Real Facial Expressions

Companion App (Optional for Gameplay, Necessary for Facial Expressions)

Real Facial Expressions uses a companion app to track your facial expressions in real time.

Companion app can now receive tracking from VTube Studio!

With the companion app: Facial expressions are mirrored on your character using your webcam.

Without the companion app: You can still play the game normally, but facial animations will not be mirrored. Instead, the default Hytale idle animations will play.

Download the companion app here: Real Facial Expressions Companion App

Note: The companion app only transmits facial blendshape data and a derived eye look direction. No other video or image data ever leaves your PC.

Disclaimers

• Real Facial Expressions uses a companion app to send data to the server. The connection fields are intended to remain private. Try not to leak them, or you will at least have to reset your faceId with /rfe resetFaceId
• There will very likely be conflicts with other player animation plugins, particularly those that modify Server/Models/Human/Player.json.

Lisence

The project is currently licensed as All Rights Reserved. I plan to revisit this after further researching more licensing options.

Installation Guide

User

A quick tutorial here: Installation Tutorial + Tips and Tricks

1. If playing singleplayer, install and activate the mod in your world folder.
2. Install the companion app with the installer Real Facial Expressions Companion App.
3. Connect to the desired server in Hytale.
4. Run /rfe faceId in-game and copy the generated ID into the companion app.
5. Enter the server IP and the port into the companion app. The default port is 25590. Note: your faceId should not change, so you will only have to do this once.
6. Once you tab back into the game, your expressions should be mirrored on your character.

VTube Studio Users

1. Follow regular user instructions.
2. Follow this setup Tutorial

Server Owners

1. Install plugin.
2. Open the configured UDP port to your players.

Current Roadmap (Subject to Change)

• Add profiles for multiple servers to the companion app, along with some general UI improvements.
• Add the ability to toggle expressions with a keybind.
• More Video Tutorials.

Long Term Goals and Current Blockers

• More animations. More animations. The primary blocker is the current state of Hytale’s animation system. From my understanding, Hytale does not support playing multiple animations within the same animation slot simultaneously. To work around this, the 9 look-direction animations, 5 eyebrow animations, 6 eyelid animations (3 per eye), and 5 mouth animations are combined via a script into unique animations representing every possible state. This results in 2,025 generated animations. Since each additional animation dramatically increases this count, no further animations are planned until the animation system receives an overhaul.
• Offer players the ability to define custom animation triggers. The goal is to allow playful mappings, such as triggering a horn wiggle animation when the player blinks.