Epic's Unreal Engine iOS app can capture high-quality facial animations in real-time

Epic Games has released a new app for iOS that can be used to capture and stream high-quality facial animations in real-time from your iPhone directly onto characters in Unreal Engine.

The Live Link Face app for Unreal Engine is currently available on the App Store and uses Apple's ARKit and the iPhone's TrueDepth front-facing camera to capture facial animations and transmit them directly to Unreal Engine. The facial animations can also be "further fine-tuned" in animation tools in the Unreal Engine, and can also be recorded on multiple iPhones remotely with live-streaming capabilities.

"Designed to excel on both professional capture stages with multiple actors in full motion capture suits as well as at a single artist's desk," the official post states, "the app delivers expressive and emotive facial performances in any production situation."

This app is the latest development from Epic Games after the recent announcement of the next-gen Unreal Engine 5. In the example photos of the app, you can see the performer using facial animations on the character who appeared in the Lumen in the Land of Nanite Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, which ran on the PS5 in real-time. The 9-minute demo showed off some truly stunning graphics, with Epic stating that the next-gen engine is built with photorealistic graphics in mind.

In a recent interview with Edge magazine, Epic revealed it had been working on Unreal Engine 5 with Sony for several years, and Sony has just recently announced a $250 million investment in Epic Games, which could spell further collaborations from the two studios as we head into the next generation.

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Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.