UE 5.6 Metahuman DNA, Skeleton Modification Support

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hi there,

In the UE 5.6 Metahuman for Maya workflow, DNA Calibration appears to be deprecated or no longer supported.

We need to modify the skeleton at the DNA level, including:

  • Changing joint neutral positions
  • Removing joints
  • Adding joints
  • Renaming joints

In previous versions, these changes were handled through DNA Calibration. With that workflow gone in 5.6, is there any supported or unsupported way to write modified skeletal data back into a DNA file?

If not, is the expectation that Metahuman skeleton topology and bind pose are now fully locked in UE 5.6?

Any clarification on the intended workflow or future support would be appreciated.

Thanks.

~Kelvin

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2

Hi Kelvin,

These capabilities are part of MetaHuman for Maya, which incorporates the DNA calibration library.

MetaHuman for Maya extends the previous DNA Calibration repository on GitHub, providing tools to edit facial expressions (using Expression Editor) and body poses (using Pose Editor). Both of these tools (although specifically Expression Editor) only permit changes within the current MetaHuman Rig Definition that is used by MetaHuman Creator; this means it is not possible to add/remove/rename joints.

To go beyond the Rig Definition (as you describe) the Python API for DNA Calibration is still available as part of MetaHuman for Maya, and can be used outside of these two tools (as it sounds like you were doing previously). In the simple case, it may be as trivial as updating the import statements from

import dnacalibto

import dnacalib2for any existing code.

Unfortunately, we do not yet have API documentation available as part of MetaHuman for Maya. However as this new API for DNA Calibration is a superset of the previous capabilities, the old documentation still applies with method names etc unchanged (though of course you will be missing documentation for any new methods).

Thanks,

Mark.

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3

Ah

dnacalib2does what I need TYSM ! didn’t know that exists.

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4

Great - glad that helped!

We’re aware this is not obvious, and the lack of documentation does not help discovery. It’s something we hope to improve in the future.

Mark.

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