do that:
  • Go to the FILE menu, EXPORT ALL.
    
  • Change to export all down the bottom, and name your file.
    
  • On the right, change the preset to AUTODESK MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT.
    
    
  • Click to export.

DO NOT ‘fix’ the scene in Maya to be a different axis up. You might be tempted to change the ‘up’ in Maya, so that you don’t have to rotate the body in Cascadeur. Don’t do that! For some reason, it always screws up the results – at least for me in July 2024.

STEP 3. IMPORT TO CASCADEUR

• Open Cascadeur
  
• In the splash “HOME” page, click “MODELS“.
  
• Double click the character that will work with your animation’s skeleton type.
  • UE5 Manny or Quinn
  • UE4 Mannequin
  • UEFN Mannequin
  • Move AI
  • XSens MVN_PUPPET
  • Rokoko
• For this tutorial, I’ll assume you’ve chosen the UNREAL 5 mannequin, but the steps are the same for each type.
• In the outliner, twirl down “SK_Mannequin“
• Right click “SK_Mannequin” and choose “select branch“.
  
• The character should now be highlighted yellow like this:
  
• Go FILE > IMPORT > FBX/DAE
• In the popup window:
  • Change the PRESETS dropdown to “ANIMATION TO SELECTED OBJECTS“.
  • Make sure the IMPORT MODE is set to UPDATE and its set to “Import to selected joints“
  • Under INCLUDE just select ANIMATIONS
    
  • click IMPORT
• It might taken ten minutes or more to process. It will seem to “freeze”, but you have to just wait for it to finish.

Step 4. Fix character Alignment

• Press X to play the timeline if you want to, or scrub through the frames to see the animation.
• You will see that the character is “incorrectly aligned“. You need to prepare to rotate it using the following instructions:
  • Go back to FRAME 0 in the Timeline.
  • On the right-side of the Timeline, click the cog icon.
    
  • Change the “Framerate” to match what you originally set in Rokoko Studio. Then click to close the Timeline settings window.
    
  • In the Timeline, click the “+UE4_SK_Mannequin” track title, to select all keyframes. A subtle black border will surround the blue keyframes on the timeline.
    
  • In the dock where the Outliner is, change the tab to “Scene Settings“
  • Scroll down to the heading “Manipulators” and twirl it down
  • Click the circle to the left of “Fix rotation step” to enable it. (It will turn blue.)
  • Make sure it is set to 90. (This will snap any rotation changes to 90 degrees.)
    
  • In the Timeline, make sure you are on frame 0.
  • Just above the timeline, click these two icons to enable them:
    
  • The viewport will turn RED
• Now, to rotate it, there are two options:

You have now fixed the scene!

To exit the ‘edit interval mode‘, click these two icons again to disable them:

Step 5. Save your project

• Press X to play the timeline if you want to, or scrub through the frames to see the animation.
• Go to FILE > SAVE, and save your mocap scene before you start doing any cleanup.

Step 6. Do basic mocap cleanup

It’s up to you how you want to work in Cascadeur. But here’s a quick overview of some basic steps to improve the motion capture.

• DOUBLE CLICK the track title in the Timeline.
  
• In the viewport, you will see purple dots showing the motion of your character.
• 
• In the top ribbon, on the right-hand side, click the icon of the two feet with a padlock – this is FULCRUM MOTION CLEANING.
  
• A very subtle message will appear in the bottom right of the viewport, letting you know that fulcrum cleaning is complete.
  
• Next, in the middle of the top ribbon above the viewport, click the icon of a running man. This is “Auto Physics”.
  
• You will see messages in the bottom right-hand side of the viewport, as it processes the auto physics.
  
• When it’s done, you’ll see a green version of your character in the scene.
  
• To make it easier to see what is happening, click the “Physics settings” tab, then click the radio button to turn off “Ghost offset“.
  
• Now if you rewind to frame 0 in the Timeline and press X, you’ll see that the two mannequins are overlapping. The green is showing you the autophysics that Cascadeur wants to apply.
  
• Now, in the top ribbon, to the right of the Auto Physics icons you’ll see other ones have appeared. Click the running man with a U in the corner, which is “Snap To Auto Physics”.
  
• You’ll once again see various notifications in the bottom right corner of your viewport, as it processes the changes.
• Once it’s done, go up to the top ribbon, and click the original Running Man icon (Auto Physics) to turn it off.
  
• Now go back to frame 0 in the timeline, and press X to play through your animation. You will see subtle differences.
• Go to the FILE menu, SAVE, to save your project in case the next step crashes the program.
• In the top ribbon, on the very right-hand side, click the icon for “Animation Unbaking“.
  
• Cascadeur will seem to freeze. Don’t worry, that’s normal. It’s processing behind the scenes, but unfortunately at the moment there’s no progress bar to tell you what it’s doing. You just need to wait until the timeline changes from solid blue keyframes to a series of pink, dark blue and cyan sections.
  

Step 7. Further cleanup

Now you have done basic mocap cleanup, but you will need to adjust the animation further.

The process has CHANGED for transferring characters from iClone to Unreal as of Unreal 5.5.

Bottom line: You CANNOT import characters into Unreal with ‘Import Animations’ enabled – it will screw up all your morphs. You must instead follow a process of first importing the character without animation, then importing ONLY the animation with no skeletal mesh.

I’ve typed up the process below, but here’s the official video explanation from Reallusion from January 2025:

Step by step process (typed up from video)

1. Export your character from iClone as an FBX:
   • In iClone, select your character in your scene
   • Go to FILE > EXPORT > FBX
   • Change the preset to UNREAL
   • Set the animation to ALL (not ‘current frame’) so that your animation is included
   • Make sure ‘include textures’ is OFF
   • Export the fbx
2. If you have NOT already installed AUTO SETUP into your Unreal project (I know this makes no sense – but its what the video explanation says):
   • In Unreal, go to EDIT > PLUGINS
   • Search for INTERCHANGE
   • Disable all related plugins (ie. all plugins with the name INTERCHANGE in them)
     
   • Restart Unreal.
3. In the CONTENT BROWSER, right click, and choose IMPORT
4. Select the FBX (the one with your character and animation from iClone)
5. In the popup:
   • Turn on the checkbox for “Enable Character Creator & iClone Auto Setup”
   • Change the Shader Type to HQ Shader
     
