
Master real-time lip sync and puppet animation in Unreal Engine, exporting a Dazz 3D character with morph targets and expressions. Explore four rigged characters, a sequencer plugin, and Kitsu.
Included In The Course Are Four (4) Fully Rigged Characters
All these characters are included in the course and are for your use both personal and professional for cinematics and film/video use. If you desire to use the characters in an actual game as a playable character you will need to purchase an interactive license from DAZ3D as these characters are based on the Genesis models. At this time, game licenses are running approx $30-$50 per character for a published game. Please go to the DAZ3D website for more information: daz3d.com
Explore character animation and lip sync techniques inside Unreal Engine 4 Sequencer, showcasing facial animation workflows for realistic performances in 3D animation.
Import morph targets and facial expressions from the studio into Unreal Engine 4, then use animation curves and sliders to independently control eyes and other features.
Prepare facial morphs in Daz Studio by using puppeteer to rig mouth, eyes, and expressions, organize with layers, and export to Unreal Engine for real-time animation.
Map all morph targets into the timeline, expanding to 140 frames, and keyframe mouth, eye movements, and expressions from neutral to positions for export to FBI file in Unreal Engine.
Export Genesis 2 female morphs to an FBX with textures and animations, then import into Unreal Engine 4.19, enabling morph targets, animations, and textures for a complete character.
Create a turning eyes animation by blending blinking with side-to-side and up-and-down eye movements, saving and applying animation data, editing curves and keyframes for smooth motion.
Learn to create mouth opening and closing in Unreal Engine by building a variable curve, keyframing zero to one, and blending a pucker with morphs for future lip-sync accuracy.
Add body movement by animating the abdomen and chest, using keyframes at frame 0 and 336 to create a looping motion with smooth curves and a breathing illusion.
Record dialogue live alongside character animation by syncing lip movements in Unreal Engine using morph targets and Audacity, then export audio and refine lip sync with animation curves.
Learn to add secondary mouth motion and head movement in Unreal Engine by editing lip puckers, keyframes, and smooth curves, then integrate with the sequencer for lip sync animation.
Open the super dude map, import the lip sync audio, add the character and animation to sequencer, sync audio with waveform, then render and export a video or image sequence.
Convert a jogging-in-place animation into forward movement by animating the root bone, extending frames to create a long run, and recording in real time in Unreal Engine.
NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE! Unreal Engine's new MetaHumans are taking the 3d world by storm! Now you can create your own fully rigged characters ready to be animated in Unreal Engine!
Showcases Unreal Engine 5's lumen dynamic global illumination and cinema-grade, virtualized geometry, enabling film-quality assets with no baking and real-time lighting across massive triangle counts.
IMPORTANT: Everything you'll learn in this course can be applied to the new release of Unreal Engine 5. The new features of UE5 such as LUMEN and NANITE are not covered in this course yet, however. You can even switch the layout of UE5 back to classic UE4 if you'd like to make it easier to follow along. (I prefer the slick new layout of UE5 myself)
LEARN FACIAL ANIMATION & MORE WITH UNREAL ENGINE 4 & DAZ STUDIO!
Both of these outstanding animation programs are FREE and will allow you to create stunning and highly professional character animations. In this course we will go over the simple techniques that unlock the little known animation powers inside of Unreal Engine. By using the high quality DAZ 3D characters, you will learn how to export any morph targets you'd like from DAZ Studio and then utilize them inside of Unreal Engine. (Note: Even though there is a DAZ to Unreal Bridge their are some issues with it and its good to learn how to do this manually as discussed in this course)
REAL TIME ANIMATION RENDERING
By far one of the most powerful features of Unreal Engine is the ability to see your animations playing in real time as you work. No more slow, sluggish systems that cramp your style and hinder your animation creativity. Unreal Engine is a breeze to use, and best of all ... it's FUN! When your ready to export your animation to an image sequence for later compositing or to a video file, you will be able to render your animation out in near real time!
IN THIS COURSE YOU WILL LEARN:
How to prepare your DAZ 3D character for export to Unreal Engine 4 with all the morph targets and expressions you wish
How to use the PUPPETEER tool in DAZ as a way to export morphs and animations
How to properly import your DAZ3D character with it's skeleton, rigging, morph targets, materials and textures
Learn where the morph sliders are in Unreal Engine and how to use them
Create a realistic blink animation for your character
Create side to side and up & down eye movements for your character
Animate mouth movements for speech as well as expressions
Animate your characters head movements
Create and animate believable expressions
Learn about amazing new tools that work in conjunction with Unreal Engine 4 such as Allright Rig & Akeytsu
Plus much, much more!
Included In The Course Are Five (5) Fully Rigged Characters
Super Dude - this character is an original creation by Michael Ricks sculpted in ZBrush. Inspired by the characters from the hit film 'The Incredibles,' Super Dude comes fully rigged with a ton of facial morphs. You'll have an absolute blast right away when you start sliding around the controls and see what hilarious expressions you can make with him. He also comes with the phoneme mouth shapes for accurate lip sync punctuation. Super Dude is based on the DAZ3D Genesis 8 character.
Wendy - this cute Toon girl character is also an original creation by Michael Ricks and was sculpted in ZBrush, based on the DAZ3D Genesis 3 character. She also comes with many facial morph and expression controls and will immediately come alive for you in Unreal Engine 4. With her big expressive eyes, you will have her emoting in no time at all!
Lil' Frankenstein - this Toon character was also created by Michael Ricks in ZBrush and is based on the DAZ3D Genesis 3 character. Frankie comes with a wide array facial morphs and can create many emotions. You'll have tons of fun with Lil' Frankenstein all year around, not just on Halloween!
Billy - also created and sculpted in ZBrush by Michael Ricks, this Toon boy character is based on the DAZ3D Genesis character and comes with a wide variety of facial morphs. You'll have a blast animating Billy!
Epic Robot - this way cool robot character is created by Epic Games for the hit VR game Robot Recall. He's a stunning 3d character asset and really fun to animate. He comes with an included animation and sound wave 'roar' so you'll have him up and running right away.
NOW IS THE BEST TIME TO LEARN ANIMATION! SO GO AHEAD AND CLICK THE ENROLL NOW BUTTON AND LET'S BEGIN!
I'LL SEE YOU ON THE INSIDE!
All these characters are included in the course and are for your use both personal and professional for cinematics and film/video use. If you desire to use the characters in an actual game as a playable character you will need to purchase an interactive license from DAZ3D as these characters are based on the Genesis models. At this time, game licenses are running approximately $30-$50 per character for a published game. Please go to the DAZ3D website for more information.