How to get expressions to work in Unreal Engine?

usa423_6c467e3e09

I know how to use the bridge to get characters from Daz into UE 4/5, and also how to bring over animations. But it seems something is missing when it comes to expressions. I'm assuming the reason is because those facial expressions are morphs and not actually bones.  Any links or info concering this is appreciated, thank you.

Krys Kryngle

I haven't done it myself (or maybe I have and forgot, I'm getting old), but I think there are two different approaches depending on which expressions you use.

The original expression morphs (genesis 8 and below) used bone poses combined with shapekeys.  For these you'll need to use the diffeomorphic bridge.  In Blender, diffeomorphic will create 'custom properties' on driven morphs, and those custom properties are converted into Animation Curves in UE.  You should be able to then use the animation curves to drive the expressions.  I think the trick in blender is, when importing morphs onto your character, to check the first box making the morphs 'driven', and that creates the custom properties.  It's been a while so you might have to experiment a bit.  Diffeomorphic can also just convert the expressions into standard shape keys with no bone posing for expressions. 

For the newer FACS (genesis 8.1), if  I understand them correctly, an expression is made of up a combination of multiple FACS.  So maybe the angry expression triggers 12 individual FACS.  These are all shape keys with no bone movement.  Diffeomorphic is able to bake out each expression into one shape key that can then be exported to UE. At least it used to be able to.  I can't find the setting now.  I think it was changed but there should still be a way.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Advanced/Morphs

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/animation-curves-in-unreal-engine/

 

 

usa423_6c467e3e09

Krys Kryngle said:

I haven't done it myself (or maybe I have and forgot, I'm getting old), but I think there are two different approaches depending on which expressions you use.

The original expression morphs (genesis 8 and below) used bone poses combined with shapekeys.  For these you'll need to use the diffeomorphic bridge.  In Blender, diffeomorphic will create 'custom properties' on driven morphs, and those custom properties are converted into Animation Curves in UE.  You should be able to then use the animation curves to drive the expressions.  I think the trick in blender is, when importing morphs onto your character, to check the first box making the morphs 'driven', and that creates the custom properties.  It's been a while so you might have to experiment a bit.  Diffeomorphic can also just convert the expressions into standard shape keys with no bone posing for expressions. 

For the newer FACS (genesis 8.1), if  I understand them correctly, an expression is made of up a combination of multiple FACS.  So maybe the angry expression triggers 12 individual FACS.  These are all shape keys with no bone movement.  Diffeomorphic is able to bake out each expression into one shape key that can then be exported to UE. At least it used to be able to.  I can't find the setting now.  I think it was changed but there should still be a way.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Advanced/Morphs

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/animation-curves-in-unreal-engine/

 

Thanks for sharing the info.   Honestly I am unfamiliar with some of that terminology. But you are saying I will need to export from Daz to Blender using a "diffeomorphic" bridge, and then once in Blender it can then be exported to UE4/5 and it will retain "shape keys" that UE can use?