   • Click OK
6. In the next popup:
   • Turn on SKELETAL MESH
   • Enable IMPORT MESH
   • Enable ADVANCED > USE TO AS REF POSE
   • Enable ADVANCED > IMPORT MORPH TARGETS
   • Scroll down, and TURN OFF the “Import Animations” option. This is vital, otherwise the morphs will import incorrectly.
   • Click IMPORT.
7. Now check that the morphs have imported correct.
   • In the Content Browser, double click on the Skeletal Mesh.
   • In the window that pops up, click on the MORPH TARGET PREVIEW tab.
   • Adjust a facial morph, and make sure it looks ok in the viewport.
   • Click the AUTO checkbox next to the morph slider you changed, to reset its position.
   • Close the popup editor window.
8. Now import the animation.
   • In the CONTENT BROWSER, it’s vital that you create a new folder. Do NOT import into into the same folder. Make a new folder called “ANIMATION” or something like that, and open it up.
   • Right click inside your new ANIMATION folder, and choose IMPORT
   • Select the same FBX (the one with your character and animation from iClone)
   • In the popup:
     • Disable “IMPORT MESH”
     • Change the SKELETON dropdown to be your already-imported character
     • Change the ANIMATION LENGTH dropdown to ANIMATED TIME (this will crop out static frames)
     • Click IMPORT
9. Now test the animation.
   • Drag your SKELETAL MESH to the viewport (ie. into the scene) DO NOT DRAG THE ANIMATION BLUEPRINT INTO THE SCENE. IT WILL NOT WORK.
   • In the content browser, right click and go CINEMATICS > LEVEL SEQUENCE.
   • Drag the skeletal mesh from the Outliner to the Sequencer.
   • In the Sequencer, next to ANIMATION, click the plus icon, and select the imported animation.
   • Play back the animation to see the results.

I made a YouTube video tutorial about how to make a custom Unreal character:

• using ONLY CC0-licensed assets, so they can be sold on third-party digital markets (stores).
• rigged to the UE5 Mannequin skeleton
• with ARKIT face shapes

IMPORTANT: The video and this description are not legal advice. No guarantees are made or implied that following these instructions will enable you to sell the resulting characters on third-party marketplaces.

Download the free example character (as a UE5.5 project) HERE.

USED IN THIS TUTORIAL:

• UNREAL 5.5 (FREE) https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US
• BLENDER 4.2.3 (FREE) https://www.blender.org/download/
• MPFB2 Blender add-on (free) https://static.makehumancommunity.org/mpfb.html
• GAME RIG TOOLS Blender add-on (paid/free) https://toshicg.gumroad.com/l/game_rig_tools
• FACE IT 2.3 Blender add-on (paid) https://blendermarket.com/products/faceit
• MARVELOUS DESIGNER (PAID; for clothes) https://www.marvelousdesigner.com/
• MAYA 2025 (PAID; only for two steps) https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/me-indie/maya-indie
• ADOBE SUBSTANCE 3D PAINTER https://www.adobe.com

CLOTHING:

• To create clothing, as I explained in the video, its best to make them ‘from scratch’ and use CC0 textures you find on the internet.
• For the video, I use “CONNECT Official” outfits, which are listed as ‘free’ and I believe are able to be used (but I am NOT guaranteeing that).
• The items were labelled free and were made by CONNECT/CLO/MARVELOUS DESIGNER itself, OR I looked for the notice below that says they say this: “This pattern collection is provided under a free commercial license by the Korea Federation of Textile Industries (KOFOTI) www.kofoti.or.kr”
  I’m not a lawyer but it seems like these can then be used in any way you like, with no attribution. They ‘recommend’ that you give attribution with hashtags, but it’s not a requirement.
• KOOTI female patterns:
  https://connect.clo-set.com/portfolio/208988/collection/collections/2411DDd4ef97a73b324c89a9ee160a79c5d76d
• BLOCK_FV2 patterns:
  https://connect.clo-set.com/portfolio/208988/collection/collections/221102e3493f8866b34c9f868d88727b3021e7
• SHOES_FV2:
  https://connect.clo-set.com/portfolio/208988/collection/collections/220422c106ae2a3c6d4962a70a1ddf535193a0

ARKIT CONTROL RIG:

• In the video, I use the arkit control rig from the Windwalker Echo project:
  https://www.fab.com/listings/36a9d7fb-6769-4e45-a0b3-950890da82c1
• Obviously you should use that ONLY AS A STARTING POINT, because it is property of Epic. You need to make your own setup and your own UI, I would imagine, so it truly becomes your own, and therefore can be considered ‘CC0’ licensed for distribution.

ADOBE 3D SUBSTANCE PAINTER:

• Great thread that explains why it’s legal to sell characters that have been textured using Substance 3D Painter.
  https://community.adobe.com/t5/substance-3d-assets-and-community-assets/selling-a-3d-models-with-substance-textures/td-p/13367098

FAQS:

Q. Why doesn’t the character you make look… good? It looks terrible compared to MetaHumans or Character Creator characters.
A. This is just an example of how the process works. You can use the MPFB2 ‘base mesh’ just as a starting point, and customize the mesh and the textures.

Q. Why do the ARKIT blendshapes you show in Unreal look so bad? The mouth even seems to expand when she smiles.
I didn’t spend time in Face It fixing them. You’re supposed to at least go through and fix them a little bit, but I didn’t. Again, this is just an example of the process.

Q. Why not just use a MetaHuman?
MetaHumans are great, but this video is about trying to make a fully CC0-licensed character – that can be sold on 3rd-party marketplaces. MetaHumans can’t be sold (as complete products) anywhere. You can sell the building blocks, like the 3d face mesh and the skin, but not the full thing.

Q. Why not just use Character Creator characters?
Character Creator characters can only be sold in the official Reallusion stores. This tutorial is about making a custom CC0-licensed character that can be sold anywhere.

Q. Why don’t you just use HumanGen (Blender plugin)?
The results aren’t CC0, and aren’t sellable in marketplaces.

Q. The skin is so basic – why don’t you use “GlobalSkin”? It makes truly photorealistic skin.
The results aren’t CC0, and aren’t sellable in marketplaces.

Links to CC0 skin textures (to paint your own skin materials):

• https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/7af5c6b1-3d26-4526-8f64-99cfddc0cfdb/
• https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/7af5c6b1-3d26-4526-8f64-99cfddc0cfdb/
  Explanation video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukvj5YLfvCI&ab_channel=Kuhantilope
• Simple Skin – 01 (Adam McAnderson)
  https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/7af5c6b1-3d26-4526-8f64-99cfddc0cfdb/
• Simple Human Skin – 02 (Adam McAnderson)
  https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/7af5c6b1-3d26-4526-8f64-99cfddc0cfdb/
• Light Human Skin (Adam McAnderson)
  https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/7af5c6b1-3d26-4526-8f64-99cfddc0cfdb/
• Light Freckled Human Skin – 01
  https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/7af5c6b1-3d26-4526-8f64-99cfddc0cfdb/

Links to CC0 fabric textures:

• https://ambientcg.com/list?category=Fabric&type=material%2Catlas%2Cdecal&sort=popular

You can now get access to the “full” outfit that was shown during the GDC demo called ‘Talisman’ – the captain of the spaceship’s outfit, fully simulated with layers inside of Unreal 5.4. (I made this YouTube video showing how cool the demo was.)

