If you have previously used MetaHuman character technology in Unreal Engine 5.5 or earlier, you’ll need to adapt how you work to make use of the new features available in this release. This section summarizes the main changes that you’ll need to be aware of, with links to further documentation so you can find out more.
MetaHuman for Unreal Engine 5.6
With Unreal Engine 5.6 you will no longer use the MetaHuman Creator web application to create and author MetaHuman Characters. Any new characters can be created directly in the Unreal Engine editor using the new MetaHuman Character asset.
The editor for this asset is now known as MetaHuman Creator. Your existing Unreal Engine 5.5 characters can be migrated to new MetaHuman Character assets using the migrate option in Quixel Bridge so that you can continue to work on them in the new version of the engine. The assembly pipelines available as part of the new asset are used to export game-ready assets (known as a MetaHuman Assembly) for Unreal Engine and UEFN, replacing the use of Quixel Bridge.
MetaHuman Animator
MetaHuman Animator is now shipped with Unreal Engine which means you no longer need to download the MetaHuman Plugin from Fab. Simply ensure the new MetaHuman Animator plugin is enabled in your project to continue using these features. As the source code for this plugin is now provided in Perforce/GitHub, it is now possible to include this plugin in a custom build of the engine.
If you are solving animation from depth data (iPhone or stereo camera pair) or using MetaHuman Identity assets you will need to download and enable the new MetaHuman Animator Depth Processing plugin from Fab.
Mesh to MetaHuman is still provided as part of the MetaHuman Identity asset workflow, however it will no longer create new characters in the MetaHuman Creator web application. Instead, the identity asset can be used directly with the new MetaHuman Character asset under the Conform options. The Mesh to MetaHuman from Template Mesh workflow is also available from the Conform options of the MetaHuman Character asset.
Capture Manager
For better integration with Virtual Production workflows, Capture Manager in LiveLink Hub replaces the standalone Capture Manager tool to ingest performance footage from iPhone and stereo camera devices. And, if you are solving animation from stereo data it is no longer necessary to use the MetaHuman Stereo Tools to generate calibration data as the same functionality is available directly from the Capture Data assets in Unreal Engine.
MetaHuman Characters
As MetaHuman Characters now exist entirely within Unreal Engine, it is no longer necessary to use the standalone Quixel Bridge application to download source assets for other content creation applications (such as Maya). Instead, use the DCC Export assembly pipeline on the MetaHuman Character asset to export head DNA, body DNA, and texture files. These are ready to be used with the new Character Assembler tool (part of MetaHuman for Maya) to recreate your character in Maya.
MetaHuman in UEFN
And lastly, the MetaHuman Importer in UEFN is replaced by the UEFN Export assembly pipeline on the MetaHuman Character asset. Once run, the assembled MetaHuman assets can be migrated from Unreal Engine to your UEFN project.