I’m trying to develop my own character creator using Metahumans. So I created a bunch of different faces for the same character and from that I build a bunch of morph targets in my character blueprint that would allow me to create unlimited face variations for the NPCs (and the main character) in my game. But I started wondering, if this is the right place to use morph targets, since once I chose the face parameters of, lets say, Adam, these parameters will never change and Adam will always have the same parameters (same face) for the whole playthrough.
Just to make that clear: I don’t want to create a fixed set of characters, that’s why I want these morphable face feature. And the player should also be able to customize their main character using this system, which won’t work with a fixed set of faces.
So my first naive idea on how to fix this would be to have one morphable face blueprint that I only create an instance of for character creation, then somehow copy over the vertex positions to the face of the npc/main character, who from that time on will no longer have the morphs available and will therefore need much less memory during the game. Even if I don’t destroy the instance of the morphable face blueprint, I would only need one instance instead of having the morphs in every instace of the character blueprint.
I would still need to store the face’s morph parameters so that I can re-create it in the same way, when I need to reload the same npc/main character.
Or are morph targets implemented in a way that I don’t need to bother about their performance when they are ‘not dynamically used’?
Does this sound like a good Idea or is there a better way to do this? If you think this is a good idea then my next question would be how to copy over vertex positions from one skeletal mesh to another (preferable using blueprints).
Do not spend your time to create a Morph generator to Matahuman.
By experiance you will hit the wall very hard.
Im in the same situation , Im creating a lot of characters but not for games but for my videos. ( I`m working on around 80 characters, but I think I will only keep 40 )
I`m in this project for paticly 3 years and I think my fist video will not be available begining 2024
I already try Iclone and Character Creator ( Complex and expensive)
I already try blender human generator ( limited )
-Upload this one in UE5 to Metahuman an create my character ( Skin, eyes … )
Download the character to UE5 with Quixell
Export the Body in Marvelous Designer and have a cloth to the correct size and the correct Fabric
Export the cloth to Substance painter to have some detail ( dirt … )
Add the cloth to the metahuman in unreal engine ( use Udrapper to have the cloth Simulation )
Export the face of the character to Substance painter to add detail ( scar, blood … )
When this is done you add your new hair ( if you do not keep the one present in metahuman.
At This moment I have 1 custom Metahuman ( This can take 1 week of work when you know what you do )
So now I can add my face animation and body animation with the metahuman process.
Why I think this process is important ?
is because I do not touch the character structure ( I add cloth , and skin )
At this moment ( with Metahuman ) we cannot modify the face structure or the body proportion .
So yes you can change all this in maya , Blender, and export this back in Unreal Engine but at this moment is not a Metahuman.
The problem with a Morph generator is that you will generate 500 Characters to maybe have 1 that will be usable.
Conclusion
When you modify a Metahuman you will spend a lot of time ratargeting and solve little detail ( if you use methahuman is to have a realistic character, if you use another tool you lose all this )
Yes, metahuman is limited but you need to train your self ( not an expert only the basic ) in other tools like Substance painter
Thanks for your reply, I already wondered a few times, if it would be worth it to use metahumans. I already hit some walls, as you mentioned, but so far I was able to overcome these. I already have morphing capabilities for the body (to fat and skinny body) that work with all the clothes that come with the MH creator + the ones from the citySample. Maybe I will give up but I want to give the faces at least a few more tries, I guess
But I’m still curious, if someone knows an answer to my original question: will it be a problem to have, lets say 20 morph targets in the face skeletal mesh to change the shape of the face (each of those affecting all the vertices) + the morph targets for animation that the MH already have. And would my alternative I posted in the initial post be a good idea?
I currently do not blend between the normal maps and textures, so all body types use the same normal weight texture and normal maps. But so far, this does not bother me.
I combined this with different body height and clothing, all the upper and lower body clothes also have their own ‘fat’ and ‘skinny’ blendshapes that I set to the same value as the body.
Getting the body blendshape was a bit tricky since the metahuman bodies do not have the same vertex order, but I was able to compute a mapping from the normal body to the fat and skinny one, so I can now blend between them. For the clothes I always took the normal one and use an algorithm that I created in my own C++ application to transfer the deformation of the body (e.g. from normal to fat) to the cloth. Some cloth will still need some manual work in blender but for a first version it already works good so far. The main concern that I currently see is performance…
What I plan to add next:
more hairstyles
the face blendshapes that this thread is about
different skin textures
different skin colors
different skeletal base poses (e.g. x- or o-shaped legs, or a bent back)
Hello
Wow this is amazing
Do you sell this ?
( Sorry for the Delay , I was busy to creating my characters under Methauman , 65 in total, the step number 2 on the process I send you the last time )
