Creating Realistic Hair and Feathers in Unreal Engine | Webinar

Learn how Weta Digital created stunningly realistic feathers and hair in its short film "Meerkat."
We’ll cover:
The strand-based workflow for hair and fur
How Weta created the grooms for the meerkat and eagle in "Meerkat"
The process of exporting from DCC and setting up in Unreal Engine
Optimizations for using film-level grooms in real time
You can download the project files for the Meerkat demo: www.unrealengi...
The free download includes rigged and animated versions of the two characters - a meerkat and an eagle - plus the original Maya files, textures and materials.

[@UstedTubo187]

Man, I'm glad there are people in the world that want this job. How freaking tedious.

[@TwistedFeetMH]

Well, if you're a character artist you're forced to learn grooming otherwise your characters will be all bald. And there're artist that made this their main role.

[@Yamagatabr]

meanwhile i'm finding this all interesting as heck 😂😂

[@ruslanmansurov3790]

Great video, thanks Weta people. But wish to had some more info about setup in Unreal, not grooming overview with custom tools in Maya.

[@Barneschild]

Great stuff, thanks for this video, Nathan! Great insight into how to build feathers, which have been confusing me for a while now! Thanks to you, WETA and the guys Unreal!

[@korcanatalay]

Creating Hair in Unreal Engine: Uses Maya the entire process.

[@nfarquhar]

It probably should have been creating hair FOR unreal engine.

[@jazzlehazzle]

Exactly what I came here to say. Wtf.

[@driftnote]

At least the shading is done in unreal :))

[@shindelion]

Wish the title say ''Maya to Unreal''. I got the idea that the feathers and fur was done purely in Unreal, base on the title. Great stuff, but a bit sad it was a mixture of both software and not all in unreal like I wanted.

[@ivanleon6164]

this is for top quality animation, so it needs the best tools.

[@isyfrisco]

100% agree, really disappointing to see this video was basically a maya tutorial

[@lancemarchetti8673]

After reading some of the comments here it seems UE needs to be a full modeling, animation, and rendering engine complete with every plugin imaginable...lol...good luck Epic!

[@notyetdecided5811]

I think the guy who is talking at the beginning is a metahuman.

[@nfarquhar]

He looks very uncanny Valley 😉

[@syntaxed2]

What the hell...450.000 curves in realtime? and this is before nanite. Oh and the shading looks absolutely gorgous! What the hell, I am kinda gob-smacked.

[@TKTKTKTK2024]

Animation of his mouth at the end gave out it is CGI

[@JauStudioFR]

Thank you but the title should be groom in Maya to Unreal. You know it's not the only 3D software in the world right ?

[@mehroz2010]

Actually this really really cool I see and understand all the things.

[@squeebbb]

Is the gentleman speaking also a CGI render? Amazing!

[@Matrinique]

omg I thought the same thing

[@squeebbb]

@@Matrinique I was joking but I wouldn't be surprised if UE5 can trick us in this way!

[@Native_Creation]

a Metahuman, lol

[@LeoLeo-cu6xg]

Golden tutorial as such a right time!!!! You're my saviourrr

[@GLITCHMonsterCat]

it's just unreal, great! 34:50

[@Patopostudio]

This is amazing. Thanks for the video.

[@jbach]

This is great. When creating the guides, are you using any mirroring? Or are left and right sides of the Meerkat unique?

[@nfarquhar]

Yeti does have symmetry tools, but they aren't great, I usually lay out one side with guides, then use the mirror guides button, then when I'm shaping them I have symmetry enabled, then once the base is done, disable symmetry and do some manual asymmetrical breakup

[@dylanhaze1455]

It's all well and good, but what is DCC? And do we have to use Maya?

[@reginaldarmah2381]

DCC simply means Digital Content Creation. It refers to 3d software like Maya,3ds max,blender etc.

[@RotPhalkun]

Guys, the sound effects are way off at 1:10. Egg shell hitting the hard earth or rock should sound more like sccraping not hitting plus at that speed the shell should be broken or partly broke on the edge leaving some pieces dangling and some falling here and there. But any who.

[@marcusmanningtv]

this is incredible. what kind of computer do you have?

[@nfarquhar]

While Weta has very high end systems, you don't need a high end system to do this kind of work, you can do everything in that talk on a medium range gaming PC, somethings might be a bit slower, but generally you don't need to go to crazy PC wise for this kind of work.

[@mikart3d]

Outstanding, this is the future of game industry! Does it handle XGen as easily as it does with Yeti? I'm quite surprised that Yeti grooming has a really great viewport handling in Maya :o

[@nfarquhar]

You can definitely use xGen for this kind of work, as well as several other grooming tools.

[@ksunnywazowski]

Unfortunately page not found. Is that the another way to see project? Thank you!

