This is an experimental workflow for editing body deformations without access to a Maya license and Pose Editor (part of MetaHuman for Maya).
Unpacking is an experimental workflow option that was introduced in Unreal Engine 5.6 to replace RigLogic body deformation with a PoseDriver and control rig-based setup to support editing directly inside the engine at the cost of performance.
Setup
To use the unpacking workflow, the experimental workflows must be enabled for MetaHuman Creator.
To enable experimental workflows, follow these steps:
In the main toolbar, click Edit > Project Settings.
In the Project Settings window, navigate to the MetaHuman Character subheading, and check Enable Experimental Workflows.
Once that is enabled, additional options appear under the Assembly tab in MetaHuman Creator.
Unpacking
To unpack, you must manually create a post process animation blueprint for the body skeleton. This may require assembling a character once to ensure that the MetaHuman body skeleton exists in the project.
You can use the post process animation blueprint to unpack the RBF logic to PoseDriver nodes and run a control rig that contains the finger half rotations and SwingTwist setup.
Assembly Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
Post Process Anim Bp | The animation blueprint where the resulting logic lives. |
Unpack Rig Logic | Enable to unpack. |
| Body Rig Logic Unpack Properties | |
Control Rig | The control rig asset to unpack the half rotations and SwingTwist setup to. If one isn’t specified, it's created. |
Unpack RBF to PoseAssets | Unpacks the RBF logic to Anim Sequences, Pose Assets, and PoseDriver nodes. New Anim Sequences and PoseAssets are created per solver. |
Unpack Finger Half Rotations | For 5.6, the legacy half-rotation setup was moved to use RBF solvers. To retain parity, this option unpacks them back to the control rig. Without it, they are unpacked to PoseDriver nodes. |
Unpack Swing Twist | Unpacks the SwingTwist setup back to the control rig node-based approach (legacy). |
With all of the above options set, running the assembly process generates the required new assets at the following paths:
MetaHumans/{character_name}/Body/RBFMetaHumans/{character_name}/Body/Controls
Process
The process extracts the RBF and SwingTwist information from the appropriate layers in the DNA, creating Anim Sequences, Pose Assets, Control Rig, and Pose Driver nodes where needed.
