"Import USD Animation" from Claire adds prefixes to animation curves (A2F 2023.2.0)

AI & Data Science Digital Humans (closed) Audio2Face (closed)
1

Hi everyone,

I wanted to import USD animation for an ARKIT-based character in UE5.3. Following the tutorial “How to Export Nvidia Audio2face facial Animations into UE5 Metahuman”(https://youtu.be/OQ3U8BRVgvM?feature=shared), if Mark is the AI Model, the exported animation comes with 52 ARKIt curves as expected. However, if I am using Claire, the animation curves are exported with a prefix, for instance “_female_bs_arkit1_eyeBlinkLeft”, screenshot below.

Just for consistency, is there a way to avoid this prefix in A2F settings?

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Thank you in advance.
LFA

2

Hi @LFA_GM

I guess you missed one step from the tutorial above? - selecting Animation source.
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If you select the correct one, I think you will see pose names that starts with “CTRL_expression_” instead of “_female_bs_arkit”.

3

Hi Seol, thank you for your reply. This option you showed is for metahumans, but in my use case, I just wanted to drive ARKit custom characters. That’s why I use the import option “USD Animation”. If I export the USD file from Mark, it works correctly and the animation curves come with the ARKit names, but Claire is adding prefixes to the ARKit anim curves. Please advise.

Thank you in advance.

4

Hi @LFA_GM,
In that case, I suggest this work-around at the moment.

  1. from A2F, export .usda file instead of .usd file (.usda is based on ascii format where you can edit the file)
  2. open the exported .usda file in a text editor
  3. In the “blendShapes” attribute in the .usda file, you will find blendshape names that starts with “female_bs_arkit1”
  4. remove “female_bs_arkit1” from all the blendshape names in the text editor, save the file.
  5. now you can import the updated .usda file and you will see the blendshape names that you updated.

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We will discuss your issue internally and see if we can update the names for such use case.
Thanks for reporting the issue!

1 Like
5

Hi Seol,
Thank you for this workaround, I’ll check if it will work now and update this thread.
An update would be much appreciated.
Thank you,
Best regards,

6

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