[@nfarquhar]

Its in the learning tab of the launcher now, or sample projects.. something like that, and its been updated for UE5.3

[@stnikou]

Hi, I have some weird flickering artifacts on my groom which is bind on a geometry cache alembic file. The alembic file has movements and the eyebrows for example are following correctly the skin. The issue is that the groom itself has some weird self-movements like jittering-flickering. The root of each strand is stick to the surface of geometry cache but the tips are moving wildly. There is not any simulation activated. The groom is also a single frame imported alembic from XGen’s Maya. It is strands. I tried also to enable RBF interpolation and set it to rigid but nothing happens. Is there any way to fix this

[@MagicSwordFilms]

When I import a groom with about 150,000 strands it took me about 8-10 minutes to import, it had a message about finding guide curves and weights, did that happen in this video too and he just skipped it? Or did his really import that quickly. If anyone knows a workaround please let me know, I was importing from blender.

[@nfarquhar]

if you don't specify guide curves, it will compute them on import, this can take AGES!, if you want to make it fast, on your import setting check override guides on each group, and set the value to 0.0001. it should import almost instantly.

[@MagicSwordFilms]

@@nfarquhar Thank you I'll look into this. I'm making a 'muppet movie' type thing so I'll have a lot of grooms to import

[@l_t_m_f]

So for the eagle, the feathers are individually made (10 diff. versions) and then copied ?

[@nfarquhar]

yeah there were about 10 unique feather types, and those were instanced over the whole assets

[@MANIAKRA]

Incredible demo, thanks

[@nfarquhar]

Thank you, hope you learnt some useful things from it.

[@MANIAKRA]

@@nfarquhar Absolutely, you're a great teacher. My studio is doing some RnD with Yeti/Unreal so this couldn't have been a better summary of the pipeline. If you ever decided to teach online I'd gladly take a mentorship with you.

[@CGMeneldil]

it's cool when guys from Weta have the same pipeline as mine for birds creation ;)

[@GameDevAraz]

We need detailed one using blender for feathers

[@kromond]

Thanks Nathan! That is just what I needed

[@B-Century]

at the end i thought that was a metahuman lol

[@sniperff6476]

Awesome!

[@othoapproto9603]

Don't be fooled, Nathon is not real, he's MetaHuman

[@nfarquhar]

He is fairly convincing.... but definitely uncanny valley. ;-)

[@Ed-iq5vi]

Thank you very much! Amazing work!

[@digitalmonqui]

Is there an equivalent grooming-like software like Yeti for Blender?

[@nfarquhar]

I think Blender has an in built fur system, you can use any kind of fur system for this type of work, you just need to be able to export the strands as an alembic file, to import into Unreal

[@sadekdhaoui9381]

is this software is Maya ?

[@welldone9440]

I think the title of this Webinar should be Creating Realistic Hair and Feathers in Maya. It's just my opinion.

[@tahseenullah2935]

What is timezone nd how to make these timezone maps which are plugged in UE shader?? can you plz tell me it will help me alot

[@nfarquhar]

Hi, if you download the project (its free on the marketplace) , you can have a look at the Shader network, thats the best way to understand it.

[@squarerootof2]

38:40 This is really what you do if you're a groomer in the film industry.

[@leomiranda1]

Is there any chance you can also make the maya file with the Yeti Node available for download???

[@nfarquhar]

There is a source files folder in the downloaded project that contains the Maya file and Yeti Fur

[@danielchen7707]

@@nfarquhar Hello! I think density masks are not included in the maya file. When I open the meerkat ma file, an error message pops up saying "Texture nodes have been deprecated - please refer to the Texture Sampler migration documentation for more information. "

[@nfarquhar]

@@danielchen7707 hi Daniel, yeah this project was made using Yeti 3, in the latest Yeti 4 they changed the way texture maps were setup, the source texture maps are included in the download, you will just need to update the yeti graph, to use the new texture node, and point it to the correct textures.

[@danielchen7707]

@@nfarquhar Thank you! I found it. And one more question: What is "groom_group_id" this atrribute node for?

[@nfarquhar]

@@danielchen7707 the group IDs get passed through to Unreal, and are used for the Material Assignments, it creates a material slot for those strands, that way you can have one groom file, with multiple elements, and each can have a seperate material assigned.

[@josephjebarajs3550]

Can you please tell me the name of the software that's used in the video to groom the merket and model it ???

[@nofudastofu]

Its autodesk Maya with yeti groom plugin

[@yannickvincent273]

Hi This amazing Where we can find maya source files please?

[@nfarquhar]

If you download the 'Meerkat Demo' project from the Unreal market place, the source maya files are in the content folder.

[@tiefsoftwarelab]

thank you for that i got idea

[@Sam-Fisher]

Awesome

[@hodoupmer]

the files are gone from the web, could you guys reupload it?

[@AvB.83]

As amazing as this is (and it looks insanely good), the title seems a bit misleading though...

