You may not do any of the following with respect to the MetaHuman Technology or any of its parts: (a) copy, reproduce, display, perform, or otherwise use it in a way that is not expressly authorized in this Agreement;
Reading through the EULA, there is this intriguing sentence. I’m concerned because nothing is “expressly authorized” in the agreement at all, only a few things are mentioned as expressly banned.
Someone please correct me, but the implication can’t be read in any other way: currently every use of Meta Human technology from any company or individual is technically in violation of this EULA, meaning it’s in Epic’s power to pick and choose what uses of Meta Human are in violation of its EULA after the fact. Possibly after companies have already invested thousands of dollars & people hours into the tech.
I would love if someone could clarify why it’s written in such a way. If you are going to only allow Meta Human to be used for only things that are “expressly authorized” then please create an exhaustive list of things that it is authorized for use. Or ideally, remove that language from the EULA so that people using the tech don’t have to guess whether they are in breach of the agreement (since currently, everyone seems to be!)
I believe this is mainly relating to the actual engine. I.e. you can’t redistribute or reverse engineer the app technology, which is their IP. What I read in the license seems to allow you to freely use your creations and redistribute them as part of a game, and so on. Otherwise, there’s no point in using a tool like this. If you read the licenses for just about any DCC, you’ll find similar language.
License Grant
1.1 License. Epic grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable limited right and license to (a) use MetaHuman Creator and MetaHuman Assets to create Generated Characters, (b) modify the Downloaded Characters, and (c) use the Downloaded Characters (with or without your modifications) in your Products as UE-Only Content as permitted under the terms applicable to UE-Only Content in the UE Agreement (the foregoing, collectively, the “License”).
Yep, and you can see here and throughout the document, exceptions are made for the “Downloaded Characters”:
(e) reverse engineer, derive source code from, adapt, translate, decompile, or disassemble it, or otherwise attempt to learn the inner workings, structure, algorithms, or ideas underlying it; (f) modify or otherwise prepare derivative works of it (except for modifications of Downloaded Characters as permitted under the License)
Yes, In part 1.1 above they’re saying you’re expressly authorized to create characters and modify downloaded characters. In (e) you’re forbidden from reverse engineering the code or making modifications to it, with the exception of modifying downloaded characters, which you ARE allowed to do. It’s a pretty straightforward license agreement. You may be confusing the application license with the license you’re being granted to use the assets created BY the application. They’re two different things.
And yes, MHC is free for use with projects created for Unreal Engine. You can use the assets in Maya and other apps, but only to edit and ultimately export back to UE, or render cinematics for use in UE.
All the people who prospecting commercial use of anything unclear read the Eula for not being sued. People who don’t may risk losing more than they earned.
I think no one more than me has spent time on metahuman technology. from day one I tried to understand every bit of it and I think I did. I didn’t read the EULA completely until now when I invested so much time and effort in it. I even managed to port it to Blender but of course for the purpose of exporting the animation to unreal. and now I realized that even trying to understand it was illegal!
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a 3d character maker app and there are many similar things but none of them actually look good enough except this one which proved to me that it is actually possible. I appreciate what epic games did and I love Unreal engine. since last year I have been encouraging people to use unreal for cinematics. but if it’s illegal to modify a metahuman to make a digital copy of people or even non-humanoid characters I’m done with metahuman and unreal.
Sooo, I am in middle of engineering of my in-game (Unreal ofc.) character creator, based on two MetaHuman models. I’m using customized MH materials and blend shapes with custom RIG. Is it legal to release game with such creator inside or not? Can someone enlight me?
So, basically…
We CANNOT render videos in Maya with Redshift using Metahumans… and sell those videos, right? Only option, is to render inside UE for that?
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