Epic Games lets users animate MetaHuman characters with iPhone camera

Epic Games will soon let developers animate their MetaHuman characters. The MetaHuman Animator allows users to capture realistic facial expressions with an iPhone camera and then add them to their digital character.

The MetaHuman Animator feature will be available “in the coming months” via the MetaHuman plugin for Unreal Engine. The feature allows users with an iPhone or professional helmet-mounted cameras to record their face. That recording can then be used to provide MetaHuman characters with realistic facial expressions. Those characters can then be used in games. It is also possible to combine motion capture images of body movements via timestamps with facial expressions, writes Epic Games.

During its State of Unreal presentation, Epic demonstrated how users can use an iPhone camera on a tripod to film their face. The actor behind Senua from the Hellblade games gave a demonstration in which she imitated various facial expressions, which were then were used on various MetaHuman characters. Epic also showed an example of facial animations in the new Hellblade gamewhich was announced in 2019 but still has no release date.

To use the animation feature with an iPhone, users must using the companion Live Link Face app. The app works on an iPhone 11 or newer, Epic Games reported on Monday. The feature is free to use, as is the MetaHuman Creator for creating realistic characters.

Epic Games introduced the MetaHuman feature in 2021. The feature should enable developers to easily create realistic digital people, who can then be used in games, movies or other digital content. The feature was initially available as a web app, but was later added to the Unreal Engine via a plugin.