MetaHuman 5.8 Release Notes

MetaHuman for Unreal Engine 5.8 delivers improvements to a wide variety of areas in the MetaHuman framework, including MetaHuman Creator, MetaHuman Animator, and MetaHuman for Houdini.

Major Changes

Populate Your World with a MetaHuman Crowd

Assemble optimized instances of MetaHuman characters to create crowds compatible with Mass, scaling from tens to thousands of characters. The new experimental MetaHuman Crowd plugin provides a complete assembly pipeline with seamless transitions between high-fidelity individual actors and lower-fidelity Instanced Skeletal Meshes based on camera distance.

Key Features:

• Build collections of modular components (head, body, hair, clothing) and compose them by hand or procedurally using Blueprints.

• Optimized face textures that maintain visual fidelity with reduced memory footprint.

• Animation applied using Unreal Animation Framework or simple sequences depending on distance.

• Simulated with Mass, rendered using Nanite or dynamic LOD systems.

• Example project setup available separately, runs on all Unreal Engine target platforms.

For more information on this feature, see MetaHuman Crowds.

MetaHuman Creator

Turn Full-body Meshes into a MetaHuman Character, Ready to Animate

Convert any human character mesh with arbitrary topology into a fully-rigged MetaHuman in a single workflow. This improved Mesh to MetaHuman process conforms both head and body simultaneously, accepting input meshes of any topology and automatically generating results powered by the MetaHuman database.

Key Features:

• Combined head and body conforming in a single step.

• Accepts head and/or body mesh of any topology as input.

• Automatic results for human characters with manual control available for technical fixes.

• Ideal for characters created from scans, external GenAI/DCC tools, or existing character conversions.

For more information on this feature, see From Custom Mesh. 

Achieve Higher Fidelity or Alternative Visual Styles with Full Control of Unbaked Textures

Assemble MetaHuman characters without baked materials and textures. This allows granular lookdev and texture control for artists wanting to match a specific look. Author unbaked texture and material assets using standard Unreal Engine editors or export textures to external DCC tools. Options are provided to then override with user-customized textures and materials in MetaHuman Creator.

Key Features:

• Full control over textures and materials for custom visual fidelity or aesthetic styles.

• Modified unbaked materials and textures can be applied as overrides in the MetaHuman Creator for users to still benefit from the material baking when running default assemblies.

• Standard Unreal Engine workflow using familiar asset editors.

• Export capabilities for external DCC authoring.

Use Case: Enables looks beyond MetaHuman Creator's built-in capabilities while maintaining performance optimization.

For more information, see Unbaked Materials. 

Preview MetaHuman Characters Using Your Lighting Setup

Create custom lighting scenes in MetaHuman Creator to preview characters in the context of your target environment. Define lighting setups using templates that include skydome hemispheres, post-processing volumes, and light groups, then use these custom scenes to validate visual fidelity while authoring.

Key Features:

• Preview characters in your target lighting environment directly in MetaHuman Creator.

• Close the gap between MetaHuman Creator previews and in-level appearance.

• Inspect and modify viewport render settings for precise control.

• Ideal for character artists, lighting artists, and lookdev teams.

• MetaHuman Creator viewport now fully supports Lumen too.

For more information, see Custom Lighting Scenarios and Render Settings. 

MetaHuman Animator

Capture Body Animation from a Single Camera

​Capture body, or face and body performance, for a single actor from a single camera. This new experimental capability extends the accessibility of MetaHuman Animator from faces to bodies, removing the optical motion-capture stage as a barrier for content creators. Available as a standalone plugin on Fab and integrated directly into MetaHuman Animator, with the Live Link Face mobile apps updated to support body capture alongside face.​

Key Features:

• Body capture for a single actor from a single camera, with optional simultaneous face capture.

• Offline solve for high-fidelity results.

• Compatible with a wide range of consumer hardware including webcams and supported smartphones.

• Available as a standalone MetaHuman Animator Markerless Motion Capture plugin via Fab, and integrated as a capability of MetaHuman Animator inside Unreal Engine.

• Extended capture guidelines included in documentation.

For more information on this feature, see Animation from Mono Video Capture. 

MetaHuman Animator Streamlined Batch Processing

MetaHuman Animator offers an improved API for batch processing large volumes of captured performance data. The updated workflow covers the full pipeline, end to end, from solve through animation review and export. Reference Blueprint examples will be included to extend or customize for your specific pipeline.

MetaHuman Animator Available on Linux and macOS

MetaHuman Animator now supports Linux and macOS, expanding the availability of the Unreal Engine editor and MetaHuman Creator across platforms. You can generate facial animation from performance capture on Linux and macOS, without requiring access to a Windows machine. However, body animation features are currently only available on Windows.

