Faceware Live Link Plugin

 

This article is a step-by-step guide to installing and setting up the Faceware Live Link plugin for streaming facial animation values into Unreal Engine via Faceware Studio.

 

The Faceware Live Link plugin is currently available for Unreal Engine 4.27 and Unreal Engine 5.

 


 

Download the premade Faceware Live Link blueprint for Unreal MetaHumans

 

 

 

Installation

 

Downloading the plugin

 

 

Enabling the plugin

 

  1. In your Unreal Engine window, go to the Edit menu and select Plugins to open the Unreal plugins window.


     
  2. In the plugins window, select the Installed category or its Animation subcategory to find the Faceware Live Link plugin. 


     
  3. Check the Enabled checkbox in the plugin. You may be prompted in the plugin window to restart your Unreal Engine application and will need to do so to run the plugin.

 

 

Launching the plugin and connecting to Faceware Studio

 

  1. From within Unreal Engine 4, open the Window menu and select Live Link.
     
  2. In the Live Link window, press the +Source button and select Faceware Live Link. Set the IP address and port number to match your Faceware Studio input. Press Ok.


     
  3. In the Faceware Studio application, set up your video stream, calibrate your video, set your Control Schema to "Standard" in the Streaming Panel, and Stream to Client.


     
  4. In Unreal, create a new animation blueprint by right-clicking in the Content Browser and selecting Animation > Animation Blueprint. Select your skeleton in the Target Skeleton sections of the Create Animation Blueprint window, then click OK.


     
  5. Double-click your new blueprint in the Content Browser to open the Event Graph.
     
  6. From the Update Animation node, create and connect to an Evaluate Live Link Frame node.


     
  7. In the Evaluate Live Link Frame node, select animationValues from the Subject dropdown and make sure FacewareLiveLinkRole is in the Role dropdown.


     
  8. Drag from the Data Result pin to create a Break FTIAnimationBlueprintData node.


     
  9. On the new Break FTIAnimationBlueprintData node, right-click on Animation Values and select Promote to Variable.


     
  10. Drag the Exec pin from the Evaluate Live Link Frame node to the new Set node.

 

 

Character control setup

 

This section will show you how to set up your specific character to be animated with the animation value data streaming from Faceware Studio. You will be working in the AnimGraph.

 

  1. In the My Blueprint panel, select Animation Values (under Variables) and drag it into the AnimGraph. When you drop Animation Values into the AnimGraph, select Get Animation Variables when prompted and a node will be created.


     
  2. Drag the pin from the Animation Values nodes and create a Break FTIAnimationValueData node.



    This node contains a list of the shapes that Studio tracks and streams animation values for. We will use this to connect to and drive our character's morph targets.
     
  3. For each shape in the list that you wish to use to drive your character, drag out from that pin and create a Modify Curve node.
     
  4. Right-click on the Modify Curve node, select Add Curve Pin, then select the control that you wish to drive with the particular animation data. In the example image below, the Jaw Open animation data is going to drive our JawOpen control on our character.


     
  5. Connect the Break FTIAnimationValueData node to the curve pin in the Modify Curve node instead of Alpha.


     
  6. Repeat steps 3-5 for each shape you are driving from the animation data in Studio, connecting the animation pose output from each Modify Curve node to the input for the next one.


     
  7. Once you are finished connecting your character's controls to the animation data, connect the final Modify Curve node to the Output Pose node.

 

8. Play your scene to drive your character animation with the animation data streaming from Faceware Studio.

 

 

Epic MetaHuman simple setup

 

The Faceware Live Link plugin contains blueprints for use with Epic's MetaHuman characters, allowing the user to forego the bulk of the initial blueprint setup process to make their own adjustments or to just start animating their MetaHuman characters with Studio and the Live Link plugin as quickly as possible.

 

  1. From the Blueprint zip file that you downloaded, copy the entire folder within the zip file to the Content folder in your project.
     
  2. Load your MetaHuman project in Unreal Engine and set up the Live Link plugin per the instructions above with Studio as the source.
     
  3. Connect the ABP_Metahuman_Faceware_LiveLink_Face and ABP_Metahuman_Faceware_LiveLink_Body blueprints to your MetaHuman character to drive it with Studio.

 

 

 

 

 

Create your own Knowledge Base