Navigating MetaHuman Creator

Double-clicking on a MetaHuman Character asset will open MetaHuman Creator; the asset editor for this asset type.

Viewport

The viewport provides a live preview of the character as it is being edited.

The Status overlay provides information about the current state of the rig. This includes the Rig State, Body Type, and Texture Sources.

Tools

The ribbon menu on the left of the editor provides access to each element of the character that can be customized.

	The Presets library is a collection of MetaHuman Characters (provided with MetaHuman Creator or created yourself) that can be used to initialize or blend new characters.
	Body Editing Tools are used to change the shape of the body using a variety of blending, conforming, and modeling tools.
	Use the Head Editing Tools to blend, conform, transform, and sculpt the head, including the teeth and eyelashes. The currently selected tool is highlighted.
	The Material Editing Tools can be used to change the appearance of the character’s skin, eyes, makeup, eyelashes, and teeth. You can also use this option to provide your own skin textures.
	The Hair and Clothing Tools change your character’s hairstyle (including eyebrows, eyelashes, mustache, beard, and peach fuzz) and outfit.   With the Hair and Clothing Tools change your character’s hairstyle (including eyebrows, eyelashes, mustache, beard, and peach fuzz) and outfit.
	Assemble your character in assets for Unreal Engine (cinematic or optimized), UEFN, and other third-party DCC applications.

Toolbar

The horizontal toolbar at the top of the editor is used to rig and texture (in high-resolution) the character.

Environment and Quality Toolbar

The Environment and Quality Toolbar provides access to the following controls. 

The MetaHuman Creator viewport settings are configured separately from the level viewport. This means that if the MHC Screen Percentage is set to 100.0 but the level viewport is not, the MetaHuman character may appear different.

Other settings for GI, light transmission, and subsurface scattering can be found in MetaHumanCharacterEditorViewportClient.cpp.

Preview Material

This control can help with the sculpting process by eliminating visual distractions and providing an experience that’s more consistent with 3D modeling applications. The available options are:

• Topology: A simple material that highlights different sections of the face and body topology.

• Skin: The skin material as defined in the Material Editing Tools. If a skin material hasn’t previously been defined the default skin texture will be used.

• Clay: Using clay material instead of textured skin makes it easier to see the shape of the eyes and lips.

Topology	Skin	Clay

Environment

Choose from a set of lighting environments to place your MetaHuman into. These include various combinations of backgrounds and lighting presets that simulate indoors, outdoors, and studio conditions.

Studio	Red Lantern	Moonlight	Tungsten

The lighting environments are saved as Level assets and are part of the MetaHuman Creator Core Data. They can be found in /MetaHumanCharacter/LightingEnvironments. A PostProcessVolume is used to lock exposure.

You can also rotate the light horizontally around your MetaHuman by either:

• Adjust the Light Rig Rotation slider in the Environment dropdown.

• While pressing the L key, click and drag in the viewport.

Camera Switching

Select from one of four preset camera positions. This is useful if you panned, rotated, or zoomed the camera, and want to quickly return focus to your character. You can also zoom in on a Face, Body, or Far view (entire MetaHuman). Selecting Auto will automatically switch to the one relative to the tool menu you’ve selected.

Face	Body	Far

Level of Detail

Inspect all of your character’s available Levels of Detail (LODs). This is useful to preview what your character will look like at different LODs.

MetaHumans support 8 LODs, from 0 (most detailed) to 7 (least detailed). The difference between LODs is more noticeable up close. If you create a complex project, you may use LOD 0 for characters a viewer or player would see up close, and less complex LODs for background characters and crowds.

LOD1	LOD4	LOD7

LODs affect a MetaHuman’s Skeletal Mesh geometry and hair grooms. The more complex your character, the greater the difference between LODs.

MetaHuman hair also renders differently depending on LOD. Higher LODs use strand-based hair grooms, while lower LODs use card or mesh-based grooms.

You can also preview what a card-based hair groom looks like on your currently active MetaHuman by enabling the Always Use Hair Cards option. This option forces card-based hair grooms at all LODs.

Using card-based grooms improves performance on certain platforms and makes MetaHumans have less of an impact on overall rendering performance. Strand-based rendering can be resource-intensive and requires a highly performant GPU to work effectively.

Rendering Quality

Select the rendering quality of lighting, hair, MetaHumans, global illumination, and ray-traced reflections.

You can set the quality Medium, High, and Epic, which is the highest possible quality. High and epic-quality rendering uses ray tracing.

To learn more about rendering MetaHumans in Unreal Engine, refer to the Performance and Scalability Settings page.

Playback Controls

When a character has been rigged, basic Forward, Reverse, and scrubbing playback controls are provided.

The animation applied to the character during playback is determined by the Preview Scene Details.

Preview Scene Details

The Preview Scene Details panel controls how the character is displayed in the Viewport.

Next Up

Presets

Manage a library of presets to use as the basis for new MetaHuman Characters.