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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

Importing your scanned mesh into Unreal Engine

With Unreal Engine open, go to the Content folder and create a new folder inside it called FaceMesh. Inside the FaceMesh folder, right-click and select Import to Game/FaceMesh. This will bring up the import dialog box, as per Figure 11.12, where you’ll see the JPG (on the left of the figure) and OBJ files (on the right):

Figure 11.12: The JPG and OBJ files

You just need to click on the 3DModel OBJ file, then hit OK.

This will open up FBX Import Options, as per Figure 11.13 (this may seem odd as the file is an OBJ file, but this is correct):

Figure: 11.13: Import mesh options

Make sure you have ticked Combine Meshes to ensure the model is imported as just one singular mesh. This is the only option that needs to be changed. Then, click on Import All.

It will take a moment to import. You will most likely get an error log dialog box saying there are issues in the smoothing group...

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