It takes a bit of effort to find, but when you eventually get it, you will be able to open the cloth asset and it will look like this:

So how do you actually GET that file though?

HOW TO GET IT

STEP 1. Launch UEFN

Once you install Fortnite and UEFN to your PC, you should have these option in your Epic Games Launcher:

Click on UNREAL EDITOR FOR FORNITE.

STEP 2. Create a new UEFN project with the Talisman MetaHuman template

Once the UEFN splash page appears, click on the “Talisman MetaHuman” tile, then create a new project.

STEP 3. Find the box.com link and open it

Once you’re in that new project, you need to follow the instructions at the bottom of this page. But if it’s TLDR for you, in the Verse Outliner there is a file called “camera_switch_mode_device.verse”. Just double click it.

STEP 4. Download the ZIP file

You’ll eventually see a whole lot of code, and in there at the top you will see a link to a box.com URL. That URL is a zip file. Download it – its 2.2gb:

STEP 5. Unzip the zip file & open the Unreal project

Once you have unzipped those folders, go to:

CaptainRoux_Cloth_Learning_Assets\CapRoux_Cloth_Example_UE

And you will see “Cloth_Example.uproject“.

Open it.

STEP 6. Find the clothing asset and open it

then have a look around and you will find this asset:

Double click that ClothAsset, and it will open:

STEP 7. Use the dataflow graph to… learn how to use chaos cloth layers and stuff?

This is an incredibly complicated and custom Dataflow graph that they have specifically made for this garment.

But hopefully it will help us all to figure out… how to make it work.

STEP 8. Make your own garment and simulate it with chaos cloth

I guess we learn from that example, and follow the general instructions here to make our own garments:

• (Official Unreal page) Creating Clothing Assets for Unreal Editor for Fornite Using Unreal Engine
• (Official Unreal page) Making a Sweater with Marvelous Designer In Unreal Editor for Fortnite

Let me know on Twitter (@virtualfilmer) or my YouTube if you have success with your own garment!

MAY 1, 2024.

For the brand-new Unreal 5.4, I’m still trying to figure out the Kinematic Collider and the layered clothing system, so I’ve made a custom Dataflow Graph that I’ve tried to make ‘match’ as close as possible Tim Brekensiek’s instructions on this official documentation page when it comes to the PROJECT TALISMAN setup.

For anyone else trying to replicate the ‘Project Talisman‘ setup, I made this post to share my work in case it helps. Please find the COMMENTS button on that official page link, and add your comment, if you think you’ve figured out how to make all this work!

Here’s a low-res image of my current Dataflow template (there is no feature to ‘save out dataflow graph in high resolution’ in Unreal yet!):

And you can download my ‘complex’ Dataflow graph here:

20240501_CAComplexTemplateV3.zip

If you’d like to replicate my experiments, here are more details:

• The MetaHuman I’m using is a f_med_nrw (I’m using the HADLEY preset, with clothes set to none and shoes set to flip flops).
  
• The clothing USD exported from Marvelous Designer that I’m using is here:
  20240501_f_med_nrw_ProjTalismanOutfit.zip
• The combined mesh I am using for the Kinematic Collider is a combined LOD 0 mesh from the Maya source file: Combinedmesh_HadleyNoClothes_20240501.zip

After you export your face animation from Unreal using the Python script, you will end up with a CSV.

