I’ve been trying to get a stable pipeline from makehuman to unreal, and I’m finding that models with default settings are incredibly shiny when imported, to the point of looking like plastic. I attached an example of the result, my best guess is that the materials are getting screwed up on import, but I can’t figure out what I should be doing differently in makehuman to fix it.
-post a pic of your material 
-make sure that you disable the specularity -> connect a constant vector with a value of 1 to the roughness
Ack sorry, I should’ve thought to provide that by default.
I think you’re right though, it might be a problem with how makehuman exports its materials: I replaced my nice suit material with the one I use on garbage bags, and while it looked weird as heck it completely eliminated the shininess issue.
Suit material’s right here, fresh out of makehuman:
Keep in mind that it’s not possible to import materials, just textures!
How does your original texture (diffuse and normal) looks like?
Sure thing! I really appreciate your taking a look at this, I’m completely lost when it comes to textures and mats. 
Normal, then diffuse:
Yep, looks good -> when you still get the shininess, do the thing with the constant node + roughness
- make sure that you texture samples are set to the right mode (normal and colour/default)
Ooh, constant + roughness tones it down a bunch, thank you!!
Yeah, on import UE is creating a default UE material for each of the materials listed in the fbx, right? Those are setup expecting PBR style textures, but the MakeHuman characters are not setup with that texture setup in mind. they are set up for older game workflows, using older rendering techniques. It is frankly setup for their internal renderer, with the knowledge that most users take the character into Blender to setup more advanced materials.
you can use the defaults, but for any decent quality, expect to be modify the textures, or starting from scratch.
As long as you have enabled “import textures” + “create material” in your import settings, it will create a basic material with the diffuse texture
I am going to need to replace them all eventually- in terms of workflows, do you recommend texturing in blender, or importing model + texture seperately and manually making the material in ue?
roughness will make your textures look shrink wrap. Try plugging in one of your RGB channels or give it any value of 1 and that will make it a simple diffused material.
So, you and maybe I are confusing some terminology. So, texturing is applying a texture to a mesh. Making a material is something that has to be done in UE4, as you will use the material tools to customize for the look you want. Do you want a cartoonish character? A PBR character? Those choices will determine the material setup you use.
The texturing will be done in another program. You can do it in Blender, as it has a painting mode that is similar to mudbox/zbrush. Or if you are willing to spend a few bucks, Substance painter is an awesome tool to texture characters. It has the benefit of having a UE4 look preset, meaning what you see in Painter will look close to the default material in UE4, and it is a more polished tool. It can also export exactly the right maps for UE4 as a preset, vs having to set all of that up in Blender.
Or, you can take those current textures from MakeHuman, and edit them in photoshop or the gimp. This is the traditional workflow, if not as easy to see at first.
Hmm okay, thank you for the clarification- I’m an utter neophyte when it comes to the graphical end of things, so I appreciate the detail.