A few points i like to share with the community, based on my experience with Adobe’s FUSE creator.
There is also the old Fuse Creator version, which has been published around 2015 by Mixamo, which contains clothes which are no longer part of the newer Fuse creator published under Adobes guidance. But you can copy the older clothes into the newer release. Specifically the newer release lacks fantasy themed clothing.
The newer release contains additional character models, additional skin features such as sunburn amount, changes to the interface and new clothes as well. And the models look like someone edited them with Substance or Quixel. 1024 texture resolution is probably enough for most needs.
Depending on the assembled model parts the Mixamo online rigging tool creates different outcomes. For instance:
Clothing compatibility along the model types
The Brute model is not compatible with all clothing assets
Same for the Male Fit A model
This can be seen with some animations. Though this might be fixed by editing the model directly.
Compatibility with other Fuse skeletons (model types)
Limited, the Brute and Male Fit A models are no longer compatible with older Mixamo Fuse skeletons, mainly the feets are off, and animations look a bit odd. Retargeting yields no satisfying results for the arms.
Previously you could use one skeleton for several models, now you want to use for at least the mentioned models an individual skeleton. Though it is likely that you can use a single skeleton, those which share the same model type.
The Male Fit A model does not include alpha diffuse maps, and has no separate material for eyes, even when exported for Unreal. However, you can use Blender to select the eyelashes (use View -> View selected to zoom into the target region), then assign them to a new material. Upon export, export the model with Armature and Mesh selected.
To account for the missing alpha diffuse to mask the eyelashes properly, use eyelashes from a Fuse Mixamo model which contains them.
Nostrils
The newer Adobe Fuse models have the oddity to come with very bright nostrils.
You want to change the contrast of them, this part here
A few more notes
To tweak materials i use such a setup, but this is depending on the model colors and situation… a lower value at the Desaturation node increases the darkness. With this you can easily change texture colors as you go along. It is also the place to add another diffuse material with a multiply node, to blend a detail material into your existing diffuse texture. Though, this is not required with these characters, or characters which already have high surface details, but is handy to make plain surfaces look more interesting.
Also make sure to edit each Specular image, and untick the SRGB tick box, then assign the material as linear color inside your materials.
Morph targets
The online rigging tool lets you pick the option to add facial expression, which adds morph targets for face expression, like 30 something different morph targets. This makes the model, and import time, considerably larger, and thus should only be used when in need of facial expression morph targets.
Hair
At least the Brute model includes opacity textures, which are not imported. These can be connected to the Opacity Mask channel of hair/beard materials, setup to mask.
Eyes
You want to import models into Blender then select the eyeballs, and assign a Eye material. Otherwise the body roughness value will make the eye look to rough.
To select the eyes with Blender,
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Click a Armature (The big geometric shapes), then go to Pose mode
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Click on Pose - Show/Hide, and hide unselected
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Leave Pose mode, click the model mesh, and enter Edit mode
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click an eyeball, then View - View Selected (Zoom)
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Press “C”, then carefully select with SHIFT pressed the inner eyeballs, then use the face select tool to carefully select the remaining visible eyeball faces. If you selected the eyelid or something not related to the eyes, use SHIFT left click to deselect those faces.
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Pick the material panel on the right tab, click the + sign then “New”, enter a material name (Eyes), then “Assign” the selected eyeball faces.
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Then export the model with Armature and Mesh
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Go to your model, click the mesh asset, then pick from the top menu “Asset”, “Reimport”. Now you should see a new material for your eyeballs. If you changed the model location (i.e. backup), change the import setting path, under the import panel settings.
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Duplicate the body material (Name it Eyes_Mat) of your model.
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Edit Eyes_Mat, add a constant node with the value “0” or max 0.1, and connect it with roughness, save then set the new material for the newly created Eyes material.
What Unreal devs probably want
Option to add morph targets to the entire model, i.e. morph target template for character customization purposes
Default UE4 Mannequin in T Pose, then the Fuse characters can be more easily be used with retargeted animations. Currently after adjustment of the case sensitive bone name spellings (Fuse skeleton) within the retarget manager, the arms and hands are still not easily setup for T Pose within the UE4 Mannequin Skeleton.
Feedback suggestions are welcome, maybe this is helpful for other UE AF users.
