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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

Preparing and uploading the MetaHuman to Mixamo

To prepare our MetaHuman for Mixamo, first, we must make sure that we are exporting our MetaHuman character with the correct body type. You may remember from Chapter 4, Retargeting Animations, that when we were retargeting our character directly from the animation asset, we had an option to preview the mesh of the MetaHuman. This is an important step because we need to use the preview mesh to tell Mixamo how much of an influence the bones will have. In addition, the step also gives us a visual idea of exactly how the motion capture animation we choose works with our mesh of choice.

My character had a particular description, being female, of medium height, and overweight; this was notated by F_Med_Ovw_Preview. We need to ensure that the exact mesh is what we are using to export from Unreal. So, to start preparing our MetaHuman, see the following:

  1. First, we need to find the right mesh. To do this, go to your character’...

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