If you open that CSV in Microsoft Excel, the column headings should precisely match the following:
A. CTRL_expressions_jawRight
B. CTRL_expressions_jawLeft
C. CTRL_expressions_jawOpen
D. CTRL_expressions_jawClenchR
E. CTRL_expressions_jawFwd
F. CTRL_expressions_jawBack
G. CTRL_expressions_jawClenchL
H. CTRL_expressions_neckMastoidContractL
I. CTRL_expressions_neckStretchL
J. CTRL_expressions_neckDigastricDown
K. CTRL_expressions_neckDigastricUp
L. CTRL_expressions_neckStretchR
M. CTRL_expressions_neckThroatExhale
N. CTRL_expressions_neckThroatInhale
O. CTRL_expressions_neckMastoidContractR
P. CTRL_expressions_neckThroatDown
Q. CTRL_expressions_neckThroatUp
R. CTRL_expressions_jawChinRaiseDR
S. CTRL_expressions_jawChinRaiseUR
T. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsBlowR
U. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPressR
V. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTogetherUL
W. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPressL
X. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsBlowL
Y. CTRL_expressions_mouthStretchLipsCloseR
Z. CTRL_expressions_mouthStretchLipsCloseL
AA. CTRL_expressions_tonguePress
AB. CTRL_expressions_tongueRollLeft
AC. CTRL_expressions_tongueRollRight
AD. CTRL_expressions_tongueRollUp
AE. CTRL_expressions_tongueRollDown
AF. CTRL_expressions_tongueTipLeft
AG. CTRL_expressions_tongueTipRight
AH. CTRL_expressions_tongueTipUp
AI. CTRL_expressions_tongueTipDown
AJ. CTRL_expressions_tongueLeft
AK. CTRL_expressions_tongueRight
AL. CTRL_expressions_tongueUp
AM. CTRL_expressions_tongueDown
AN. CTRL_expressions_tongueWide
AO. CTRL_expressions_tongueNarrow
AP. CTRL_expressions_tongueIn
AQ. CTRL_expressions_tongueOut
AR. CTRL_expressions_tongueRoll
AS. CTRL_expressions_mouthLeft
AT. CTRL_expressions_mouthRight
AU. CTRL_expressions_mouthUp
AV. CTRL_expressions_mouthDown
AW. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipRaiseL
AX. CTRL_expressions_mouthSharpCornerPullL
AY. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerPullL
AZ. CTRL_expressions_mouthDimpleL
BA. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerDepressL
BB. CTRL_expressions_mouthStretchL
BC. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipDepressL
BD. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipDepressR
BE. CTRL_expressions_mouthStretchR
BF. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTowardsDL
BG. CTRL_expressions_mouthFunnelUR
BH. CTRL_expressions_neckSwallowPh1
BI. CTRL_expressions_neckSwallowPh2
BJ. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTowardsUL
BK. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipBiteR
BL. CTRL_expressions_mouthFunnelDR
BM. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTightenDL
BN. CTRL_expressions_mouthPressUL
BO. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTightenDR
BP. CTRL_expressions_mouthFunnelDL
BQ. CTRL_expressions_mouthCheekSuckL
BR. CTRL_expressions_mouthCheekBlowL
BS. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTightenUL
BT. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTightenUR
BU. CTRL_expressions_mouthPressDL
BV. CTRL_expressions_mouthFunnelUL
BW. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTowardsUR
BX. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPurseDR
BY. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperUpBiteL
BZ. CTRL_expressions_mouthPressDR
CA. CTRL_expressions_mouthPressUR
CB. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPurseDL
CC. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipBiteR
CD. CTRL_expressions_mouthCheekSuckR
CE. CTRL_expressions_mouthCheekBlowR
CF. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPurseUL
CG. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsTowardsDR
CH. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipBiteL
CI. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPurseUR
CJ. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerDepressR
CK. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipRaiseR
CL. CTRL_expressions_mouthDimpleR
CM. CTRL_expressions_mouthSharpCornerPullR
CN. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerPullR
CO. CTRL_expressions_earUpR
CP. CTRL_expressions_earUpL
CQ. CTRL_expressions_noseNostrilDilateR
CR. CTRL_expressions_noseNostrilCompressR
CS. CTRL_expressions_noseWrinkleR
CT. CTRL_expressions_noseNostrilDepressR
CU. CTRL_expressions_noseNostrilDilateL
CV. CTRL_expressions_noseNostrilCompressL
CW. CTRL_expressions_noseWrinkleL
CX. CTRL_expressions_noseNostrilDepressL
CY. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookLeftL
CZ. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookRightL
DA. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookUpL
DB. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookDownL
DC. CTRL_expressions_eyeBlinkL
DD. CTRL_expressions_eyeWidenL
DE. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookLeftR
DF. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookRightR
DG. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookUpR
DH. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookDownR
DI. CTRL_expressions_eyeBlinkR
DJ. CTRL_expressions_eyeWidenR
DK. CTRL_expressions_eyePupilWideR
DL. CTRL_expressions_eyePupilNarrowR
DM. CTRL_expressions_eyePupilWideL
DN. CTRL_expressions_eyePupilNarrowL
DO. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookLeftL
DP. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookRightL
DQ. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookUpL
DR. CTRL_expressions_eyeLookDownL
DS. CTRL_expressions_eyeCheekRaiseL
DT. CTRL_expressions_eyeSquintInnerL
DU. CTRL_expressions_eyeLidPressL
DV. CTRL_expressions_noseWrinkleUpperL
DW. CTRL_expressions_noseWrinkleUpperR
DX. CTRL_expressions_eyeSquintInnerR
DY. CTRL_expressions_eyeCheekRaiseR
DZ. CTRL_expressions_eyeLidPressR
EA. CTRL_expressions_browLateraIR
EB. CTRL_expressions_browLateralL
EC. CTRL_expressions_browDownR
ED. CTRL_expressions_browDownL
EE. CTRL_expressions_browRaiseOuterL
EF. CTRL_expressions_browRaiselnL
EG. CTRL_expressions_browRaiselnR
EH. CTRL_expressions_browRaiseOuterR
EI. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerWideL
EJ. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerNarrowL
EK. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerUpL
EL. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerDownL
EM. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerUpR
EN. TRL_expressions_mouthCornerDownR
EO. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerWideR
EP. CCTRL_expressions_mouthCornerNarrowR
EQ. CTRL_expressions_eyeFaceScrunchR
ER. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPushUL
ES. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPullUL
ET. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsThickUR
EU. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPushDL
EV. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPullDL
EW. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsThickUL
EX. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerRounderDR
EY. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerSharpenDR
EZ. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipShiftLeft
FA. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipShiftRight
FB. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipRollInR
FC. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipRollOutR
FD. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsThickDL
FE. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerRounderUR
FF. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerSharpenUR
FG. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipShiftLeft
FH. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipShiftRight
FI. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipRollInR
FJ. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipRollOutR
FK. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipRollInL
FL. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipRollOutL
FM. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerRounderDL
FN. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerSharpenDL
FO. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsThickDR
FP. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipRollInL
FQ. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipRollOutL
FR. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerRounderUL
FS. CTRL_expressions_mouthCornerSharpenUL
FT. CTRL_expressions_noseNasolabialDeepenL
FU. CTRL_expressions_eyeFaceScrunchL
FV. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPushUR
FW. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPullUR
FX. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipTowardsTeethR
FY. CTRL_expressions_mouthLowerLipTowardsTeethL
FZ. CTRL_expressions_noseNasolabialDeepenR
GA. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPushDR
GB. CTRL_expressions_mouthLipsPullDR
GC. CTRL_L_mouth_lipsTowardsTeethU_1451
GD. CTRL_expressions_mouthUpperLipTowardsTeethR
GE. Discard because no blendshape
GF. Discard because no blendshape

For help with the FACE ANIMATION IMPORTER PRO plugin, click here.

How do you add a windows “convert to WebP” option when you right-click in Windows Explorer?

One way is to download and install the free FILE CONVERTER program for Windows.

• Go to the official site file-converter.io
• Click to download the program
• It will download a file called something like “FileConverter-2.0.2-x64-setup.msi”
• Double click the MSI file to start installation
• Follow the simple instructions to complete installation
• In Windows Explorer, a new option will appear when you right-click on a file:
  
• Hover over “File Converter”, and you’ll see a list of files to convert your image file to:
  
  Including GIF, PNG, WEBP, JPG, ICO and PDF.

What is the “Substance” plugin for Maya and what can it actually do?

What is it?

It’s a free plugin for Maya 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020.

It lets you:

• import Substance materials – in “.sbar” format – from:
  • the free Substance Community website or
  • the paid Substance Asset website
• apply those materials to objects in your scene
• export the textures (once applied to your objects) as standard ‘image maps‘ (eg. myobject_basecolor.png)

How do I get it?

You can download it here.

The official help files website is here: https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-integrations/3d-applications/maya/substance-in-maya-overview.html

The official release notes can be found here. (Useful to know what has recently changed or been fixed).

How do I install it?

Just download the file and double click, then it will walk you through the installation.

However, even once you install the plugin, it does not automatically load in Maya. You need to do this:

• Open Maya, create a new scene
• Go to WINDOWS > SETTINGS/PREFERENCES > PLUG-IN MANAGER
• In the search bar, type “substance“
• Then at the top next to APPLY TO ALL click “loaded” and “auto load”
  
• Click CLOSE

What are the buttons the shelf?

