Description
Have you ever tried to animate or clean-up mocap with the Metahuman Face Control Board? The individual controls are hard to see, and often impossible to select - and that's when you know which control is which. This is the solution to that problem:
An intuitive, easy-to-use control picker for any Metahuman face control rig in your Unreal Engine scene. This dockable editor utility widget has an innovative WASD control scheme - just pick a control through the picker, and the WASD keys will allow you to adjust the 1D and 2D sliders from your keyboard - no more switching back and forth between picker and viewport.
Here's a short video explaining how it works.
Need to adjust your selection? Shift-click will multi-select, Ctrl-click will de-select, and clicking outside the control buttons will de-select all currently selected.
And as a bonus, a bunch of handy utility buttons (Copy Pose, Paste / Paste Mirrored, Mirror Pose, Mirror Match, Key Selected, and Key All) help with your in-engine animation or mocap-cleanup workflow.
This picker has sped up my work and let me concentrate on animating - I hope you find it useful!
Note: This widget requires the Common UI plugin, so please ensure that Common UI is enabled in your Unreal Engine project.
Installation
Install the tool from FAB
There should now be a folder named Locodrome in your Content folder
Note that if you place the Locodrome folder anywhere else, the Picker will not work
If it is not already enabled, please enable the Common UI Plugin for your project
Inside your Unreal project's Content Browser, in the Locodrome\FacePicker folder, right-click on the widget ("Locodrome_Face_Picker") and select Run Editor Utility Widget
Usage
Once the widget opens up, you can dock it anywhere in your screen layout - it will scale depending on how much space you give it - use this to adjust until the size of the text and buttons are comfortable for you
Open a sequence with a Metahuman Face Rig in it - without this the Picker will not find a rig with which to work
Open the drop-down at the top of the picker and select the Face Rig you want to work with. If you do not see anything in the drop-down list, hit the Refresh icon to the left of the "Actor" label
Once you have a Face Rig selected, you are good to go!
Selections
Selecting a control on the Picker will select the corresponding control on the Face Rig in the scene - you can see the name of the control before selecting it by hovering over the control with your mouse.
The Picker has several nested buttons for easy and common multi-selects - these allow the quick selection of multiple controls in a single click. There are also labeled group-select buttons for Eyes, Brows etc that are in the upper left corner of each face section in the Picker.
Shift-select will add to your current selection, Ctrl-select will remove from your current selections, and clicking outside of any buttons in the Picker will clear your current selection.
Manipulating Controls
Once you have selected the controls you want, you can move them in the viewport, as per normal Face Rig usage
Alternatively, if you have a single 1D control selected, it can be convenient to use the Anim Details panel to precisely adjust its value
The recommended workflow with this Picker is to use the WASD keys to adjust your selection of controls
WASD will adjust the 1D and 2D values of the selected controls (W, A will reduce / S, D will increase) in 0.1 value increments or decrements.
Note that some controls are value inverted (i.e. increasing the value of the control will move the slider downwards in the Viewport).
Note that the Picker window must be in focus for the WASD keys to work in this way
The Reset button in the top right corner of the Picker will reset the current selection of controls to their default positions
Utility Buttons
Copy Pose: Copies the positions of the current control selection to the clipboard
Paste Pose: Pastes the positions from the clipboard to the current control selection
Note that if you de-select a control in between a Copy Pose and Paste Pose, it will not be affected by the Paste Pose action
Mirror Pose: Performs a L-R reflection of the current control selection
Paste Mirror: Pastes the positions from the clipboard to the current control selection, but as an L-R reflection
Mirror Match: Matches the opposite side controls to the values of the current control selection
Key Selected: Will add a key in Sequencer at the Playhead's current time for all the controls in the current selection
Key All: Will add a key in Sequencer at the Playhead's current time for all the controls in the rig
Troubleshooting
If the Picker widget does not show up in Content Browser:
Are you using a version of Unreal Engine older than 5.4? The widget does not work on engine versions earlier than 5.4
If the Picker widget runs, but the control rig selection dropdown is empty:
Please make sure you have a Sequence open with a Metahuman and a Metahuman Face Rig in the Sequence (not just in the scene)
The Picker dropdown looks for control rigs that have the word "Face" in them (it gets crowded with too many other body and other control rigs otherwise) - if you have renamed the control rig, please make sure the word "Face" is still in there
If the Picker widget runs and all the buttons are gray:
Check that the Common UI Plugin is enabled
If not, enable the Common UI Plugin, and restart your engine as prompted
Technical Notes
Requires CommonUI plugin to be enabled
Locodrome folder must remain in the project's Content folder - cannot be moved
Devlog
v1.2 (Released 2 November 2024)
Bugfix: Ctrl-clicking in viewport no longer causes selection malfunction in Picker
Tooltips appear on selection buttons upon mouseover (in addition to Control Hint name field on top of widget)
Minor interface improvements
v1.1 (Released 20 September 2024)
Added face shape background image to UI for better animator orientation
Added ChinRaise and ChinCompressor controls to Mouth and Jaw sections
Minor re-arrangement of control buttons based on user feedback
Feature Roadmap
Features currently under consideration for future versions:
User-defined custom selection sets
Marquee selection for face ocntrols
Easy pose paste from Pose Library including Metahuman visemes (for lipsync editing)