Metahuman skeleton is very unoptimized, it has a lot of redundant bones. Using 10+ metahumans simultaneously will blow up a lot of PC’s. How can I replace metahuman bones with UE5 or UE4 default Manny characters?
I figured out an easy way to do this in general, but it’s not quite complete and therefore not fully useable for me just yet.
I started by exporting the FBX for the body and the head, then opened Blender and imported both. I unparented the meshes from the bones and deleted the bones. Then, I exported the meshes as an FBX. I then used AccuRig to automatically rig the mesh to the CC4 skeleton, then imported the mesh back into Unreal. The CC4 skeleton is pretty close to Manny’s, I used a rig/retargeter to easily retarget animations.
However, here enters the problems that I encountered. First: Materials. Since Unreal doesn’t export materials or anything with the FBX, I’m unable to apply materials properly when importing back to Unreal after rigging in AccuRig. I fixed this by simply separating the parts of the face mesh that needed their own materials in Blender, and just assigning them blank materials (I did restarted the process and did this prior to rigging, but could probably do it after rigging before going back into Unreal, too). Later after reimporting to Unreal I’d just reapply the original materials to these material sections of the mesh. This works pretty well, although it’s difficult to tell with a few of the original materials where exactly they’re meant to be applied, even with the “Isolate” feature. Still, I got satisfactory results.
Then came the second and more serious problem: Grooms. I’m not exactly sure how I can get my grooms placed onto the mesh properly at this point, and I’m wondering if I’m just stuck.
I really want to use Metahumans, but the performance is terrible due to the overly-complex skeleton. 99% of the time I don’t need facial animations or that level of detail in my animations, so I’d like to figure out a way to use the CC4 or Manny skeleton with the Metahuman in most situations, then only if needed figure out a way to spawn in the full-skeleton version of the mesh for facial animations (possibly for cinematics only, but tbd). I feel like I’m close but also possibly at a road block. So if you or anyone else figures out how to do this, I’m very interested.
Hi,
Before importing your meshes back from Blender, or before sending the meshes to AccuRig, make sure the materials’ names match with original names shown in the UE editor. Then, to import back to UE, in the import options, Choose “All Assets”.
If the names match, all slots will be filled accordingly, regardless the order they appear in the skeleton mesh.
You can have two player character blueprints, one for gameplay, another for cinematics. In Take Recorder, you can use Record Type: Spawnables and assign the high poly version for all cinematics taken from the level outliner.
Once the cinematic is done, check “restore state” in your level sequence and the spawnable actor will be destroyed. The level sequence has the option to Hide the Player, Hud and disable input while playing the cinematics.
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Thanks, great idea! Any suggestions for grooms?
No problem.
Not sure what you mean.
I didn’t have great success with this method (assigning the metahuman the mannequin skeleton). It wants me to recreate the bones from the original Metahuman skeleton. If I uncheck all, it errors when changing the skeleton. I did notice that I can check to create just 1 of the bones and it will succeed. However, I’m not sure how to get the body and the head to reassign the skeletons and seamlessly attach as they did on the original skeleton. I always end up with a seam separating the two. Any tips?
If you export the mesh and import back to UE selecting the SK_Mannequin, that should work. If you do the same for the head mesh will loose all facial rigging, and it might work with several warnings. There is a YT tutorial that show a way to export body and head together using Sequencer. I’ll see if I can find the link, but look for Metahuman Combining Body and Head, or similar. If you’re using Blender and AccuRig, that should one way to go. I would also try either Autorig Pro or Magic Bone tools, but mind these are paid Blender addons.
Here’s an example. I haven’t tested, though.
Let’s Metahuman this | Merging Metahuman body and head in Blender - YouTube
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Thanks! I have to step out for a bit but will try this later and get back to you.
No problem, keep up the good work.
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I didn’t have time to complete the whole video, but the FBX Converter was the missing key for the materials. Will update again later.
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