This page provides an overview of the most important MetaHuman Assets. Note that your MetaHuman Assets may differ based on your project’s content structure and development workflows.
Shared MetaHuman Assets
The following Assets are shared by some or all MetaHumans in an Unreal Engine project. They are located in the Content/MetaHumans/Common folder.
Skeletal Meshes
Body
Body Skeletal Meshes with specific purposes have an additional parameter at the end that specifies that purpose. For example, preview meshes have the _preview suffix and are used in the process of animation retargeting.
Tops, Bottoms, and Shoes
Skeletal Meshes for tops, bottoms, and shoes are located in the Content/MetaHumans/Common/Female and Content/MetaHumans/Common/Male folders for each body type. These meshes can be reused between MetaHumans with the same body type.
The screenshot below shows an example folder that contains Skeletal Mesh Assets for clothes that fit masculine MetaHumans of medium height and average weight.
Animation Assets
MetaHuman Control Rigs for the face and body are available at the following locations:
Body:
Content/MetaHumans/Common/Common/MetaHuman_ControlRig.Face:
Content/MetaHumans/Common/Face/Face_ControlBoard_CtrlRig.
Additionally, a MetaHuman IK Rog Asset is available at Content/MetaHumans/Common/Common/IK_metahuman.
There are two default Skeletons for the body and face, available at the following locations:
Body:
Content/MetaHumans/Common/Female/Medium/NormalWeight/Body/metahuman_base_skel.Face:
Content/MetaHumans/Common/Face/Face_Archetype_Skeleton.
To facilitate retargeting animations to a MetaHuman, we provide an IK Retargeter Asset. This Asset is available at Content/MetaHumans/Common/Common/RTG_metahuman.
Facial Pose Library
The Facial Pose Library contains a number of pre-made expressions for MetaHumans. These expressions are implemented as Control Rig poses, and are located in the MetaHumans/Common/Common/PoseLibrary folder. This library is downloaded and added to your project when you add at least one MetaHuman from Quixel Bridge.
For more information, refer to the Facial Pose Library Quick Start page.
Unique MetaHuman Assets
The following Assets are unique to each MetaHuman.
For all of the Assets described on this page, MetaHumanName is a placeholder for your MetaHuman’s name in MetaHuman Creator.
MetaHuman Blueprint
Every MetaHuman has their own Blueprint, located in the Content/MetaHumans/MetaHumanName folder. This Blueprint is named BP_MetaHumanName.
A MetaHuman Blueprint consists of the following Components:
Skeletal Mesh Components for the body, feet, legs, torso, and face.
Grooms for the hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, fuzz (the fine hairs on the face), mustache, and beard. Note that all MetaHumans have mustache and beard grooms, even if their face is clean-shaven.
For characters that have additional props, such as Io’s sunglasses, these are Static Mesh Assets located in that MetaHuman’s folder or subfolders.
An LODSync Component that controls this MetaHuman’s LODs.
In addition, the MetaHuman 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 MetaHuman has a Skeletal Mesh for their head and another for their body. These are located in the following folders:
| Mesh Category | Location |
|---|---|
Head |
|
Body | Subfolder in |
All MetaHuman body Skeletal Meshes follow the same naming convention: gender-presentation_height_weight. The possible values for each of these attributes are:
| Attribute | Possible Values |
|---|---|
gender presentation |
|
height |
|
weight |
|
Skeletal Meshes for clothing items (tops, bottoms, and shoes) are shared between all MetaHumans and are located in the Content/MetaHumans/Common folders. These meshes are described in the Shared MetaHuman Assets section on this page.
Additionally, the BP_MetaHumanName_PreviewMeshCollection array is located in the Content/MetaHumans/MetaHumanName/Previews folder. This array groups Skeletal Meshes for the head, body, top, bottoms, and shoes.
Hair Grooms
MetaHuman hair grooms are located in Content/MetaHumans/MetaHumanName, in either the FemaleHair or MaleHair subfolder.
The groom for the MetaHuman’s hairstyle is an Asset called Hair_GenderMarker_HairStyleName, where GenderMarker can be either M or F. For example, the Taro MetaHuman Preset’s hairstyle groom is Hair_M_SideSweptFringe.
Textures and Materials
MetaHuman textures and Materials are located in the following folders:
| Texture and/or Material Category | Location |
|---|---|
Body (base color texture) |
|
Face (color textures, normal maps, and various masking textures) |
|
Face (Materials) |
|
Body (Material) |
|
Clothes (Materials) | Subfolders in |
Hair cards (Materials) |
|
DNA File
Each MetaHuman has a DNA file that encodes all the details of the shape and rig for that MetaHuman's head. DNA files can be modified using the DNA Calibration set of libraries. DNA files can't be imported into Unreal Engine.
MetaHumans downloaded through the Bridge plugin in Unreal Engine have a DNA file named (MetaHumanName).dna. This file is located in the project folder, under Content\MetaHumans\(MetaHumanName)\SourceAssets.