MetaHuman Facial Rig Transfer

DRAG TO INSTALL

Two ways to install

A. Drag and drop. Drag the .zip onto Blender and confirm. Done.

B. The menu. Edit → Preferences → Get Extensions → Install from Disk (the ▾ arrow, top right) → pick the .zip.

Needs Blender 4.5 or newer. Once installed, open the 3D viewport, press N, and click the MH Transfer tab on the right.

STEP 1

Setup — two meshes

Pick a cage LOD whose polycount is close to your head mesh, that match gives the cleanest wrap. A denser head wants a denser cage, a light head wants a lighter one. Then click Load Cage and set your character's head as the Head Target. The Head Cage and Head Target must be two different mesh objects.

STEP 2

Landmark Curves — draw where facial features match

Click Draw Landmark Curves and the viewport splits with the cage on the left and your head on the right. Hold LMB and draw a curve along a facial feature on the cage, such as the jaw, eyebrow, nose or lip seam. Release and scroll to choose how many landmark points ride the curve, then click or orbit to confirm it. Draw the matching curve on your head in the same direction and it automatically receives the same number of paired points. Drag any point to reshape the curve. Symmetry mirrors the entire curve across X, so you only need to draw one side.

STEP 3

Wrap — fit the cage onto your head

Hit Wrap and the cage shrink-wraps onto your head, saved as a Wrapped shape key so the original is never lost. Use Draft while you refine the landmark curves, then switch to High for the final pass. Missed a spot? The Live Session lets you grab and drag the mesh like cloth, or use the Slide and Smooth brushes.

STEP 4

Rig — skeleton and live control board

Click Build Rig. The MetaHuman skeleton fits your cage, the control board hooks up, and the face goes live instantly. Changed something upstream? Update Rig keeps the same skeleton and your poses. Expression Intensity scales the whole face per character, and you key any control with I → Location.

STEP 5

Fine-Tune — eye pivots and tongue fit

This nudges rest bone positions only, never your mesh. For each eye, drop the 3D Cursor dead center of the eyeball and place it, front and side views keep you honest. For the tongue, Edit Tongue Bones isolates the purple bones so you can S / R / G them onto the real tongue, then Finish.

STEP 6

Bind — weights on, character live

Transfer Weights & Bind copies the cage weights onto your head and the face starts moving. It only touches facial groups, so any body rig you already have stays safe, and you can re-bind anytime. Lips or eyelids bleeding together? Weight Cleanup opens the mouth or eyes, you sculpt to match, and bind again in that pose.

STEP 7

Parts — eyes, teeth, tongue, eyelashes

Separate eyes, teeth, tongue or lashes? Select one, click its slot, done. Eyes and teeth ride a single bone, lashes and tongue get auto weights. A posed character is fine, it binds in rest and snaps back to the pose. Skip the whole step if everything is already joined into the head.

STEP 8

Morphs — pose, pick, sculpt

Pose the face and the list shows the exact morphs that pose fires, strongest first. Click one to sculpt it. Empty ones you ignore delete themselves, so your mesh only carries shapes you actually made. Custom Morphs let you add correctives to controls that ship without a shape. This is your fix-anything button.

STEP 9

Animation — play a performance

Import Face Animation drops a performance onto the board as keyframes, press Space to play, then hand-polish any control on top. It takes UE5 FBX, iPhone Live Link CSV, or JSON. Export writes it back to a .mhfa clip, and Test Animation plays a bundled range-of-motion take to sanity check the rig.