You should now have a new shelf in Maya called ‘Substance‘.

The buttons are:

	Substance Settings (opens the Substance settings menu)
	Batch Import (imports and creates the selected Substance files)
	Batch Bake to Disk (bake selected Substance nodes to a folder)
	Upgrade Old Nodes (convert all old plugin nodes to new nodes)
	Apply Workflow to Maps (apply Substance workflows to image maps)
	Open Content (open sample ‘sbsars’ in content browser)
	Open Substance 3D Assets (Open the paid ‘Substance 3D Assets’ website in a browser) https://substance3d.adobe.com/assets/
	Open ‘Substance Share’ (Open the free community assets website in a browser) https://substance3d.adobe.com/community-assets/
	Open Documentation: Open the ‘Substance in Maya‘ documentation in a browser https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-integrations/3d-applications/maya.html
	About Substance in Maya: Display ‘About’ window

Free materials that come with the plugin

If you click the Open Content button you’ll see a list of free included materials:

These “.sbsar” files are on your hard drive: C:\Program Files\Allegorithmic\Adobe Substance 3D for Maya\2024\sbsars

• bark_pine.sbsar
• bricks_bond_variations.sbsar
• carbon_fiber_twill_weave.sbsar
• cardboard_torn.sbsar
• chrome_plated_rusty.sbsar
• concrete_damp_wall.sbsar
• concrete_layers_stacked.sbsar
• fabric_jeans.sbsar
• golf_bunker_sand.sbsar
• leather_fine.sbsar
• metal_grinded.sbsar
• parquet_american_chestnut.sbsar
• plastic_vinyl_glossy.sbsar
• pounded_asphalt.sbsar
• powdery_snow_marks.sbsar
• rotten_wood.sbsar
• rust_corrosion_drip.sbsar
• rusted_painted_metal.sbsar
• scrapped_paint.sbsar
• slate_tiles_with_moss.sbsar
• tarmac.sbsar
• wood_fence_painted.sbsar

How do I actually apply an .sbsar to something??

To apply a Substance material to a mesh, you first IMPORT the “.sbar” and then construct the Material in Hypershade.

To do that:

1. Go to WINDOWS > RENDERING EDITORS > HYPERSHADE
2. Above the graph, click the icon with the ‘diamonds‘ to clear the graph
3. Right-click and hold in the GRAPH, then swipe upwards and click CREATE NODE:
   
4. In the dialogue box that appears, type “subst” in the text field, then click SUBSTANCE NODE
5. The following will appear, and the ‘substancenode’ node will be selected:
   
6. In the Property Editor, click the browse file icon next to ‘Load Substance’:
   
7. In the file explorer that pops up, choose an “.sbsbar” file
8. In the Property Editor, click the WIDTH drop-down and change the resolution to something like 4096 (for cinematic-quality textures)
   
9. Scroll down, and under WORKFLOWS click the workflow on the left that you’d like to use (Standard Surface, Arnold, Renderman, Vray Next, Redshit, Maxwell, Vray 6). If you don’t know, just choose ‘Standard Surface’. Then click ‘Create Network’.
   
10. The system will pause for a few seconds, then various nodes will appear in the graph, and a preview of the material will appear in the “Texture Viewer”.
    
11. Click to select the tile of the material in the ‘MATERIALS’ tab of Hypershade:
    
12. Change the name of the material in the Property Editor.
    
13. Now your scene, right-click on the mesh you want to apply the material to, and choose ‘Assign Existing Material‘, then the material you just named:
    
14. Make sure the ‘Texturing’ option is enabled in the Viewport, and you’ll see your material applied:
    
    But the tiling of the texture will be too large.
15. In HYPERSHADE, click the ‘place’ node (the first node) in your material
    
16. In the Property Editor you will now be able to adjust the ‘Repeat UV’ value to adjust the tiling. Increase it to maybe 3.
    
17. You will see that the tiling of the material in the viewport improves:
    

I haven’t gotten this to work fully yet (as of Thursday March 21 2024, 8:45am) but here is what is working so far:

1. Make your clothing item in Marvelous Designer:
   1. Make an Avatar in Marvelous Designer that matches your MetaHuman body type
      
   2. Design a garment and add it to your Avatar, and simulate (as normal) to test it
      
   3. Make sure you make different fabrics, and set their physical properties (Unreal will use them in its simulation)
      
2. When you’re happy with the garment, export a USD from Marvelous Designer.
   • Go FILE > EXPORT > USD
     
   • Save the file in a new folder:
     
   • In the popup that appears,  disable the “Select All Avatars” checkbox
     
   • Make sure to select CM as the scale
     
     
   • Click OK
   • It might take a few minutes to export
     
     
3. Create a new Unreal project with Unreal 5.4.0
   1. Open the EPIC LAUNCHER, and install Unreal 5.4.0 (Preview 1)
   2. Create a new Unreal project, with the FILM AND TV template
      
4. Add your MetaHuman:
   1. Go to the built-in Quixel Bridge in Unreal
   2. Download the MetaHuman that your garment uses
   3. ADD it to your project
   4. Click to enable any plugins it tells you do, and restart Unreal when needed
   5. Drag your MetaHuman to your level, and zero-out the location and rotation
      
5. Enable the Chaos Cloth plugins:
   1. Go to EDIT > PLUGINS.
   2. Search for “cloth”, and enable the following plugins then restart:
      Chaos Cloth
      Chaos Cloth Asset
      Chaos Cloth Asset Editor
      Chaos Cloth Editor
      Chaos Cloth Generator
      
      
      
6. Create your “Cloth Asset” file:
   1. Once Unreal restarts, make a new folder in the content browser called “test“, and open it
   2. Right-click in the new folder, and go PHYSICS>CLOTH ASSET
      
      
   3. Name the new ‘Cloth Asset‘ file as “TestGarment01“
   4. Press CTRL-SHIFT-S to save your project and the new ‘Cloth Asset’ file.
   5. Double click the ‘Cloth Asset‘ file
      
      
   6. Zoom in on the DATAFLOW graph  so you can see the first nodes, and click the USDImport node.
      
      
   7. On the right side, click the “…” icon to browse for USD file.
      
      
   8. When it opens, you’ll get errors saying there’s no LOD 0. I’m not sure how to solve that right now. I’ve posted on the official Unreal forum here.
      
