Epic Games launches MetaHuman Animator to capture high-quality human faces with an iPhone

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Epic Games has launched its MetaHuman Animator, a tool that enables developers to capture high-quality human faces using just an iPhone and a PC. And as you can see in the video of the guy here, it’s pretty amazing at making simulated people.

The company said the tool can deliver high-quality facial animation in minutes. First shown at GDC 2023, the latest version of the fast and easy digital human pipeline brings high-fidelity performance capture to MetaHumans.

MetaHuman Animator has features that enable you to capture an actor’s performance using an iPhone or stereo head-mounted camera system (HMC) and apply it as high-fidelity facial animation on any MetaHuman character, without the need for manual intervention.

Every subtle expression, look, and emotion is accurately captured and faithfully replicated on your digital human, Epic Games said. Even better, it’s simple and straightforward to achieve incredible results—anyone can do it.

If you’re new to performance capture, MetaHuman Animator is a convenient way to bring facial animation to MetaHumans based on real-world performances.

And if you already do performance capture, this new feature set will significantly improve your existing capture workflow, reduce time and effort, and give you more creative control. You just pair MetaHuman Animator with your existing vertical stereo head-mounted camera to achieve even greater visual fidelity.

Previously, it would have taken a team of experts months to faithfully recreate every nuance of the actor’s performance on a digital character. Now, MetaHuman Animator does the hard work for you in a fraction of the time—and