MetaHuman 1.0.0 Early Access Released!

Development Character & Animation
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What’s new

This latest release introduces an exciting Mesh to MetaHuman feature—part of a new experimental MetaHuman Plugin for Unreal Engine—as well as support for the new character rigging, animation, and physics features in Unreal Engine 5. MetaHuman Creator also gets new options for hair and clothing, together with additional facial animations and body poses. Find out more!

MetaHuman Plugin for Unreal Engine

Mesh to MetaHuman

The MetaHuman Plugin for Unreal Engine’s first major feature, Mesh to MetaHuman, enables artists to take their own custom facial mesh and convert it into a MetaHuman, fully rigged and ready to animate. They can then further refine their character in MetaHuman Creator.

Starting with a textured mesh created using scanning, sculpting, or traditional modelling tools, Mesh to MetaHuman uses automated landmark tracking in UE5 to fit the MetaHuman topology template to it, combining it with a body type of the artist’s choice from the MetaHuman options. This template is then submitted to the cloud, where it is matched to a best-fit MetaHuman derived from the database. This mesh is then used to drive the facial rig, while the deltas from the original mesh come along for the ride.

Once they have transformed their static mesh into a MetaHuman, artists can immediately download it, or open it in MetaHuman Creator, where they can play through the animations and see it instantly come to life, and continue to tweak and enhance it.

While some elements like hair and skin textures will need to be reauthored or reapplied either in MetaHuman Creator or within a tool of choice, Mesh to MetaHuman means artists can get a starting point for a fully rigged digital human from their unique static mesh in minutes.
Check out the tutorial to find out more about how it works.

MetaHuman Creator

General

  • New UI for the blend, sculpt and move functions
  • Added Custom Mesh side panel for characters created with Mesh to MetaHuman. This panel allows geometry fine-tuning per face region and character unlock functionality.
  • Added icon to distinguish custom Mesh to MetaHuman from the gallery
  • Improved normal maps to preserve details in lower LOD faces

Clothing, Prints and Graphics

  • Added new clothing items
    • Tops: Crewneck T-shirt
    • Bottoms: Yoga Pants Mid Thigh Length, Yoga Pants Full Length
    • Shoes: Running Shoes, Loafers, Oxfords
  • Added 30 Print options, with up to 4 colors.
  • Added 34 Graphic options, with up to 3 colors.

Animation

  • New UI to accommodate new animations & UE5 styling.
    • Added auto stop/start when entering panel where animations are required to “stop” to continue e.g. Body Proportions, Face Blend, Skin & Teeth.
    • Updated warning messages to UE5 styling.
  • Added new animations
    • Facial Poses x 5: Happy, Sad, Anger, Fear, Surprise
    • Body Poses x 6: Artistic, Emotional, Fashion, Peace, Sport, Fight
    • Facial Loops x 10: Happy, Sad, Anger, Fear, Amaze (with A & B options)
  • Updates to pre-existing animations
    • Idle
    • Body ROM
    • Face ROM

Grooms

  • Added Ombre and Highlights to all grooms that can support it.
  • Added Color Regions to Mohawk, Faux Mohawk and pulled back hairstyles.
  • Added 13 new hairstyles.
  • Added 4 new eyebrows.
  • Added 1 new eyelash.
  • Added 3 new mustaches.
  • Added 3 new beards.
  • Added further LOD support for existing grooms.

Quixel Bridge

Unreal Engine 5

  • Support for Unreal Engine 5 MetaHumans and Mesh to MetaHuman exports.

MetaHuman Presets

  • Io, from The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, is now available as a featured MetaHuman in Bridge, to download and add to your UE5 projects.
  • 6 new MetaHuman presets are available.
  • Existing MetaHuman presets have been updated with the latest features.

MetaHuman Sample

  • The sample, including MetaHumans Ada and Taro, has been upgraded to use Unreal Engine 5.
  • Timecode support for audio, body and face, viewable in Sequencer.
  • Added a Ragdoll Level to showcase the active ragdoll technology where MetaHumans fall realistically and can blend with get-up animations from their ragdoll state.

MetaHuman Creator Lighting Presets

There have been 3 new lighting presets added, created for The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, that were used in various parts of the dystopian city featured in that project, including Rooftop, Downtown Night, and Underpass Night.

MetaHuman Upgrade Notes

Unreal Engine 5

  • Added VersionInfo file for specific MetaHuman character assets to allow for MetaHuman compatibility with engine versions.

  • Added features to existing MetaHuman Control Rig:

  • Simplified graph using Functions

  • IK Spine and Neck

  • Reverse Foot Setup

  • Soft IK on Arms and Legs

  • Compatible with UE5 character tools

  • Active ragdoll physics

  • Built-in IKrig support for retargeting motions between any MetaHumans

  • Backwards compatibility with UE4 Mannequin animation

The latest MetaHuman Creator now uses Unreal Engine 5. To ensure we remain compatible with MetaHumans in UE4 projects we have created a version selection screen allowing users to choose their version of MetaHuman Creator that matches their Unreal project. MetaHumans created in UE5 are not compatible with existing UE4 projects. Please re-export any UE5 MetaHumans for your UE5 projects.

