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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

Adding Motion Capture with DeepMotion

In the previous chapter, we were introduced to the motion capture library of Mixamo and how to make the Mixamo animations work inside Unreal.

In this chapter, we are going to build on that knowledge and create our very own animation using another third-party online tool called DeepMotion, which includes a tool called Animate 3D that analyzes video of human performances and, in return, creates a motion capture file. We will learn how to use a video camera effectively to record a performance, then use DeepMotion’s Animate 3D feature to create your very own bespoke motion capture file, and then use it to animate your MetaHuman character in Unreal.

As much as stock motion libraries such as Mixamo are great, you will need to have your own bespoke animation to give you creative freedom. Even if a solution such as DeepMotion’s Animate 3D may not be as good as the results that you would get from expensive motion capture suits, it will...

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