MetaHuman for Unreal Engine 5.6 continues to evolve the MetaHuman suite of products, offering new capabilities and features in various areas, including creation, animation, and styling.
In this latest version, MetaHuman Creator ships with Unreal Engine, allowing you to create MetaHuman characters with significantly improved visual fidelity and a completely new parametric body system. MetaHuman Animator is able to solve facial animation in real time from a much wider range of single-camera devices, while animation from audio adds head movement and creative control over the emotional state.
For the first time, MetaHumans and their compatible assets can be traded on Fab, allowing more creators to share their work and engage the marketplace.
MetaHuman for Maya and MetaHuman for Houdini provide capabilities to continue authoring MetaHumans on these platforms, whilst the EULA has been updated so that MetaHumans can be used in any engine.
MetaHuman Creator
In Unreal Engine 5.6, the MetaHuman Creator workflow moves into Unreal Engine, enabling you to create and author MetaHuman characters directly in the editor by using the new MetaHuman Character asset. A new parametric body system combined with an improved visual fidelity gives even greater flexibility to create the likeness you want. You can now use your own MetaHuman-compatible groom and clothing assets directly in MetaHuman Creator, meaning your characters can look better than ever before.
And, to show what’s possible with these new features, we’ve provided a new set of MetaHuman preset characters ready for you to use.
MetaHuman Animator
You can now solve animation in real time from a wide range of single-camera data sources (including webcams), mobile devices, or audio input. Integrated with Live Link, real-time animation can be used to preview a character in MetaHuman Creator, or animate a character placed in a level while editing.
Animation solved offline from audio-only input can now include plausible head motion, while also allowing you to influence the mood.
The new MetaHuman Animator Depth Processing plugin is required to solve animation from depth data (iOS or stereo camera pair) or use a MetaHuman Identity.
MetaHuman Capture
To support real-time animation in MetaHuman Animator, the Live Link Face (Beta) application is now available to download from the Google Play Store for Android devices with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (or later) chipset. The Live Link Face application on iOS (available on the App Store) has also been updated to generate animation in real time on the device.
Meanwhile, Live Link Hub is now used to ingest performance data for solving animation offline in MetaHuman Animator, simplifying virtual production and performance capture setups with streamlined data management, regardless of device.
MetaHumans on Fab
With this release, we’re establishing the MetaHuman channel on the Fab Marketplace, allowing you to buy and sell MetaHumans and MetaHuman-compatible grooms and clothing, made easy by a validation and packaging tool (MetaHuman Manager) provided in Unreal Engine.
The sale and purchase of MetaHumans on the Fab Marketplace are governed by the Unreal Engine EULA, Fab EULA and the Fab Distribution Agreement.
MetaHuman for Maya
Maya 用 MetaHuman は、Maya 2022〜2025 に対応した新しいプラグインです。MetaHuman キャラクターを Maya 上で直接扱うための 4 つの新しいツールを提供します。
The Character Assembler tool loads MetaHuman Characters exported from MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine, ready for preview and animation.
Expression Editor ツールでは、MetaHuman キャラクターの顔の表情を細かく調整可能です。このツールは、Epic Games の社内で MetaHuman を制作する際にも使われているものと同じ機能が使われています。 これをポーズ エディタとともに使用し、放射基底関数 (RBF) や SwingTwist ソルバを使用することで、キャラクターのボディの二次的な変形を作成できます。
And lastly, a new Groom Exporter grants the easy export of XGen grooms as MetaHuman-compatible hairstyles for use with MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine.
The Groom Exporter is supported by a Groom Starter Kit available on Fab.
MetaHuman for Houdini
Houdini 用 MetaHuman の新しいプラグインは、MetaHuman キャラクターをアセンブルしたり、MetaHuman 互換のグルームを作成したりするための HDA のコレクションを提供します。これらは、Unreal Engine で MetaHuman Creator にエクスポートして使用できるようになります。
Houdini 用 MetaHuman は、Houdini 20.5 以降と互換性がありますが、キャラクターのアセンブルに使用される HDA は Houdini 21.0 以降でインストールされた場合にのみ使用できます。
This plugin is supported by a Groom Starter Kit available on Fab.