I have a character in iClone 8.6 w/face puppet animations that look great; I then export them to UE 5.6 using the new workflow detailed in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4rdunCvT3o ; upon import, the facial animations are heavily muted and while, functional, are far superior within iClone.
I then try to use the CC UE Control rig in the hopes that I could restore the original quality of the facial animations and found out when adding the facial rig to a character with existing animations, it throws them out - so I would have to animate the character’s face by hand, undoing all the work done in iClone.
Please tell me this isn’t by design. Tell me reallusion devs were smart enough to realize no one wants to “hand animate” a rig they already animated in iClone because the export quality is so poor.
This issue occurs because iClone facial morphs can exceed the standard 0–1 range, but when exporting to Unreal Engine, UE clamps morph weights to 0–1 for stability. This leads to muted facial expressions in UE5.6—especially for intense movements like jaw open or brows raise.
To preserve the original animation quality:
Use “Bake to Control Rig” to convert iClone animations into UE Control Rig keyframes, which allows full facial editing without losing data.
ad to revert back to iC 8.5.4 for reasons already mentioned; I do not have access to UE Live Link in iC because only v1.36 is available and it forces you to upgrade to iC 8.6 (not gonna happen.)
So, I exported said character via FBX into UE and chose the HQ shader option; I then create a CC rig by right clicking the skeletal mesh → Create CC rig option; I then try to test and get a blueprint compile error in [MyCharName_Rig_BP; I’ve attached the screenshot
Use “Bake to Control Rig” to convert iClone animations into UE Control Rig keyframes, which allows full facial editing without losing data.