Environment: UE 5.8, MetaHuman Crowd plugin (Experimental) + MetaHuman Crowd Sample from Fab, Windows 11
What I’m trying to do
I want to add a custom MetaHuman Character (created with the in-editor MetaHuman Creator) to a Crowd Collection, so its head and body can be used in random crowd combinations alongside the sample archetype characters.
Setup
- Created a MetaHuman Character asset (
MHC_Able) in the in-editor Creator, with skin/face fully set up.
- Duplicated the sample’s
CrowdCollection (which uses BP_CrowdPipeline) into my project’s Content folder.
- Added
MHC_Able to the Collection twice — once in the Head slot, once in the Body slot — the same way the sample’s archetype characters (MHC_AverageFemale_Head01, etc.) are set up.
- Rebuilt the Collection (Auto-Build For Preview enabled, also tried Clear Build Cache + full Rebuild).
Problem 1 — Face renders untextured
The custom head rendered with no skin texture (plain white/grey face) in the item thumbnails and in the built preview, while the body skin and clothing were textured correctly. Even the Principal Asset thumbnail showed a white face.
Problem 2 — Custom head misaligned with bodies
After rebuilding, the custom head does not sit on the neck; it floats forward at chest height when combined with a body. The sample archetype heads/bodies combine fine.
Any pointers would be much appreciated — I’ve been stuck on this for days.
The Crowd system expects more than just the MetaHuman mesh. Check that your custom MetaHuman has the same generated assets, skeleton setup, materials, and alignment data as the sample archetypes.
Since MetaHuman Crowd is still Experimental in UE 5.8, custom Creator characters may not fully work yet. Try duplicating a working archetype and replacing its appearance data to see if the issue is with the custom asset compatibility.
Hi, I think I can help if you haven’t solved it already (or if anyone else is struggling I hope this can be of help)!
I had the same issue but there’s a few things you need to do and since this is all very new there’s not a lot of documentation.
One thing I’m noticing from your screenshot is that you have the head equipped, but you don’t seem to have the matching body equipped. Heads are not compatible with different body types, hence why you’re getting the geometry cutting through. They must always use the body they were assembled with. (If you wanted to create a variety of faces, you can edit the face and leave the body untouched).
Next, did you generate combined skeletal mesh, download texture sources and assemble your Metahuman? This is required to get all the necessary SKM data. Make sure you have no hair or clothing on the Metahuman if you wish to add that via a collection.
Once that is done, you need to create a wardrobe item for the Metahuman and set it up like this.
And once that is done, try adding it to your collection and make sure to Apply/Rebuild. Hopefully that should have the textured metahumans working.
Now I’m still getting a few issues where the body appears to be invisible unless it has a garment equipped and I’m not sure how to fix that, so if that happens to try equipping garments from the sample pack to see if it’s working.
I feel I should mention that as far as I’m aware the actors in the crowds are not random. They use user created instances from a Metahuman collection. It took me a while to wrap my head around this, but to get actors working in a Metahuman crowd sim you need to manually create an instance and add that instance to the spawner config.
I hope this can be of help!
