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Reimagining Characters with Unreal Engine's MetaHuman Creator

Reimagining Characters with Unreal Engine's MetaHuman Creator

By : Brian Rossney, Ciaran Kavanagh
5 (7)
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Reimagining Characters with Unreal Engine's MetaHuman Creator

Reimagining Characters with Unreal Engine's MetaHuman Creator

5 (7)
By: Brian Rossney, Ciaran Kavanagh

Overview of this book

MetaHuman Creator (MHC) is an online, user-friendly 3D design tool for creating highly realistic digital humans that can be animated within Unreal Engine (UE) and enhanced with motion capture technology. This means that filmmakers and game developers now have access to a high quality, affordable solution that was previously only available to specialist studios. This book will focus on using UE5 and MHC from a filmmaker angle. Firstly, you’ll understand how to use the online MHC to create a digital character, changing its facial structure, body type, and clothing. After that, you’ll learn all the necessary steps to bring the character into UE5 and set it up for animation. Then, using an iPhone and a webcam to capture face and body movements, you’ll mix these motion capture files, refine the animations using the MetaHuman Control Rig, and save these takes to be reused and edited again within the Level Sequencer. On top of that, you’ll learn how to create a rendered video file for film production using both the Level Sequencer and a VR Cinematic Camera. By the end of this book, you’ll have created your own MetaHuman character, as well as face and body motion capture data, and learned the necessary skills to give your future projects further realism and creative control.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
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1
Part 1: Creating a Character
4
Part 2: Exploring Blueprints, Body Motion Capture, and Retargeting
9
Part 3: Exploring the Level Sequencer, Facial Motion Capture, and Rendering

Exploring advanced rendering features

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Unreal Engine is a very powerful tool, and when it comes to rendering, it doesn’t disappoint. Unreal is capable of delivering outstanding results that are comparable to traditional path-tracing renderers such as Mental Ray, Arnold, V-Ray, and RenderMan. Unreal now supports path tracing, which is the foundation of how these other renderers work.

In the context of filmmaking, Unreal has real-time rendering capabilities that should be explored to unlock its full potential. The camera and lights have features that we find in 3D programs such as Maya, Houdini, and Blender that use path tracing renderers. It’s possible to export whole scenes from either of these applications with the camera and lighting settings intact and compatible with Unreal.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at some of these great rendering features.

Adding and animating a camera

...

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