Assets Overview | MetaHuman Documentation

This page provides an overview of the most important assets created during the assembly of a UE Cine or UE Optimized MetaHuman Character.

Your assets may differ based on your project’s content structure, development workflows, and project settings.

Core Assets

The following assets are installed as part of the additional content required by MetaHuman Creator. Plugin Content must be enabled in the content browser for them to be visible.

To facilitate retargeting animations to a MetaHuman, we provide the following assets:

IK Retargeter Asset, available at:
/Engine/Plugins/MetaHumanCreator/Animation/Retargeting/RTG_MH_IKRig

MetaHuman IK Rig, available at:
/Engine/Plugins/MetaHumanCreator/Animation/Retargeting/IK_MH_IKRig
UDNA, available from the content browser (display name: DNA), with right-click actions on both USkeletalMesh (import / create from legacy) and UDNA (export).
UDNAAssetUserData, available from the USkeltalMesh, the new wrapper shows in the editor as "MetaHuman DNA Data", while the deprecated UDNAAsset shown as "Legacy MetaHuman DNA Data".

Shared Assets

The following assets are shared by some or all assembled characters in an Unreal Engine project. They are located in the Common folder of the assembled character.

Animation Assets

MetaHuman Control Rigs for the face and body are available at the following locations:

Mesh Category	Location
Body	`Common/Common/MetaHuman_ControlRig`
Face	`Common/Face/Face_ControlBoard_CtrlRig`

There are two default Skeletons for the body and face, available at the following locations:

Mesh Category	Location
Body	`Common/Female/Medium/NormalWeight/Body/metahuman_base_skel`
Face	`Common/Face/Face_Archetype_Skeleton`

Hair Grooms

Shared grooms are located in the Common/Optional/Grooms folder.

Unique Assets

The following assets are unique to each assembled character.

For all of the assets described on this page, the MetaHumanName is a placeholder for your character’s name.

MetaHuman Blueprint

Every assembled character has their own Blueprint. This Blueprint is named MetaHumanName/BP_MetaHumanName.

The Blueprint consists of the following Components:

Skeletal Mesh Components for the body and face.
Grooms for the hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, fuzz (the fine hairs on the face), mustache, and beard. Note that all characters have mustache and beard groom components, even if their face is clean-shaven. Refer to the Groom Components documentation for more information about these assets.
An LODSync Component that controls this character’s LODs.
A MetaHuman Component.

In addition, the Blueprint contains:

A Construction Script and an Event Graph, which you can customize and extend based on your needs (for example, to perform runtime animation retargeting).
Dedicated functions for ARKit and animation retargeting setup, along with their supporting variables.

Skeletal Meshes

Every assembled character has a Skeletal Mesh for their head and body. These are located in the following folders:

Mesh Category	Location
Body	`SKM_MetaHumanName_FaceMesh file in MetaHumanName/Face`
Face	`SKM_MetaHumanName_BodyMesh file in MetaHumanName/Body`

Clothing

Skeletal Meshes for clothing items are located in the MetaHumanName/Clothing folder.

Hair Grooms

Character specific groom bindings, and material instances are located in the MetaHumanName/Grooms folder.

Hair grooms render differently depending on the LOD. Higher LODs use strand-based hair grooms, while lower LODs use card- or mesh-based grooms. Short hair grooms (such as eyebrows) at lower LODs are baked into the skin textures.

Textures and Materials

The character’s textures and Materials are located in the following folders:

Texture and/or Material Category	Location
Baked Body Texture	`MetaHumanName/Body/Baked`
Body Materials	`MetaHumanName/Body/Materials`
Baked Face Texture	`MetaHumanName/Face/Baked`
Face Textures	`MetaHumanName/Face/Textures`
Face Materials	`MetaHumanName/Face/Materials`

For more information, refer to the Materials and Textures page:

MetaHuman Collection and Instance Assets

MetaHuman Collection assets are available in Unreal Engine 5.8 as an Experimental feature and are still in active development.

MetaHuman Collection and Instance assets provide a modular, non-destructive approach to assembling MetaHumans from MetaHuman Creator. Instead of using the Creator's Assemble button which bakes the character into final assets, Collections and Instances give you access to a pipeline that can be customized and extended.

To use the MetaHuman Collection and Instance assets you must enable the MetaHuman Creator plugin.

With Collections and Instances, you can:

Set up a MetaHuman to wear a choice of different clothes and hairstyles, and switch between them without opening MetaHuman Creator.
Assemble MetaHumans from modular parts at runtime in a cooked build, which supports character customization and procedural populations.
Keep a non-destructive link between the source MetaHuman Character and the final in-game result, so changes to the Character (for example, a face sculpt or skin tone update) are reflected in-game without manual rework.
Define your own modular character slots and assembly logic in C++, extending MetaHumans with features such as body hair, tattoos, particle effects, or static mesh accessories.

Key Concepts


Concept	Description
MetaHuman Character	The source asset you create and edit in MetaHuman Creator. Contains face DNA, body shape, skin, eyes, and makeup settings the source definition for a MetaHuman.
MetaHuman Collection	A set of items (hairstyles, clothing, MetaHuman Characters, and so on) assigned to slots that determine how they are applied to the character. Building a Collection generates game-ready assets from the items.
MetaHuman Instance	A selection of specific items from a Collection that make up one assembled MetaHuman. You can have multiple Instances referencing the same Collection, each with different selections.
Collection Pipeline	Defines the available slots and the logic for building and assembling items. Pipelines are defined in C++ and control how items are processed and composed into a final character.
Slot	A named category in a pipeline (for example, Hair or Top Garment). Each slot accepts specific asset types and defines how its items are processed.
Wardrobe Item	An individual part of a hairstyle, garment, groom, or mesh that can be assigned to a slot in the Collection.

How This Differs From the MetaHuman Creator Workflow

In the existing MetaHuman Creator workflow, you edit a MetaHuman Character and click Assemble. This performs processing steps such as baking materials to textures, removing body geometry hidden under clothing, and generating an actor Blueprint. The result is a set of optimized assets. If you later need to edit the Character, you must re-assemble and any manual edits you made to the assembled assets must be redone.

With Collections and Instances, this process is split into separate, repeatable steps:


Options	MetaHuman Creator workflow	Collection and Instance workflow
Edit	Edit the Character in MetaHuman Creator.	Edit the Character in MetaHuman Creator (same as before).
Build	Done automatically when you click Assemble.	Build the Collection: generates game-ready assets from the Character. Repeatable and non-destructive.
Assemble	Assemble button bakes everything.	Assemble an Instance: composes built assets from a Collection into a renderable character Instance. Repeatable, supports multiple configurations.
Modifications after assembly	Manual edits to baked assets. These edits are lost on re-assemble.	Pipeline logic applies customizations automatically on every build. Manual edits to generated assets are not supported.
Runtime assembly	Not supported.	Supported: assemble any valid Instance from a cooked Collection.

Next Up

Materials and Textures
Information about the textures and materials provided in a MetaHuman Assembly.