First off, this is an amazing tool! The ability to create a believable human character with full facial and body rig is incredible. The current toolset within the app shows so much promise but there are a few nagging limitations which are holding it back from its potential greatness.
My biggest complaint is that when exporting to UE, the A-pose that’s created is not aligned with the UE4 Mannequin. The Pose Asset provided in the example project works fine to align the Male Normal Weight model for retargeting, but there is no asset provided for aligning the female. This requires making a custom pose by trial and error to fix some bad hand alignment issues, and some minor ones with the feet. I know we’re all artists here, but this seems like an unnecessary step when it could be built into the exporter. I’m hoping this is something that’s in the works, given that MHC is touted as being made to work hand in hand with UE4. In the mean time I’ve made a pose that works well enough for the female model to be retargeted with any mannequin poses, and I’ve had success making a playable female character blueprint with Advanced Locomotion.
The current face sculpting seems to be pretty loose and unpredictable. We can get a generic face pretty quickly, but it takes a lot of fighting between controls to get a passable likeness if you’re designing a specific face. I think the ability to optionally weight the influence/strength of the handles would be beneficial. For example, with the nose bridge control it should be possible to create a pronounced bump and move it up and down without lengthening the entire nose. It would also be good to be able to exaggerate features a bit more to reach the real world limits of human appearance.
Here’s a test that I’ve done, targeting a recognizable actor. I was only able to get so far, due to limitations in the nose and ear controls. Ears play such a huge part in the look of a face, but currently the ear controls seem to have a mind of their own, changing the size and shape of the entire ear automatically based on its position on the head. I found it impossible to get Gary Oldman’s characteristic drooping lobes, while keeping the ears at the correct height. I also couldn’t get the nose to be both the right shape and the right length. Those two properties seemed to fight each other.
Eye shape was another severe limitation. Mr. Oldman’s eyes have a slight downward droop that I was unable to replicate. I think this is a major cause of the sameness some people have noticed in the faces–everyone has almond shaped eyes, almost like it’s one person wearing different masks. We need the ability to droop or tilt the inside/outside edges of the eyes. Also, a control for narrowing the chin is a must.
Skin texture currently seems to be a convolution of types, which is good, there is a wide variety available. But often once I found the right complexion, I wanted to simply decrease the strength of the wrinkles (normals). This is not possible without choosing a totally different skin type, and therefore losing the specific creases.
Hair, skin, and eye colors are all currently dependent on Melanin strength. An RGB override or tint color on each of these would be fantastic for creating more unnatural but common make up effects.
The ability to limit freckles to an area, to replicate birth marks or a more subtle scattering of freckles over the upper cheeks, similar to the skin color accents would be useful.
Lastly, I guess I’ll be the 10000th person to ask for more body types, or a body editor.
Overall, I am having a blast building a photoreal version of my main character. I think this tool is going to be a godsend for many creators.
