AnimSnap Documentation / Capture Reference

Capture Reference

Sources and preview

The preview uses the selected Skeletal Mesh and defaults to the supplied AnimSnap head. Standard Persona controls provide scrubbing, frame steps, playback, looping and speed. Stop returns an Animation Sequence to its first frame.

Preview meshes run in an isolated scene. Their normal post-process animation is applied after AnimSnap maps native MetaHuman or ARKit curves.

Bone-only facial animation cannot be converted into a Control Rig pose. The source must retain supported facial curves.

Facial rig

Use the bundled CR_AnimSnapFace or a compatible MetaHuman facial Control Rig. The rig must provide facial controls, expression curves and a Backwards Solve event.

Find Facial Rig reads the selected mesh’s Default Animating Rig. If the mesh has no usable rig, AnimSnap selects the bundled rig. You can also choose a rig manually.

AnimSnap evaluates a temporary rig instance, so capture does not modify a Control Rig that is open for editing.

Capture settings

Smoothing needs continuous Live Link samples. It does not affect independent Animation Sequence snapshots. Changing the subject or source resets smoothing history.

Strength applies to float and Vector2D facial controls. It does not scale gaze targets or head movement.

Supported facial curves

• Native MetaHuman: CTRL_expressions_* curves.
• ARKit: the standard 52 facial coefficients, converted through AnimSnap’s MetaHuman mapping.

Native MetaHuman curves take priority if both formats are present in the same frame. Curve names are matched without case sensitivity.

ARKit contains fewer channels than a complete MetaHuman face. AnimSnap cannot recreate detail that is missing from the source, and results also depend on the rig’s Backwards Solve setup.

Head movement

Enable Include Head Movement for Animation Sequence, Live Link Pose or Live Link Record.

For Live Link Face, enable Stream Head Rotation in the sending app. Custom senders must use Live Link Face’s raw ARKit radians rather than Unreal’s normalized Face AR sample values.

The preview mesh needs compatible head post-processing. Pose capture also needs mha_head_ik_ctrl and mha_head_ik_switch_ctrl; the bundled rig provides both.

Head movement stored only as baked bones is not reconstructed as pose controls. Recorded clips save the source head curves and do not bake the head into bones a second time.

Saving a pose

SNAP POSE creates a Control Rig Pose Asset containing the captured control names, values and transforms. The facial rig itself is not stored inside the pose.

• The output folder must be inside /Game.
• The pose name must be a valid Unreal asset name.
• Existing assets are never overwritten.
• The saved folder is registered with the Control Rig Pose Library.

Reopen an already-open Pose Library after the first save to refresh its folder list. AnimSnap does not upload or publish captured assets.

Thumbnail

Editor pose capture adds a square thumbnail from the preview viewport. Frame the face before capture. Grid, axes and selection overlays are hidden automatically.

The thumbnail represents the final forward-solved controls, including Strength. Runtime captures and the Blueprint Save Pose Asset helper have no preview viewport, so they do not create a scene thumbnail.

If the preview is hidden or not ready, thumbnail capture fails and AnimSnap reports the error instead of saving an incomplete editor pose.

Live Link recording

1. Choose Live Link Subject.
2. Set Live Link Mode to Record.
3. Choose a mesh, recording folder, name and frame rate (1-120 fps; 30 fps by default).
4. Click RECORD, perform the animation, then click STOP.

The result is an Animation Sequence containing native facial curves and optional head curves. Audio, body motion and derived morph/material curves are not recorded.

Recording uses live input even if the preview was paused. Settings remain locked during the take. If the subject becomes unavailable, AnimSnap stops and saves the frames already captured.

Keep the editor responsive while recording. The recorder interpolates between evaluated preview samples; a higher output rate cannot recover missing source detail.

The default folder is /Game/AnimSnap/Animations. Existing assets receive a free name. Switch the Source to Animation Sequence to replay the saved clip.

Replay and recover results

To replay a saved recording, choose Animation Sequence as the Source and select the recorded clip. Use the timeline to play, pause or scrub.

If a recording cannot be saved, the take remains available:

• Use Retry Save after correcting the original destination.
• Use Save As to choose a different /Game location.
• Use Discard Take only when the recording is no longer needed.

A pending take blocks a new recording. If the AnimSnap window is closed, the unsaved take remains in the current editor session under /Game/AnimSnap/RecoveredTakes. Save it before exiting Unreal; it will not survive an editor crash.