Today we’re releasing a new version of MetaHuman for Maya that includes Pose Editor. MetaHuman for Maya enables you to assemble and customize your MetaHuman characters in Autodesk Maya.
Using Pose Editor, rigging artists working in Maya are able to modify the body of a MetaHuman character created in Unreal Engine using MetaHuman Creator to apply technical fixes or create new kinds of human, humanoid, or fantasy characters.
With the release of MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine 5.6 we introduced a new parametric body system evaluated at runtime using Rig Logic. This made it easier than ever before to create a wide range of more performant human bodies for your MetaHuman character.
Pose Editor enables you to go beyond what is possible with MetaHuman Creator alone, editing the existing RBF (radial basis function) and SwingTwist solvers that drive the secondary deformations on the character’s body. Saved in the MetaHuman DNA file format, these modifications remain compatible with MetaHuman Creator and the body conform controls.
Alternatively, for characters that require more extreme customization, the RBF and SwingTwist solvers provided by Pose Editor can be used with custom skeletons and mesh topology to create custom skeletal meshes. While not compatible with MetaHuman Creator, these changes are still saved in the DNA format to be used with RigLogic in Unreal Engine so your rig still benefits from the significant performance improvements introduced by RigLogic in 5.6.
Combined with the already released Expression Editor, MetaHuman for Maya can now be used to create characters that were previously not possible with MetaHuman Creator alone.
We have also made a number of improvements to the existing tools in MetaHuman for Maya;
- We’ve added the option to create separate head and body skeletons in Character Assembler,
- Character Assembler will no longer create empty head groups in the Outliner when importing only the body,
- Fixed locking of normals when using Character Assembler to import only the head,
- We’ve improved the ML model used for ML joints matching in Expression Editor to deliver better results,
- Correctly align the contents of the optional FBX files exported by Expression Editor with the related assets in Unreal Engine, including the shader name.
Juggling with multiple different installs because of compatability reasons is such a pita^^