Key Features:

• Offline and real-time facial MetaHuman Animator functionality available on Linux and macOS.

• Platform parity with Unreal Engine editor and MetaHuman Creator.

• Real-time facial animation on Linux is only available using Live Link Face.

Improved MetaHuman Animator Solve and Curve Quality

New real-time and offline animation models deliver improved solve quality across a wider range of capture conditions, including varied camera angles, lens distortion, and infrared lighting. Audio-driven animation benefits from a new real-time model. Curve output is more animator-friendly, with cleaner activation on key poses for easier editing and refinement.

Stream Video via RTSP from Live Link Face for Realtime Animation

The Live Link MetaHuman Animator Video source now supports streamed video as input for realtime facial animation solving in Unreal Engine.  Any video source compatible with an RTSP Media Source can be used, with native RTSP streaming available in the latest version of Live Link Face on iOS and Android devices.  This opens real-time animation to many more mobile devices that are not able to support on-device processing.

MetaHuman Devkit

The MetaHuman Devkit provides the option to integrate MetaHuman’s character technology into the platform or application of their choice outside of Unreal Engine. As a collection of MetaHuman technology that we’re making available to all developers, it’s fully open source.  We’re starting with the OpenRigLogic repository, containing the RigLogic and DNA libraries released under an MIT license.

Release Notes

MetaHuman Characters in Unreal Engine

New: 

• Updated to use the latest version of the RigLogic and DNA libraries.

• Added an optimized serialization path for cooked DNA assets that significantly reduces runtime initialization cost. Cooked assets now restore the already-initialized rig state directly instead of rebuilding it on every load. This path is enabled per DNA asset by default; projects must re-cook to benefit, and legacy DNA assets are not supported.

• Reduced redundant data copies when loading DNA assets and converting legacy assets, improving editor load time and peak memory use in MetaHuman Creator.

• Hardened the DNA file parser against malformed input. Added bounds and validity checks throughout the binary deserialization path so that crafted or corrupted DNA files are rejected cleanly instead of producing undefined behavior.

• Added the ConvertLegacyDNAAssets commandlet to migrate existing DNA content to the new DNA asset type. It supports dry-run preview, in-place conversion, and re-import from the original .dna source file.

• Added per-platform tuning for RigLogic. Calculation backend, floating-point precision, and ML multi-threading can now be set per platform, so a project can ship FP16 to mobile and FP32 to desktop from the same asset.

• Added a toggle for multi-threaded ML evaluation, so small models that run faster single-threaded can skip the threading overhead.

• Added a Project Settings >  Plugins > RigLogic page that defines per-project defaults applied to every newly imported DNA asset. Two settings are exposed: the default FDNAConfig (LOD ranges, target coordinate system, rotation convention, face winding order, layers) and the default FRigLogicConfiguration (per-platform calculation backend, FP precision, ML multi-threading toggle, and the rig-system load flags for joints / blend shapes / animated maps / ML / RBF / twist-swing). Project leads can declare these once, in one place, instead of touching each DNA after import.

• Extended half-float (FP16) RigLogic evaluation to Linux and Windows desktop, in addition to the previously supported platforms. Projects that opt into FP16 (directly or via the platform-Auto resolution) now benefit on the major desktop targets.

• Made DNA configuration editable directly on the DNA asset. You can now change LODs, layers, coordinate system, rotation convention, and face winding order from the Details panel or via Python without re-importing; edits rebuild the rig in place. Maximum and minimum LOD can be set per platform, so each cooked package ships only the LOD range relevant to its platform.

• Added coordinate-system conversion to the DNA library, so DNA files can be converted to a destination coordinate system at load time without extra steps.

• Switched to using the new conversion functionality where possible and provided fallback paths for code paths that have not yet been updated to the new workflow.

• Added Dataflow nodes (Guides to Joints, Average Curves, and Resample Curve Points) to create and update a skeletal mesh and skeleton directly from hair guide curves.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed DNA control name filtering, so driver joint names are not included in the animation curve list, which would cause them to be set to 0.0, overwriting the default identity initialization for quaternions, which in the absence of actual driver joint inputs (e.g. missing Skeleton), would cause twist and swing to output NaN values in RigLogic.

• Fixed NaN joint output in packaged builds for characters that use twist/swing input controls. The bug: twist and swing input controls were being initialized to all-zero, which is a degenerate input to the twist/swing decomposition - quaternion normalization of (0,0,0,0) produces NaN, which then propagated through to joint output. In the editor the bug was masked because preview / animation systems populated those inputs to valid values before the twist/swing evaluator ran; in packaged builds, where that upstream population doesn't happen on the first evaluation, the zero-initialized values flowed straight into the evaluator and tripped a single assert.