All UE4 MetaHumans prior to release have been duplicated as a UE5 MetaHuman. This is a one-time operation to ensure users have all of their MetaHumans available for edit in the latest MetaHuman Creator. Please note that UE4 and UE5 MetaHumans are treated as independent, locked to their respective versions. Therefore any changes in UE4 MetaHumans will not be visible in the UE5 version of your MetaHumans, and vice versa.
To export UE5 MetaHumans to UE5, you will need to use the Bridge plugin available inside of UE5. This is not available in the standalone version of Bridge. Likewise, the Bridge plugin will not display UE4 MetaHumans.

Known Issues

Upon importing your UE5 MetaHuman into an Unreal Engine 5 project, where one or more MetaHumans already exist in that project, there is a chance that the import process will result in some errors, and may not function correctly as a result. We are working to fix this issue and will have a solution out by the next major Unreal Engine release. As a workaround in the meantime, please follow the instructions provided in the dialog, which will require closing and restarting the engine.

The updated MetaHuman sample is currently not available for Mac users.

6 Likes
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This is AMAZING. What fantastic work - congrats to the entire team :slight_smile: Can’t wait to play with the Maya source files when they are ready!!

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Oh, that’s a big one!! Congrats and thank you, having this tech available for small teams and solo devs is a gift!! :+1: :+1: :+1:

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Nina, will export to Maya (etc) be available at some point from inside the Bridge tool in UE5? Or just the external Bridge app?

Also, is there any documentation on the new MH features, specifically:

  • Simplified graph using Functions
  • IK Spine and Neck
  • Reverse Foot Setup
  • Soft IK on Arms and Legs

Thanks! :slight_smile:

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By the way, I think there are 7 new UE5-only MetaHuman presets, not six, right? Dax, Erno, Farrukh, Fei, Kioko, Lena and Orla. :slight_smile: The overall quality of the MHs is so amazing in these new releases by the way, just mindblowing! So many subtle improvements across the board. :smile:

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Hey!

@absolutecarnage - No current plans to support exporting to other DCCs from Bridge inside UE; please continue to use the external Bridge app :slight_smile:

For the docs - we don’t have any explicit MH docs on the UE5 features, but there are a bunch that our blog links out to that may be of use.

@JASKOWASTAKEN - do you see the version selection page when you start MHC? If not, you may want to try loading it in an incognito tab.

Cheers,
N

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Are there any plans of being able to import custom morph target models- to override the smile expression for example. It’s just that the expressions look too uncanny if you generate a metahuman from a more stylized mesh.

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Hi! Fantastic work as usual.
I did noticed that with the latest release of Bridge and MH you can’t export the Maya Source file with the face rig (controls) attached to it. The generated binary file only contains the body skeleton + rbf nodes (in Maya). Was this intended?

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XTRUDER: I’m not seeing that issue, with latest standalone Bridge, into Maya 2022. At least for the character Vivian. As always, it MIGHT be a character by character issue as these source files are made manually. :slight_smile: To clarify, you mean that when you are in the standalone version of Bridge and you try to Export to Maya, it works but the way it turns up inside there is NO face rig? Or that it is not “attached” to the rest of the rig? Also, if you mean there is no face rig at all, I would definitely recommending restarting your machine and then making sure Bridge (standalone) has prompted you to update the Maya plugin.

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I updated bridge to the latest version. Used on 3 different metahumans and tried on 2 different pcs. Collegues are experiencing the same. This is on maya 2020.
The result is a full skeleton plus rbf nodes fully deforming all the lods. No face rig is in the scene nor hidden in the outliner. The skeleton structure and grouping also looks different from the “old” metahuman source file. Dna files also are smaller. No blendshape deformer is created as front of chain of the skin cluster.

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Can you say a specific metahuman you have tried? I’ll do it with the same Metahuman with Maya 2020 on my machine and try to take a recording and see if it has same results. I’m on Windows 10 Pro. Bridge is “2022.0.4” - is that the same as yours?

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If it helps, I just made a video showing it work ok on my end. It gives an error in Maya 2020, but it still appears to work fine:

The error it gives is “Errors have occured while reading this scene that may result in data loss. Please check the Script Editor for details.”

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I’m not sure where to report bugs with the source assets (exported to Maya from Quixel Bridge). I’ve posted to the Quixel forum:

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Hi guys! I finally pin pointed what the problem was. The system now requires to actually click on the export button in order to generate the face rig. I found additional scripts in the Megascan Library that are run at export time. I was used to point directly to the Maya Ascii file downloaded (which used to contain everything). Is all working as intended.

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Hi, there is an issue when I use Livelink. The mouth is going towards the left in a weird way. Had a close look and found that Lip Outer Lower (R) has 8 data points that you can move around. HOWEVER, Lip Outer Lower (L) only has 5. In my head this is the reason why the Meta Human is not picking up the Livelink feed correctly. I hope someone sees this!

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Mismatch_Lips1920×1080 115 KB

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Yes, Ocular_VR, I’m seeing the same thing! Have you submitted a bug report buddy? The bug report form is here → Unreal Engine Community

If you do, post the link to it here and I’ll upvote!

Also check out these threads in the forum about this topic:

You’ll see that a moderator suggested we look at an old thread for a previous MetaHuman release and see if it contains answers, but I haven’t had a chance yet:

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Hi I did make a bug submission but it has to be approved first before the url is public. When it is ill post it here. Thanks

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