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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

Introducing and installing KIRI Engine on your smartphone

What is KIRI Engine? Well, KIRI Engine is an application that falls under the category of photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is the process of creating 3D geometry inside a 3D application (automatically, for the most part) using photographs.

In the context of creating a face scan for a MetaHuman, photogrammetry requires the artist to take multiple photographs in a 180-degree arc and at varying heights. From Figure 11.2, you can see four different angles of a head and shoulders.

Figure 11.2: Typical camera positions

We are only interested in the front of the face, which is why we only capture within a 180-degree arc. It’s also important to get high and low angles so that we get information for under the chin, nostrils, and the forehead.

Tips for shooting photogrammetry

- Use diffused (soft) lighting so there are no shadows on the face

- Have your subject sit very still with their chin tilted...

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