• Improved eye control evaluation consistency between Unreal Engine and Maya, resolving a rare edge case where control behavior could diverge between the two environments.

• Fixed an issue where neck bone transformations were not properly propagated from the body to the face rig, causing incorrect head alignment and LookAt behavior. LookAt controls now correctly follow head rotation.

Deprecated:

• Deprecated the single project-wide calculation type and rotation order settings. Rotation order is now read from the DNA's authored convention, and existing assets migrate automatically on load.

API Change: 

• Added a DNAConfig property (FDNAConfig) to UDNA, editable in the Details panel. Editing it normalizes dependent layer bits (for example, masking Geometry when blend shapes are excluded) and reloads the DNA reader with the new settings.

• Added per-platform MaxLOD and MinLOD (FPerPlatformInt) on UDNA. On save, each field resolves to the cook target's value; the per-platform map is editor-only and is stripped from cooked packages.

• Deprecated FRigLogicConfiguration::CalculationType and FRigLogicConfiguration::RotationOrder. Existing assets migrate on load: the old calculation type moves into CalculationTypePerPlatform.Default, and rotation order is sourced from the DNA's authored convention. Read CalculationTypePerPlatform.GetValueForPlatform(...) or Reader->GetConfig().RotationSequence instead.

Upgrade Notes:

• Existing classical-rig DNA assets continue to load and resave automatically through the migration path, with no manual content steps required. Projects that ship joints-only ML characters need a DNA exported from the new pipeline; these cannot be produced from a classical-rig DNA in-engine.

• If your project imports DNA from untrusted or user-supplied sources, the parser hardening in this release is recommended. Well-formed DNA files behave exactly as before, with no content or API changes.

• To migrate existing MetaHuman content to the new asset layout, run the ConvertLegacyDNAAssets commandlet once per project. Use -DryRun to preview the scope of changes before writing, and -ReimportFromSource to re-pull from the original .dna files instead of converting in place. The commandlet is idempotent, so re-running on an already-migrated project is safe.

• Existing DNA assets are not retroactively reconfigured; project defaults apply to new imports only. To apply the new defaults to an existing asset, edit its DNA configuration in the Details panel or run the commandlet with -ReimportFromSource.

• FP16 evaluation remains opt-in. Numerical output in FP16 mode differs from float mode within the documented FP16 precision range.

• Configuration edits are destructive. Narrowing the layer set or LOD range permanently discards the dropped data from the in-memory DNA, and re-enabling a layer later does not restore it. The only way to recover is to reimport from the source .dna file (Asset Actions > Reimport). Work on a copy if you are unsure what you are discarding.

• Configuration edits made after import are saved with the asset and used as the read configuration on subsequent loads. They are reachable from Python and Blueprint.

To learn more, see MetaHuman 5.8 Upgrade Scenarios. 

MetaHuman Creator

New: 

• Added the MetaHumanGenerator Toolset plugin for the Unreal MCP server to instantiate a new MetaHuman Character asset and get or set eye color, skin tone color and body shape. Includes test coverage for all getter and setter methods and utility functions.

• Consolidated the blend, model, sculpt, and transform controls under a combined Head and Body tool.

• Moved the head and body conform controls to a new Import tool.

• Automatically set palm and sole skin color for new characters with optional overrides for further control.

• Added new material parameters to adjust fingernail and toenail texture and color.

• Added the option to enable scalable normal textures when assembling, these are heavily optimized based on the new MetaHuman crowd features.

• Moved the DCC Export assembly pipeline to a new Export tool.

• Moved the option to export a Skeletal Mesh and DNA from the MetaHuman Character menu to the Export tool.

• Added a new DNA Export, Geometry Export, and Materials Export controls to the Export tool.

• Added head and body specular, roughness, metallic, and fuzz (SMRF) textures to the DCC Export package.

• Added animated map packed masks to the DCC Export package.

• Removed unused body underwear and chest texture maps from the DCC Export package.

• Removed the Maya specific source assets (maps and masks); these are now provided with the MetaHuman for Maya plugin.

• Disabled Virtual Textures across the MetaHuman Editor (including Texture Overrides); Virtual Textures remain supported for assembled MetaHumans.

• Added a new camera framing option for hands and feet.

• Added a toggle to switch between a head and body view in the Preset and Blend tool character thumbnails.

• Added a warning when material baking is enabled but the override materials are not based on default MetaHuman materials. Baking still proceeds, but those slots do not benefit from the baking pipeline.

