Unreal Engine Developing MetaHuman Creation Software
Last Updated on: 31st August 2022, 08:17 am
The future of animation and motion capture is here, and it is in the form of digital character creation. 2021 is off to a robust start with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine software, MetaHuman, that will accommodate creation of completely digital photo-realistic likenesses of humans.
In an official reveal video, Epic Games stated that,
“MetaHuman Creator is a cloud-streamed app designed to take real-time digital human creation from weeks or months to less than an hour, without compromising on quality. It works by drawing from an ever-growing library of variants of human appearance and motion, and enabling you to create convincing new characters through intuitive workflows that let you sculpt and craft the result you want. As you make adjustments, MetaHuman Creator blends between actual examples in the library in a plausible, data-constrained way. You can choose a starting point by selecting a number of preset faces to contribute to your human from the diverse range in the database.”
The preview video features some bizarrely realistic human renders that look so close to real life people. The level of detail was effectively exemplified in the video, along with the ease of use of the interface, which seems to be one of the software’s core features.
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This high-fidelity digital human creator is said to help with the scaling of efforts to capture likenesses and animate characters, a typically arduous and time-consuming process. With Unreal Engine developing MetaHuman creation software, the process is said to be streamlined in order to help developers keep up with the increasing demand for high-end virtual production required by next-gen consoles.
The software in its current state boasts 30 hair styles using Unreal Engine’s stand-based hair as well as hair cards for lower-end platforms. Clothing options are also available, as are 18 differently proportioned body types.
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The assets, once made, can be downloaded via Quixel Bridge, fully rigged, complete with LODs, and ready for animation and mo-cap in Unreal Engine. Face data will also be made available containing meshes, skeleton, facial rig, animation controls, and materials, in the form of a Maya file. The asset can also be tested with Unreal Engine’s Live Link Face iOS app, with support for other vendors on the way.
This could mean great things for next-gen gaming. With the recent induction of ray tracing and the frequency of high-fidelity models and textures in AAA games, game developers and fans alike are sure to thrive. Gaming performance standards have grown exponentially with the arrival of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S, along with the Nvidia RTX 30 series, and the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series putting forward absolute powerhouse cards. Aside from these, even more, powerful hardware is in the pipeline for the future. Needless to say, the high quality of assets surely will come with their own fair share of drawbacks, one major such issue being bloated game file sizes — but that’s a bridge to be crossed on its own time.
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