The new white paper by Epic Games explains the tech side of Rig Logic, a runtime facial rig evaluation solver system used by Epic's MetaHuman Creator tool.
Epic Games released a new white paper that explains the tech side of Rig Logic, a runtime facial rig evaluation solver system used by Epic's MetaHuman Creator tool.
Rig Logic was developed by 3Lateral, a research and development company that is a part of Epic Games. The firm focuses on facial rigging and animation and develops technologies that enable the digitization of human appearance and motion. The company has worked on a number of films and games including Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and Marvel’s Spider-Man.
3Lateral shared that its Rig Logic is built upon the foundations of Facial Action Coding System (FACS) expressions as well as rigging values in Autodesk Maya. By optimizing data loads and calculations, the development team was able to create a lightweight, portable, real-time face rig solution that runs at 30 frames per second or more.
The company also revealed some of the innovations that were used to develop the final version of its Rig Logic solution. They include reduction of extraneous joint deformations, zero-cost reduction of joint configurations in LODs, and smart storage and application of corrective expressions.
Apart from that, 3Lateral developed a new file format called MetaHuman DNA. It stores a full description of a rig and its geometry. These kinds of files are constructed with several layers, with one of them being a separate geometry layer. This structure allows the DNA files to be geometry-independent so that the same DNA file may be applied to a number of characters of different shapes and sizes.
The developer notes that reusability for different types of characters was one of the crucial principles behind Rig Logic, and 3Lateral managed to achieve this goal, so now all MetaHumans can run on the same facial rig.
You can learn more about the technical details behind Rig Logic in the white paper here. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.