• Improved handling of invalid assets when duplicating Common content. DuplicateDepedenciesToNewRoot() now detects when an existing asset at the Common target path is of an incompatible UClass and bails out with an error instead of crashing in StaticAllocateObject. DuplicateDepedenciesToNewRoot() detects any orphaned objects in the target package and removes them.

• Added live updating of the Virtual Texture and Bake Materials warnings in the assembly tool.

• Removed Root Motion from locomotion animations.

• Expanded editing capabilities while the character is rigged. The Skin tool now stays active, with only face/body texture indices, texture filter controls, and Texture Position Offset disabled. Skin tone, roughness, accents, freckles, and hands/feet remain editable.

• Moved Texture Position Offset next to Face Texture Index in the Skin tool.

• Tool builders reparented to UMetaHumanCharacterEditorToolWithToolTargetsBuilder which now provides shared GetTargetRequirements and IsCharacterRigged / IsCharacterRequestingHighResTextures helpers. Removes duplicated GetTargetRequirements / CanBuildTool across all MetaHuman Creator tool builders.

• Per-tool CanBuildTool rigged checks: Presets, ImportFrom{DNA,Identity,Template}, MeshImport, Body, FaceEditing, HeadModel (except Materials sub-tool), Pipeline. Texture Material Override tool is always buildable.

• Updated the mode warning text to note that material selections are supported on rigged characters.

• Added a check for a missing pipeline on the character's internal collection: prompts the user to reset it to the default pipeline, logging an error and skipping the character if they decline.

• Added the mh.Character.UseCustomAssetEditor cvar to load the default Unreal Engine asset editor.

• Used default axis drawing code from FEditorViewportClient.

• Gate drawing the axis behind the Show Viewport Overlays option.

• Added Show Hands option to skin material editing.

• Extended the MetaHuman Character editor to support the insertion of custom import tools.

• Extended MetaHuman Character Editor viewport toolbar with camera controls, view modes, and visualization options.

• Added near and far view plane controls to the perspective camera menu, matching the style used in Unreal Editor Viewport Toolbar.

• Added focal length (mm) spin box that converts to/from FOV using the CineCamera's default Super 35mm sensor width (24.89mm).

• Added a Reset Camera Defaults button that restores FOV, near plane, and far plane to their default values without closing the menu.

• Added a View Modes submenu (like Lit, Unlit, and Wireframe) to the viewport toolbar via UE::UnrealEd::PopulateViewModesMenu.

• Extended with visualization submenus matching the level editor: Buffer, Nanite, Lumen, Substrate, Groom, Virtual Shadow Map, and Virtual Texture.

• Changed the MetaHuman Character Editor settings from per-user to project-level, so they are stored in a shared, source-controlled config file. Existing settings migrate automatically the first time. Shows a Message Log warning with a clickable file link if the save fails.

• Moved UMetaHumanCharacterEditorSettings defaults to Editor.ini.

• Enabled Lumen in the MetaHuman Character Viewport.

• Added automatic bone-count reduction for the Skeletal Mesh editor and the MetaHuman assembly pipeline.

• Added GetFaceModelCoefficients and SetFaceModelCoefficients to the MetaHuman Python API for conform-to-PCA support.

• Added a MetaHuman category to all Blueprint-exposed functions to make them easier to find in the function palette.

• Updated to the latest Texture Synthesis model.

• Stopped DCC export from creating temporary texture assets under /Game/. Generated textures now live under the Saved/ mount and no longer appear in the Content Browser.

• Added the mh.Character.Viewport.LightRigCameraTracking console variable (on by default).

• Added detection of degenerate (zero-area) triangles before autorigging, with a suppressible warning; autorigging continues on degenerate triangles and aborts on other incompatibilities.

• Exposed assembled character name override for UEFN export.

• Added bCopyAllNumericalParameters property to FMetaHumanBakedMaterialProperties to allow copying all numerical parameters from input to baked material.

Deprecated:

• Deprecated ApplyFaceDNA() and split out the API into: AlignFaceDNAWithBody (modifies DNA) and face SKM update (reads only DNA)

Bug Fix:

• Fixed an issue where the wrong eye and teeth textures were used in the DCC export package.

• Fixed a neck-seam skin-tone inconsistency caused by an incorrect bent-normal contribution.

• Fixed an issue where Remove Unused Wardrobe Items left a stale wardrobe asset behind.

• Removed Root body from PHYS_Body.

• Fixed MetaHuman character editor light rig rotation and environment-swap preservation. Rewrote UpdateLightRigParentRotation as a per-tick world-yaw delta (fixing inverted sign + quat-drift freeze from the previous offset model).

