So far I’ve had a lot of fun with the creator, though I think there could be some really neat features/sliders added to cater towards more “planned” characters.
In my instance, I was using it as a test to create some renditions of family and friends. One of the issues I ran into, that upon sharing my creations with people I know is that they felt that the people I created, who were all white, had, and I’m quoting these people, “Asian-descent eyes”. I did what I could to match my MetaHumans to their references, but there are obviously some intricacies that aren’t there yet. Below is a MetaHuman of one of my friends.
Instead of us picking from a list of existing characters to start from, it what be interesting to just have some basic things to choose - Sex, Age Range, and Ethnicity. Age Range would I feel correlate in some fashion to the Texture slider under Skin, which right now is a nightmare for me to try and get where I want it.
My background is more Environment and Prop Art, so for me, I see this tool as a potential avenue for being able to create characters for my scenes and personal projects, and to hopefully one day have this be a one-stop-shop for creating characters in the future. I’m by no means a character artist, so I know that there are some people who are probably taking these as base meshes and refining them elsewhere, but my hope is that this would one day be a thing akin to a more advanced Fuse, and allow for full customization on every level.
These are based on real people, and I believe the blending aspect, rather than starting from scratch, is intended to retain the physical plausibility between different face types, and keep things anatomically consistent. I’ve yet to see a MetaHuman pass into the uncanny valley in a bad way, which means it succeeds where needed.
The look you’re talking about is probably epicanthic folds, and the angle of the lower lid. More tools to push the bounds of each face would be helpful, but I’d guess that more face scans will make that less of a necessity.
Lastly, race sliders or selection might seem like the solution, but the fact of the matter is that everyone looks different, regardless of where they come from. No ancestry has a definitive look that can succinctly be categorized as “white” or “whiteness”, as these are traits and anatomies that descend from blending over time. Your friend has very unique eyes, or post processing done by his cellphone camera - an ethnicity slider won’t help there.
I think MetaHumans is a cool tool to provide a launch pad for creating characters. Being able to modify these characters post generation is probably going to be where it really shines, as I doubt Epic is going to turn this into something that makes every character for everyone’s needs right out of the box, but instead, something akin to a tabula rasa, a place to build from.
I think Metahuman would really improve if you’d be able to get more into details: being able to change the nose (not only the bridge but length width etc.), cheeks (fuller, thinner and changing the shape?) eyes (I tried giving my metahuman bigger droopy puppy eyes but I just couldn’t do it with the current features), mouth ( again I couldn’t really change much about the mouth given the current features), eyebrow shape and color (I think this is fundamental in creating a human bc the brow bone really changes the expressions), forehead ( I couldn’t really make it bigger or more narrow without changing the head shape…) and hairstyles (pls give us more hairstyles, there were so less for women). I could go on for a few more minutes like that, my point is that if only metahuman allowed us to edit the faces in a more detailed mode (yes just like in sims) it would deliver more :))
I agree op. You have to be careful to make sure that the sculpt tool is using the scans that match the ethnicity… you can cycle through them with the move/sculpt tools until you get something plausible. I disagree with the first reply, you can’t just mr. potato head these things if you are going for something ethno-specific.
I personally wish there were more European looking models with classically proportioned features like large “puffy” eyelids, grecian profiles, etc. The trick I’ve been using on the eyes it to widen the upper eyelid with the controls on the sculpt tool. It gets you close but more scans are needed to create many “looks” right now.
The ability to change the forehead/nose/chin ratio would be greatly appreciated as well.
