MetaHuman Creator is here! The revolutionary new program showcased in the Unreal Engine tech demo awhile back is now available, bringing customizable “high-fidelity digital humans” to the public - all for free!

Be sure to bookmark this post so you can come back to it as your MetaHuman journey begins!

The MetaHuman Creator is a web-based character creation tool that allows for limitless customization of photorealistic CG human actors. Once you build your character, you can then easily transfer the character into the Unreal Engine using Quixel Bridge.

The beauty of MetaHuman Creator is that it’s perfectly integrated into the Unreal platform. Rather than being a third-party tool with limited support, MetaHuman Creator is designed with the force of Epic Games behind it, and a focus on harnessing the full power of the Unreal Engine for a seamless experience. 

Even more significant is the fact that, upon importing into the Unreal Engine, MetaHuman characters are fully-rigged and ready for motion capture, with limitless customization.

Imagine game characters that will blow your players’ minds, digital doubles on the latest virtual production set that will stand up to close-up shots, virtual participants in immersive training scenarios you can’t tell from the real thing: the possibilities for creators are limitless.” Epic Games | Unreal Engine

Since MetaHuman Creator is presently in early access, you’ll need to first head over to the MetaHuman Creator page and click “Request Access.” From there, you’ll be directed to sign in to your Epic Games account and complete a quick form. As they continue rolling out access, you’ll be notified via e-mail when your spot is ready. After that, you’ll simply log into the web app and be ready to go.

The current expected wait time for receiving access is in the range of “the next few days” according to the e-mail we received at the time of this writing.  

While you wait for access to MetaHuman Creator, Epic Games has released 50 additional characters for users to jump straight into a project with. The characters are available now in Quixel Bridge.

Image Source: Unreal Engine

Following the initial unveiling of the MetaHumans, Epic Games had released two demo models for the community to get started with. These two models were a great example of how powerful MetaHuman Creator would be, featuring incredible realism and extensive facial and body rigging, and eliminating the biggest pain points of creating and rigging characters. 

It’s great to see they’ve expanded their pre-made character lineup, and it can only grow even further from here.

The magic that makes MetaHuman Creator possible is the fact that this is a cloud-powered web app, with all the heavy lifting of character generation and customization being streamed through high-end servers. None of the work is done on your local machine.

This makes it perfect for team collaboration (both on and off set), with no limit to users’ creativity when experimenting with character designs. Characters can be fine-tuned easily on a laptop at home, then accessed later in the studio for integration into the production pipeline.

Now, anyone can create their own realistic, infinitely customizable character with the MetaHuman Creator web app and it couldn’t be any easier to use! In an interface similar to generating your own character in a video game, completely unique CG characters can be made in no time.

For anyone getting started with MetaHuman Creator, Matt Workman’s CitizenMetaOne YouTube channel is by far one of the most prolific channels when it comes to helping you build a fundamental understanding of how to use MetaHuman Creator, as well as offering a glimpse at what’s possible with this technology.

Users can currently customize:

•Facial Features
•Skin Complexion
•Make-Up
•Hair (Head, Facial, Eyebrows, and Eyelashes)
•Teeth
•Body Type
•Clothing

This excellent video walks users through the first steps of refining not only your character’s facial structure, hair, teeth, and body type, but also the very useful feature of picking “parents” to base your model on. 

One of the most notable observations this video makes is that parameters have been seamlessly woven into the customization process, ensuring users stay within the realm of believability for characters, without ever having to worry about focusing on realism.  

It’s this organic navigation that hopes to keep users out of the uncanny valley, thanks to some seriously impressive AI.

Once your character is designed in the MetaHuman UI, simply exit the editor and your changes will be automatically saved and visible in Quixel Bridge. 

Once you select your character in Bridge, you’ll spend a significant amount of time waiting for the character to be processed (an estimated hour in the video above). While this processing time will most likely see some drastic improvements in the future, it’s just something to keep in mind.

After your character has been processed, you can import your character from Bridge into the Unreal Engine with a single click.

You’ve created your character and imported it into the Unreal Engine, now you can use the Unreal Engine’s Live Link Face app to capture performances with an iPhone or iPad. You need to first enable a few plugins and adjust your settings in the Unreal Engine to achieve optimum performance on your system once you’ve imported your MetaHuman (more on that here). 

This video quickly walks you through the importing process, as well as setup with the app. Be sure to first download the Live Link Face app from the App Store.

Enabling missing plugins for your MetaHuman character is fortunately as simple as clicking the “Enable Missing” button. If you encounter any missing plugin errors from the initial import, this should take care of the problem.

Once everything has been compiled and you’ve linked the app to your computer’s IP address, your facial performance capture can then be streamed and instantly mapped to your character in real-time.  

Since the release of MetaHuman Creator, Epic Games has continued to innovate in the realm of digital human creation. The latest addition to their suite of tools is the MetaHuman Animator. This groundbreaking facial animation and performance capture toolset is designed to streamline the process of transferring an actor's facial performance from footage captured on an iPhone or helmet-mounted camera to a real-time MetaHuman character inside Unreal Engine. This means you can now animate your MetaHuman characters with even more precision and ease.

MetaHuman Animator works by generating a MetaHuman character that matches video footage of an actor. The process begins by ingesting the footage into Unreal Engine and identifying key reference frames. The MetaHuman plugin then performs a solve, conforming a template mesh – a MetaHuman head – to the data. The result is a MetaHuman rig calibrated to the actor’s facial proportions.

Image Source: Unreal Engine

The MetaHuman plugin can then extract facial motion from video footage of that actor and transfer it to the 3D character. The animation can then be exported to Unreal Engine as an animation sequence, allowing the actor’s performance to drive any MetaHuman character. This opens up a world of possibilities for creating realistic digital humans in your projects!

As the Unreal Engine continues to evolve, processes are sure to become even easier and faster for working with MetaHumans. What’s cool about MetaHumans is also the fact that they’re not just limited to living in the Unreal Engine. You can bring these characters to other platforms like Maya, as well.  

To learn more, you can view the official MetaHumans guide, and also be sure to check out the Unreal Engine community page for support or questions.

We’ll continue to bring you the latest updates and best resources for taking your MetaHumans to the next level, so stay tuned!

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