• Extended env-swap rotation preservation to On Environment Changed.

• Fixed an issue where the viewport camera was not placed correctly when the editor opened.

• Fixed an issue where a wardrobe item could become stuck on a character with no way to remove it; removing the asset now unwears and unprepares the item.

• Fixed an issue where using Lorenzo as a blend preset produced an elongated neck.

• Fixed incorrect LOD settings between body and face across all assembly qualities.

• Fixed an issue where eyelash cards did not show on LOD0.

• Fixed an issue where body textures did not update when moving the skin-tone sliders.

• Fixed an issue where eyelash cards selected in the materials section were not updated in the strands wardrobe panel.

• Fixed an issue where eye material parameters were not set in the baked eye materials.

• Fixed an issue where a custom sclera tint did not refresh after being disabled.

• Fixed a warning about Pupil Feather missing metadata.

• Fixed a crash that occurred when quitting the editor while the MetaHuman Character asset editor was open.

MetaHuman Animator

New: 

• Added support for streamed video as input to the Live Link MetaHuman Animator video source, via an RTSP media source.

• Added an option to automatically generate depth when solving a performance, instead of requiring a separate step.

• Improved the CPTAKE archive format specification.

• Added a calibration prompt when processing stereo footage without depth.

• Moved the default Capture Manager working and download directories from user documents to user settings.

• Removed the MetaHuman Identity state validator, which has been disabled for some time, along with its warning indicator.

Deprecated:

• Deprecated the MetaHuman Identity Invalidation State property.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed a frame-count mismatch for sub-30fps footage in the MetaHuman Performance asset.

• Fixed crashes and data loss when opening MetaHuman Identity assets upgraded from older UEFN versions.

• Fixed a crash during teardown when the Sequencer global time changed.

• Fixed a crash caused by unprotected map access in MetaHuman Performance when source data changed.

• Fixed an issue where audio could be muted after processing a performance.

• Fixed a crash when opening a performance asset with missing media.

• Fixed a crash in the derived data cache commandlet when deserializing MetaHuman Identity assets.

• Fixed an issue where unattended processing did not correctly handle existing assets.

• Fixed a crash when undoing after changing calibration diagnostic options for an empty Capture Data asset.

MetaHuman Capture

Live Link Face for iOS

New: 

• Added RTSP video streaming for real-time processing and camera monitoring in Unreal Engine.

• Added landscape recording and streaming on iPhone.

• Added quick switching between the front and rear cameras.

• Reduced take file sizes by making H.264 the default video encoding format, replacing MJPEG.

Bug Fix: 

• Fixed an issue that could corrupt takes when storage space was low.

• Fixed an issue that prevented recording while AirPlay screen mirroring was active.

Live Link Face for Android

New: 

• Added take recording for animation processing in Unreal Engine, including video and audio capture.

• Added take browsing and management, including on-device playback and deletion.

• Added take export via the Android share sheet, local file storage, or directly to Unreal Engine over your local network.

• Added RTSP video streaming for real-time processing and monitoring in Unreal Engine.

• Improved external camera connection stability.

MetaHumans on Fab

New:

• Added the ability to open an asset in the Content Browser by double-clicking it in the MetaHuman Manager.

• Added multi-asset selection for verification and packaging in the MetaHuman Manager.

• Added the ability to package multiple assets into a single combined package or as separate single-item packages.

• Relaxed the asset locations the MetaHuman Manager uses, for more flexible asset discovery.

• Added support for packaging assets that depend on content outside their own package root.

• Added the ability to include only selected sub-assets in a package (for example, only selected wardrobe items when packaging an editable character).

MetaHuman Maya

New: 

• Added editing of the animated-map activation curve in the Expression Editor.

• Added the ability to apply textures to the character in the Expression Editor and Pose Editor.

• Added construction of the MetaHuman Faceboard from a JSON representation.

• Consolidated the update and save DNA buttons when editing expression poses in the Expression Editor.

• Removed the From DNA up-axis option in the Character Assembler.

• Updated to the latest RigLogic and DNA libraries.

• Added support for Maya 2026.

• Removed support for Maya 2023, which Autodesk no longer supports.

Bug Fix:

• Resolved a conflict with the onnxruntime library.

• Fixed an issue where duplicated RigLogic nodes in the same Maya scene were not initialized correctly.

• Fixed a crash in the RigLogic node caused by timing-dependent resource management.

MetaHuman Houdini

New: 

• Updated the MetaHuman Character Rig SOP to the latest RigLogic and DNA libraries.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed hardcoded paths to dynamically linked libraries on Linux.