Case study
Metahuman Animator
Metahuman Animator Tests
Test 1
I wanted to try a 'worst-case' scenario for capture. -Facial hair -Not looking directly into the camera -Moving my head around -Poor lighting -Extreme facial shapes I was really pleasantly surprised with the quality of it. I think it did a nice job. The head-banging did introduce some drift to the tracking, but you need to lock the face down to really notice it. It blows my mind that in about an hour you can get 2 minutes of really high quality facial animation. The Metahuman is custom. I used to use blend shapes for my customization, but there's a limit to how far you can push that. The current technique I'm using will move all the facial joints to the correct location, which allows for extreme deformation. I was too lazy to set up a groom.
Test 2
This time I tried to capture my face as properly as I could. I ordered the head mounted camera helmet that the YouTuber JSFilmz sells. I can't complain considering the price (under $200). The fit isn't perfect, if I had to wear it all day I don't think it would be too comfortable, but totally fine for testing short clips at home. When I yell you can see the helmet shake around, even with the strap as tight as I can make it. But again, no complaints, he clearly described what this helmet is (and isn't) and I'm not spending over $1000 for testing things at home. The main changes from the last test are: -The iPhone is attached to the helmet, so it always has a good view of my face no matter where I move. -Lights are attached to the helmet, so hopefully shadows are minimized. I still tried to make extreme facial poses to see if it would break the rig, but I think it held up ok. I'm using the same custom Metahuman geometry as last time. One thing that really stands out to me is the impressive amount of detail that the Normal maps hold. The geometry is pretty simple, those maps do a lot of heavy lifting bringing out detail on the face. I'm also really blown away how Metahuman Animator captures all the subtle eye movement. There's some odd shadow around his eyes, I think from eyelash geo that is casting a shadow when it shouldn't. I didn't add any mocap to the body to really get a good look at the tracking and how it holds up. I have to say I'm really impressed. This took less than an hour from setup to having a sequence in Unreal to look at.