MetaHuman 5.6 Release

General Announcements
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MetaHuman 5.6 Release Notes

MetaHuman for Unreal Engine 5.6 continues to evolve the MetaHuman suite of tools, offering new capabilities and features in various areas, including creation, animation, and styling.

In this latest version, MetaHuman Creator ships with Unreal Engine, allowing you to create MetaHuman characters with significantly improved visual fidelity and a completely new parametric body system. MetaHuman Animator is able to solve facial animation in real time from a much wider range of single-camera devices, while animation from audio adds head movement and creative control over the emotional state.

For the first time, MetaHumans and their compatible assets can be traded on Fab, allowing more creators to share their work and engage the marketplace.

MetaHuman for Maya and MetaHuman for Houdini provide capabilities to continue authoring MetaHumans on these platforms, whilst the EULA has been updated so that MetaHumans can be used in any engine.

MetaHuman Creator

In Unreal Engine 5.6, the MetaHuman Creator workflow moves into Unreal Engine, enabling you to create and author MetaHuman characters directly in the editor by using the new MetaHuman Character asset. A new parametric body system combined with an improved visual fidelity gives even greater flexibility to create the likeness you want. You can now use your own MetaHuman-compatible groom and clothing assets directly in MetaHuman Creator, meaning your characters can look better than ever before.

And, to show what’s possible with these new features, we’ve provided a new set of MetaHuman preset characters ready for you to use.

MetaHuman Animator

You can now solve animation in real time from a wide range of single-camera data sources (including webcams), mobile devices, or audio input. Integrated with Live Link, real-time animation can be used to preview a character in MetaHuman Creator, or animate a character placed in a level while editing.

Animation solved offline from audio-only input can now include plausible head motion, while also allowing you to influence the mood.

The new MetaHuman Animator Depth Processing plugin is required to solve animation from depth data (iOS or stereo camera pair) or use a MetaHuman Identity.

MetaHuman Capture

To support real-time animation in MetaHuman Animator, the Live Link Face (Beta) application is now available to download from the Google Play Store for Android devices with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (or later) chipset. The Live Link Face application on iOS (available on the App Store) has also been updated to generate animation in real time on the device.

Meanwhile, Live Link Hub is now used to ingest performance data for solving animation offline in MetaHuman Animator, simplifying virtual production and performance capture setups with streamlined data management, regardless of device.

MetaHumans on Fab

With this release, we’re establishing the MetaHuman channel on the Fab Marketplace, allowing you to buy and sell MetaHumans and MetaHuman-compatible grooms and clothing, made easy by a validation and packaging tool (MetaHuman Manager) provided in Unreal Engine.

The sale and purchase of MetaHumans on the Fab Marketplace are governed by the Unreal Engine EULA, Fab EULA and the Fab Distribution Agreement.

MetaHuman for Maya

A new plugin for Maya 2022-2025, MetaHuman for Maya provides three new tools for authoring and working with MetaHuman characters directly in Maya.

The Character Assembler tool loads MetaHuman Characters exported from MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine, ready for preview and animation.

The new Expression Editor tool enables you to fine tune the facial expressions of your characters, taking advantage of the same tools used to create many of our own MetaHuman characters.

And lastly, a new Groom Exporter grants the easy export of XGen grooms as MetaHuman-compatible hairstyles for use with MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine.

The Groom Exporter is supported by a Groom Starter Kit available on Fab.

MetaHuman for Houdini

A new plugin for Houdini 20.5, MetaHuman for Houdini provides a collection of HDAs for creating MetaHuman-compatible grooms, ready for export and use with MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine.

This plugin is supported by a Groom Starter Kit available on Fab.

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Why Metahuman Capture supports S23 and S24 Ultra, but no S25 Ultra? Is there a problem with 8 Elite?? Hope it updates soon, I was so happy to test it. :pensive_face:

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Can anyone confirm that the depth processing plugin for Metahumans works in the 5.6 release.
I just downloaded 5.6, created a new project, added the depth processing plug-in and I get this error after a restart: ```The following modules are missing or built with a different engine version:

MetaHumanMeshTracker
MeshTrackerNodes```

Is the only solution to build unreal? If so, is there a guide?

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@Geov4ni1 you can try the android app on the S25 Ultra, we support snapdragon 8 gen 1 or greater.

@wafumaster have you had the preview version of 5.6 and the depth processing plugin installed? We updated the Depth Processing Plugin for 5.6 today, and verified it was available. You should see an update available in launcher.

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You get this error when if you try to upgrade from 5.6 preview to 5.6 release. Removing the upgraded version and installing from scratch fixes it.

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I am having issues with MetaHumans in 5.6 on OSX, enabled the MetaHumans Plugins and also installed the Metahumans Core Data but in UE when i want to add in the Content browser in have not the option under ther Metahuman tab to import MetaHuman Character. Any idea or known issues under OSX ? (OSX 15.5 and XCode up to date) Thanks for any help…

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Pretty sure it’s not available for OSX the old MetaHumans plugin which included the animation stuff wasn’t either, and if you look in fab at the new plugins they say Windows only I believe. That’s how it is for us OSX people, that’s why I had to get a PC also, but I feel like it’s within reason that they eventually add support, however I wouldn’t bet that a Mac can actually run it at all, my MacStudio would almost crash when I would just load a MetaHumans in, let alone try to animate them or do anything else, not particularly optimized in that regard

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It’s looking super cool so far but I wish the previous default clothes were available in the creator, especially with only one track suit on the fab currently. More clothing choices were a big hope but now we have one and need to wait for more models to be published

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I keep getting a “Skin editing is disabled. Enable the metahuman content option in the UE installer to enable skin editing.” message in the MetaHuman Character creator but I cannot find this setting anywhere. How can I find it?

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I can use a smartphone with a processor Exynos 2200 ? probably not

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Hey, thanks for clearifying the OSX issue. Hopefully there will be a solution to use MetaHumans in OSX one day…i would really appreciate it. I thought it might work with the M4 Chip but it seems to have different reasons why it is not working with OSX…

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Screenshot_20250605_103504
Screenshot_20250605_1035041080Ă—2120 65.5 KB

@JamesPullan
I tried… :pensive_face:

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@Geov4ni1 we are working on a fix for the latest devices - we hope to have an update available soon.

@Anonymous_23a335cc726a5b798ceab3df9d04cf5d, no we only support snapdragon 8 gen 1 and above on Android.

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Very cool. When I add the Tech Wear parametric outfit in the MHC, its always grayscale even though the textures / colors show properly in the Asset Browser on the left. Note that there are no params in the Details section.

TechWear
TechWear2023Ă—1681 126 KB

image
image855Ă—371 11.5 KB

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Please follow the instructions in the FAB listing to correctly apply the textures:

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Cool!
Been using Metahuman since late 2021. Switched to CC4 due to more compatibility and freedom in creation. Plus, a huge minus for me was that Metahumans were always “visible”. You always saw that the character you are watching is a Metahuman. Takes me out of the experience every time…
However, the past updates and this overhaul seem to have addressed this issue significantly. I am thrilled to give it another go!

The Export to Other DCCs is, for now, only officially supported for Maya and Houdini, right? The Export to Blender is still.. kinda bothersome? Or you buy the Poly Hammer DNA to Blender Plugin I suppose.

Or are there new ways of exporting your digi human?

Cheers!

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Same problem anyone know how to fix it?

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@Kris24morris @Javi_Garcia it looks like you guys need to enable the MetaHuman Creator Core Data: