Summary
We’re evaluating the new MetaHuman 5.8 body conform workflow for use in a studio production pipeline, and we’ve encountered an issue that makes it difficult to create reusable body templates. If only the mesh vertices have been edited, we would expect the original body parameters especially height, bone lengths, and the underlying skeleton to remain unchanged unless explicitly modified. This is particularly important when creating multiple body archetypes (slim, athletic, heavy, muscular, etc.) that all share the same standing height and animation rig but after conforming, the resulting MetaHuman often has a slightly different height than the original. This also happens in-editor when changing weight proportions.
Feature Request:
It would be extremely valuable to have a conform option such as:
-Preserve Original Body Parameters
-Lock Height
-Preserve Bone Lengths / Skeleton
-Conform Vertices Only
This would allow artists to create body-shape variations while guaranteeing that all characters share the exact same underlying body rig and proportions.
Insight request, Clarification of “Target” vs “Actual” Values:
The parameters in the Head & Body and Body Params sections are a bit confusing. When entering a Target value (for example, Height = 176.73 cm), the field accepts that value, but the resulting ‘‘Actual value’’ is different (for example, 176.62 cm).
It isn’t immediately clear what each value represents, Is the editable field the target value requested? If so, is the Actual value the result after the solver has fitted the character?
Additional clarification in the UI tooltips on Target and Actual would help.
Thank you for your help. We believe an option to preserve the original body would make it significantly more suitable for large-scale game production and character pipelines.
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
UI / Tools
Steps to Reproduce
-Create a MetaHuman using a Presets (In my case it was Vivian but any would do).
-Change random parameter in Head & Body → Body Params (just to customized it a bit) and take a look at the Height parameter and keep it in mind.
-Export-> DNA Export
-Import-> From DNA → link your DNA head and body that you just exported. Apply.
-Go to Head & Body → Body Params, look at the Height parameter. Even if we re-imported the same mesh the Height is different and it’s very problematic cause everytime you do this it will change Height.
You can re-do these steps but with DCC Export:
-Import in Maya with the MetaHuman tool
-Edit-> Delete all by type->History, Export your head,eyes,body,teeth in FBX without changing anything, bring it back to MetaHuman
-Import-> From Template, link head,eyes,body,teeth and Apply
-If you look at the Height parameter Head & Body → Body Params, it will be changed even if we didn’t change anything.
Expected Result
Height should stay the same before and after conforming from Templates or DNA.
Observed Result
The Height value shouldn’t change when conforming to exactly the same mesh, also it shouldn’t change when editing Parametric that doesn’t affect Length, we need a parameter to lock the Height when modifying the body.
Affects Versions
5.8
Platform(s)
Windows