      
   9. You can try to set the Skeleton and the Physics asset, like this, but it doesn’t seem to do anything:
      
      
   10. You can also try clicking the TRANSFER SKIN WEIGHTS node and setting details, but it doesn’t work either:
       
       
       
       
7. For now, the bottom line is that it seems to import the USD file okay, but the viewports stay blank – and it clearly can’t “see” the garment:
   
   
8. Oddly, the garment IS imported. If you go into the Content Browser, you’ll see that a full mesh – with proper materials added – has been imported. So at least it seems that USD is the fastest current way to import properly textured/materialed Marvelous Designer garments into Unreal (with automatic texture/material setup).
   

WEDNESDAY MARCH 20, 2024

I found the presentation about Marvelous Designer simulation features in UE5.4 amazing but a little difficult to follow just because it was so dense and full of wonderful detail. 🙂 So I wrote out what Epic’s Jared Monsen said then I tried to separate it into parts and steps (below) – to make it easier to follow. I’m sure, closer to UE5.4’s release on April 24, we will get proper documentation! But for now, this might help some folks like me who are keen to understand but found it all too a little overwhelming.

You can find the start of this part of the video stream here. Follow along by reading my ‘split into parts and steps‘ transcript below….

(This presentation is (C)2024 EPIC GAMES and the text is presented here only for educational purposes and to help the community, including hard of hearing and EAASL folks!)

PART 1: OVERVIEW OF THE PROCESS

It really is awesome to be able to take clothing assets from high end packages like Clo and Marvelous Designer, where clothing panels and parameters translate directly into the Engine.

With such an easy integrated workflow, it’s clear to see it’s a “win win” for everybody here.

And this new process, which will be in Beta in 5.4, allows you to easily see the real-time representation of your “sim” set up quickly.

Once in the Engine, you have the option to use those results in Unreal or send them on to be used in UEFN.

THE FOUR STEPS

• STEP 1. MAKE THE GARMENT
  • At Epic, we use Marvelous Designer to create the costume for Rue, our captain on “Talisman”.
  • Here you can see we used one of our stock MetaHuman bodies from “MetaHuman Creator” to construct the costume.
  • You can begin your creation process by constructing your clothing in Marvelous Designer like we did.
  • When working in Marvelous Designer, your fabric selections and simulation settings matter. If you choose to transfer those simulation properties during the USD process, we take into account those attributes and they will affect the simulation behavior in Unreal.
• STEP 2. USD EXPORT
  • Once you’re finished in Marvelous Designer, USD export is an easy way to get your clothing assets out of Marvelous Designer and straight into the Unreal Engine.
• STEP 3. IMPORT INTO UNREAL
  • Once you’ve imported your clothing assets into Unreal, we can now start setting up the “cloth panel graph”.

• STEP 4. CLOTH PANEL GRAPH
  • You can choose a workflow that ranges anywhere from fully automated to a completely hand-tweaked This flexibility allows you to get something up simulating faster, as well as having the option to customize the areas that you feel are necessary.
• STEP 5. (OPTIONAL) MIGRATE TO UEFN
  • At any point in time the “cloth asset” can then be used in Unreal, or it can be migrated to be used in your UEFN
• STEP 6. ADD TO CHARACTER
  • In order to get your cloth onto your character, you simply add a “Chaos Cloth” Component to your character’s Blueprint and choose the corresponding “Cloth Asset” you want to use.

PART 2: 5.4 IMPROVEMENTS IN WORKFLOW

AUTOGENERATED GRAPH: A new feature we’ve added is an auto generated graph that’s built when you first create a “cloth asset node”. This graph helps you get going fast and saves you time getting started. This includes the USD import node, some core nodes for setting up the simulation, value transfers from Marvelous Designer (if selected), a physics asset node, and parameters set to good initial values.

USD IMPORT HAS TWO MESHES: The USD import brings in both a simulation mesh and a render mesh for you to immediately use. And just to be clear by what I mean by that:

• the simulation mesh or “sim mesh” is a lower resolution mesh that’s actually simulated but not rendered.
• The render mesh is a high resolution mesh that you actually see. The render mesh is driven by the “sim mesh”, and provides a higher detailed model -without having to pay the computation price of a higher resolution symmetry.

AUTO-SKINNING AND AUTO-LOADING: We’ve also added some really great nodes for you to use in your graph, like auto skinning and auto loading to speed up the creation process. And this feature streamlines the cloth setup, allowing you to arrive at a working simulation much faster and more easily.

FLEXIBLE PIPELINE: One of the best features of the clothing pipeline though is not only do we provide automated path for many aspects of the pipe, but we also allow you to customize basically every part of that pipeline to suit your needs.

For Talisman, we decided we wanted to have the best of both worlds. In this project, we felt there were assets that we wanted our ours to customize to fit our needs.

For example, we created our own customized higher resolution render mesh for the captain’s costume. The clothing graph allows us to swap out the render mesh for our own version in a really easy way.   We also decided to use some of our artist-tuned skin weighting for LOD 0. And we used a remesh node to auto generate lower resolution “sim meshes” for the lower LOD’s.  In addition, we dialed in the simulation solver settings as well as other nodes to meet the needs of our project.

KINEMATIC COLLIDER: And another customization, customization we use is a really cool new feature which uses a “Kinematic Collider”.

This is a deformable collider mesh that moves with the skinned asset.  This allows more accurate collisions at a relatively inexpensive price.

The Kinematic Collider is really easy to set up in the graph and solves a lot of problems that come from just using Capsules.

The ability for us to customize the graph in areas that we wanted to, but also take advantage of the automated processes where we could, saved us time while also giving us creative freedom and control over the end results.

With these features you can decide what pipeline best works for your needs – anything from again the fully automated to the totally customizable.

PART 3: THE CLOTHING PANEL EDITOR

Let’s take a closer look at the clothing panel editor.

The clothing panel editor was released in UE5.3 and introduced a new way of authoring cloth.

The clothing panel editor is where all your clothing graph work is done.

There are 4 main sections to the editor:

• In the top left is the PANEL VIEWER, where you can see 2D and 3D representations of your asset, make selections and paint weight maps. There have been a lot of tool improvements made here for easier painting and selection, and we’ll continue to refine tools and processes there.
• In the middle of the editor is the SIMULATION VIEWER. Here you can view the actual simulation behavior, play animations, use different meshes to view your cloth on and see the visual debug tools.
• On the far right is the panel for simulation details, preview scene settings, and the simulation visualization tools. The Preview Settings tab allows you to set skeletal meshes and animations to view your clothing with. And the details panel has all the usual settings that pertain to the clothing asset. The visualization panel has a lot of great features like seeing only the simulation meshes, displaying collisions, viewing weight maps, and simulations to statistics, just to name a few.
• Last but not least is the data flow graph – and this is where you set up your graph and access the nodes to create different cloth features. It has a very familiar field similar to setting up and wiring nodes like blueprints.

Once you’re done setting up the graph in the panel editor, you’re now ready to use your cloth asset and UE or export to UEFN.

But before we do that, let’s take a look at some nodes that might be of particular interest to you.

PART 4: USEFUL NODES IN THE CLOTHING PANEL EDITOR

NEW TRANSFER SKIN WEIGHTS NODE

The new Transfer Skin Weights node is a new tool that we’ve added to the Unreal toolbox for you to use.  This node allows you to take an imported static mesh or asset that came from the USD import and copy weights from a user defined skeleton mesh to the chosen mesh.

Since the cloth solver needs weights in order to work correctly, this is a great solution that skips the need for you to rig and await your clothing mesh in an external DCC.

In most cases, all you’ll need is a rigged body – most likely your character or simplified version of it – and then your static mesh as inputs.

The output of this node will give you a skinned version of the static mesh, now ready to use for your clothing asset.

Two more things to note about the ‘Transfer Skin Weights’ node:

• INPAINT WEIGHT ALGORITHM: The algorithm we use in this node is different from what you might find in some DC packages. The node provides an option for you to use the “Closest Point On Surface” method if you wish, but the “Inpaint Weight” method is something that’s quite different. This algorithm allows us to significantly better handle loose clothing – as well as armpits and other tight areas on the mesh. And this method is a “robust, non data-driven mesh algorithm”; which essentially means it’s it will work on any given mesh.
• You could also use the skin transfer node even if you don’t want to simulate your clothing. You can simply use this node in the graph without any simulation nodes and the end result will be the rigged version moving with your character. (And we use this technique for LOD 2 on our “Talisman” project.)

THE REMESH NODE

The “remesh” node allows for auto generation of lower resolution meshes, based on a target percentage.

You can choose to remesh both the “render mesh” and “simulation mesh” – or just one, or the other.

For creating LODs in “Talisman” and we took a hybrid approach:

• We hand-created our “render mesh” LODs, but we used the “remesh nodes” to auto reduce the “simulation meshes”.
• We decided to keep the same “render mesh” for both LOD 0 and LOD 1, as we felt the lower resolution wrapped better to the “simulation mesh”.
• And here you can see the numbers that we targeted for both the simulation and render mesh. Depending on your project needs and complexity, these numbers will be different for you.

PART 5: THE “MIGRATE TOOL” FOR GETTING CLOTH INTO UEFN

Now that you have the cloth asset all set up, getting your cloth asset into UEFN is really straightforward.

At any point in time in your process you can use the “migrate tool” to to migrate your cloth into UEFN.

When migrating your cloth, the only essential assets you need to migrate are:

• the “clothing asset” itself,
• and the physics asset, if you’ve chosen to use one.

Materials and textures are also available for you to migrate, but you may or may not need them depending on your project needs, and if this is the first time you’ve migrated the asset into your project.

The “clothing asset” bundles up almost everything you need into one asset, which makes the process really simple when exporting to UEFN.

REAL-TIME SIMULATION

Rue’s jacket is 100% simulated using self-collision and a “kinematic Collider”.

Real time simulation is not an easy task, and it’s always a ‘give and take’ relationship when it comes to performance and quality.

Our goal is to make real time simulation more widely usable and performance friendly.

PERFORMANCE & FRAME RATES

You can expect one to one performance and behavior between Unreal and UEFN.  Which is really cool.

• For Talisman, our goal was 30 frames a second on a high end machine, going for a high end quality simulation in a close up scenario.
• Our lower LOD simulation frame rates come in anywhere from about 50 to 60 frames a second, after tuning the graph for those specific LODs. (Total simulated vertices, self collisions and solver iterations being the biggest factors for performance.)

PART 6: RECAP & AVAILABILITY

Our clothing tool gives you a new option as a developer. Whatever your budget is, real time simulated clothing is now a much more realistic option for you to use in your project.

Our engineers and artists have been on the ground level using the system and we’re really excited to continue to push and develop it on all fronts.

• You now have the ability to import your clothing creations from high end software packages like Clo and Marvelous Designer.
• The USD import process is what allows you to to bring those clothing assets and to be translated into software packages into Unreal.
• You can utilize both automated and custom setups in your “cloth asset graph”.
• You can use a cloth asset in Unreal or easily migrate it into UEFN.
• And when this comes out in UEFN as early access it will be released with documentation to help you get the best results from your assets and both Unreal and Marvelous Designer.

The Clo and Marvelous Designer functionality will also be releasing at the same time UE5.4 does. So at 5.4 launch everything is unlocked and ready for you to use.

We’d like to thank Clo for their work and their collaboration as we worked on implementing the USD format, and collaborating with the clothing and fashion industry and a leading company like Clo is really a wonderful opportunity.

We’re really excited to see what the community creates and leverages when creating their own experiences.

(This presentation is (C)2024 EPIC GAMES and the text is presented here only for educational purposes and to help the community, including hard of hearing and EAASL folks!)

If you’ve animated a MetaHuman source rig in Maya, how do you transfer that animation (the FACE animation of it – see body here) to Unreal and apply it to a MetaHuman?

The following process assumes you’ve already imported a Maya MetaHuman source rig (instructions here) and animated the face using the facial GUI.

So as of February 2024 (Maya 2024 and Unreal 5.3.2), here’s the process:

1. EXPORT FACE ANIMATION:
   1. Make sure your scene length is only as long as the animation – to avoid unnecessary processing time later.
   2. Take a note of your Maya scene’s FPS – you’ll need to match that later in Unreal.
   3. Click on “FacialControls” then right-click and choose “Select Set Members“
   4. Open the FILE menu and click the BOX next to ‘Export Selection…’
   5. In the dialogue box, under GENERAL OPTIONS, change the File type dropdown to “FBX export” then click “Export Selection“
   6. In the next dialogue box, under FILE TYPE SPECIFIC OPTIONS, change the Current Preset dropdown to “Autodesk Media & Entertainment
   7. Under ANIMATION, enable the “Animation” checkbox
   8. Under BAKE ANIMATION, enable the “Bake Animation” checkbox
   9. Make sure that the Bake Animation in and out frames are the full length of your timeline
   10. Under CONNECTIONS, disable the “Input Connections” checkbox
   11. Name your FBX (eg. ‘StretchAnimation_MayaMHface_forUnreal‘)
   12. Click “Export Selection”
       
       
2. CHECK THE OUTPUT FBX:
   1. Go to the START menu and open a fresh MAYA session
   2. Go to FILE > IMPORT… and find the FBX of the body animation and open it
   3. In the Viewport, zoom out so you can see the skeleton
   4. Press play on the timeline to check that it works
   5. If it doesn’t, it might be because of a persistent bug in Maya! To fix that, QUIT OUT OF MAYA and open Maya again. And try the process again of importing it and see if it works.
      
