This week was all about MetaHumans, which are customisable photorealistic humans that come fully rigged, and able to be driven by someone in a mocap suit. Today, we learnt how to create a MetaHuman of ourselves that can be imported into Unreal Engine and driven by a mocap actor.
Below is a little clip introducing some examples of MetaHumans from their website:
We began learning about facial capture and how you can use the data recorded from the face rig - a headset with a camera attached to the end - to drive the ‘victor’ character, while having the controls to change different aspects of the facial features and their corresponding behaviours. Some expressions may need emphasising and others may not need to be so pronounced. One example of this would be the eyes rolling too far into the head, and so you have the ability to change the position/intensity of the movement.
The images below illustrate this process:
We then moved on to creating a lidar scan of the mocap actor using the iOS app Polycam https://poly.cam/ on a tablet. This app requires you to capture many images from all different angles around the actor in a 360 degree fashion. Polycam then stitches the images together to create a 3D representation of the person or object. We then export this out as an FBX file, using a Sketchfab account.
Moving around the subject in a 3D fashion to capture over 100 images in all angles
Polycam scan 3D
The 3D scan projected onto the screen behind, with the reference model in front to show the likeness
Polycam Scan 3D
This character mesh data is then downloaded as an FBX file to then be uploaded into Unreal Engine. Once in Unreal Engine these are the main steps to follow to turn the static mesh into a Metahuman:
The Mesh to MetaHuman workflow consists of the following steps:
Set up your Unreal Engine project.
Import and prepare the character mesh.
Create and configure a MetaHuman Identity Asset.
Create and track a Neutral Pose.
Run the Identity Solve.
Submit the Template Mesh to the MetaHuman Backend.
Further customize your MetaHuman in MetaHuman Creator.
Download and import your MetaHuman into Unreal Engine 5.
You can fully customise your character by changing hair colour and style, eyes, nose, ears, pretty much everything, even the clothing. This allows you to get the closet likeness to the real person, if that's what your MetaHuman is referenced from.
This is the final screen recording of the Metahuman and the face motion capture both working together:
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