3. SETUP A SEQUENCE IN UNREAL:
   If you don’t already have a Sequence with a MetaHuman, you’ll need to set one up.
   
   1. Open Unreal Engine and import a MetaHuman (via Quixel Bridge)
   2. Add the MetaHuman to your scene, and zero out its transform (ie. the location, rotation, scale in the details panel)
   3. In the Outliner, click the floor object (if you have one), and zero out its transform as well (it defaults to a height of 20 for some reason)
   4. Now in the content browser, create a folder for SEQUENCES and create a new Sequence in it (right-click and go CINEMATICS > LEVEL SEQUENCE)
   5. Open the Sequence, and change the FPS to match your Maya scene earlier
   6. Go to the first frame (0000), drag the Blueprint from the Outliner into the Sequence
   7. In the Sequence, under FACE, delete the “MetaHuman_ControlRig” layer
      
4. IMPORT THE FACE ANIMATION:
   1. On frame 0000, right-click on “Face_ControlBoard_CtrlRig”, choose “Import Control Rig FBX” and open your facial animation FBX
   2. Under STRING MATCHING OPTIONS, twirl down the 0 and change “Find” to your namespace in Maya (INCLUDING the colon)
   3. Click the “Control Mapping Presets” dropdown and choose “Metahuman Control Mappings”, then click IMPORT 
   4. You will need to adjust BOTH the Sequence ‘End Time‘ and ‘Selection End‘ to match the length of the clip you imported – otherwise it won’t fully play.
      

THIS PAGE IS WRONG NOW AS OF UE5.4. THE SOURCE FILES HAVE CHANGED AND THE VALUES BELOW ARE INCORRECT.

If you have a MetaHuman source file open in Maya (ie. you have used Quixel Bridge to export a MetaHuman to Maya), you’ll see that it comes with a facial rig but not a body rig. (That is, there is a body SKELETON, but there’s no way to easily control it.)

So let’s add a body rig that supports FK and IK. In Maya, one of the easiest ways to do that is to add a HumanIK rig.

Step 1. Change the character into a t-pose

We need to change the character into a t-pose to make this work.

1. In the viewport click in a blank area to deselect everything.
2. Now go to the Show menu and turn on “joints”.
3. In the same Show menu, turn off polygons.
4. You might want to hide “DHIhead:spine_04” entirely in the Outliner, because it shares bones with the main body and it can get confusing.
5. Go to the first frame of the Timeline. (I usually change the scene to start on frame 0)
6. Turn on the “Auto keyframe toggle“, which is in the right bottom of the Maya interface
   
7. CLAVICLES:
   1. In the Viewport, click on the right clavicle. Hold down shift and click the left clavicle.
   2. In the Channel Box, change the “Rotate Y” amount. You will need to change it to varying amounts depending on the size of your MetaHuman:
      

      UNDERWEIGHT	MEDIUM WEIGHT	OVERWEIGHT
      f_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -7	f_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -10	m_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??

      **Eventually I’d love to fill this table out with ROTATE Y values for all 18 MetaHuman body types.
      
      

8. UPPER ARMS:
   1. In the Viewport, click on the right upper arm joint.
   2. Hold down shift and click the left upper arm joint.
   3. In the Channel Box, change the “Rotate Y” amount. You will need to change it to varying amounts depending on the size of your MetaHuman:
      

      UNDERWEIGHT	MEDIUM WEIGHT	OVERWEIGHT
      f_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -45	f_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -44	m_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??

      **Eventually I’d love to fill this table out with ROTATE Y values for all 18 MetaHuman body types.

   4. Now in the viewport click in a blank area to deselect everything.
      
9. LOWER ARMS:
   1. Click the right lower arm. Hold down shift and click the left lower arm.
   2. Then in the Channel Box, change the “Rotate Z” amount. You will need to change it to varying amounts depending on the size of your MetaHuman:
      

      UNDERWEIGHT	MEDIUM WEIGHT	OVERWEIGHT
      f_srt_unw ROTATE Z: ??	f_srt_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	f_srt_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      f_med_unw ROTATE Z: ??	f_med_nrw ROTATE Z: 36	f_med_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      f_tal_unw ROTATE Z: ??	f_tal_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	f_tal_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      m_srt_unw ROTATE Z: ??	m_srt_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	m_srt_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      m_med_unw ROTATE Z: ??	m_med_nrw ROTATE Z: 36	m_med_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      m_tal_unw ROTATE Z: ??	m_tal_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	m_tal_ovw ROTATE Z: ??

      **Eventually I’d love to fill this table out with ROTATE Z values for all 18 MetaHuman body types
      
      

Step 2. Characterize the skeleton

Ok so we have our t-pose. Now let’s characterize the skeleton.

1. Click the brown root bone between the legs.
2. Open up the Human IK panel. (If you don’t have this panel visible, go to the top menu WINDOW> ANIMATION EDITORS > HUMAN IK.)
3. Change the “character” dropdown to “none“.
4. Click “create character definition”.
5. Select the brown root bone again.
6. Click on the blue button in the HumanIK panel, then hover over “edit character definition” > “load character definition template”.
7. Then in the template drop down, choose “Metahuman_UE5_V1”. If you don’t have that option, you need to download it here then unzip the file and move it to:
   C:\Users\{yourname}\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\HIKCharacterizationTool6\template
8. Click to enable “match all bones bones with prefix”
9. In the text field, delete all text so it’s entirely blank.
10. Click OK.
11. Check that EVERY bone has turned green. If not, you need to adjust the ROTATE Y and ROTATE Z values of the upper and lower arms.
12. Once it’s processed click the padlock icon to lock the bone setup.
13. Change the source drop down to control rig, to generate the HumanIK Control rig.
14. Now click  the blue button and choose “Rename character”.
15. Type in the name “charaternameHIK” (eg. “billyHIK“). Or you could use MetaHuman body type, so something like “MH_{bodytype}_HIK” (eg. “MH_m_med_nrw_HIK“).
16. Click OK to apply the name.
17. In the viewport, go to the Show menu and turn off “joints”.
18. In the same Show menu, turn on polygons.
19. I usually save this Maya scene as “_full_rig_02Y-upHIK.mb“. (I come back and open this file really often as part of my animation process, so I make sure I name it properly!)