[@kritikpatel5923]

How to export feather abc i tried with source file its not exporting eagle feathers but it worked with meerkat groom?

[@nfarquhar]

It should work the same, the feathers are technically still strands, if you are exporting the Yeti node, the feather barbs should import into unreal. I didnt do anything different for the export process.

[@kritikpatel5923]

Thankyou so much.

[@mohammedalsalem3945]

Who can lead me to a tutorial that explains in detail how did Nathan made wing feather? Thanks in advance.

[@obrenovicnikola]

I have a few questions about this. when I export my alembic from Maya to unreal 5 I get different results. First, my groom have a lower density in unreal. Second, is not the same as this one in Maya. Third, I created color maps in ZBrush and used them as color in Maya, how to use that same color in unreal engine, because, when i import in UE groom is golden color. Tnx for the answer :) Great work, this helped me a lot, but this is something i don't understand and can't find useful. Tnx one more time :)

[@nfarquhar]

Hi, in maya, double check that your Display density and any export densitys are the same, sometimes depending on the tool, you have a lower display density in maya, fr performance, and a higher density for rendering or exporting, this depend on what fur tool you are using. regarding the colour, Unreal has a default shader which is the orange you are probably seeing, if you want to use a texture map, you will need to make a new fur material in unreal and sample the root UVs in the material, for applying a texture map to them. Also, depending on what exporter you are using, some of the fur attributes dont get saved in the alembic output, so you will need to adjust them in unreal, such as tip scaling, width etc...

[@obrenovicnikola]

@@nfarquhar thanks for this answer, this helped me a lot. :)

[@ThatTechGuy123]

can you show how to make hair in blender with guides?

[@maddiehad]

which buttom does he press to show the base guide curves ?

[@nfarquhar]

I think I had them on a standard maya layer, I hide and show the layer when I dont need the guide curves

[@roy_tanmoy]

how you did the sand grain on the whiskers?

[@stsimon1713]

best stuff

[@elanderaofficial]

How did you create those hair groups for the different shaders?

[@nfarquhar]

thats using the groupID attribute in yeti, if you assign strands to different groupids, then in unreal they will show up with different material slots

[@MeariBamu]

3:29 what software they use for import lot of photo and map to see all together?

[@fenexj]

I think that's pureref

[@barbaraklein]

Those hair shaders look pretty complex 😱😂

[@DanielZellmer]

Thanx for the tutorial. Amazing, thats great training. It would be great too, if a billion dollar company would buy your webinar hosts a microphone which compares to every streamer, who uses a 60$ microphone. Sound is important and to much reverb distrubs a little bit. that would be great.

[@codeKing-os4bs]

that is good for me as a new game developer .

[@bushraalwesabi8563]

Is there a version of this for Mac?

[@hanguo3549]

How to set yeti groom group，import to ue is not have attribute

[@nfarquhar]

in yeti, use an attribute node to set the 'group_id' to a number, hairs associated with that attribute will be a part of that group in unreal

[@a2fan202]

How to make growing hair plz 🙏

[@weihan8854]

如何使羽毛看起来像孢子？我的显示屏只是一块

[@GameDevAraz]

How to do feather?

[@entium1]

So for the feathers the spines are geometry or particles?

[@nfarquhar]

they are geometry strips , derived from the Yeti feather

Yeti studio - 700$ + Maya 1700$/y versus Houdini indie 270$/y. Just sayin.

[@momengaber6012]

The problem is when you download and install most of the educational license to learn ,, your work on it doesnt really matter because most of the companies and places needs experience in something published with your work . Which isn't available in these licenses :(

@@momengaber6012 not sure what are you referring to here, I only commented because the artist was using tools which have entry level price almost 10x higher than the almost exactly the same set of tools in Houdini Indie. If you wanna find work I am pretty sure that companies these days will appreciate Houdini skills.

[@momengaber6012]

@ Yes that's what i refer too , And i am talking if someone new to the field and wants to get learning before buying ... i guess it's hard to him have an easy start specially you have 2 options ,,, Educational license or Pirating (Which isn't something nice to do most of the time)

p.s. it is true, though, if you are searching for work in these companies, most of them will also ask you to use AD tools, so, well, that's just, being a freelance artist vs. studio hired artist scenario. Depending of where are you coming from, being hired in New Zealand, UK, Canadian or US company, for some of us is only impossible dream, if you understand what I mean.

[@momengaber6012]

@ Woah i mean now i understand why most of the people in US trying to say that the life is hard and most of the people can't get a real job (With Insurance and stable money) , That's because the job owners and companies are actually requiring things mostly impossible , Unless you have the money to do the impossible . And this example is much similar to the point we are trying to make .

[@georges8408]

that was really an amazing work, but not for me.... too much time and difficulty

[@ivanleon6164]

for most of humans, this is just too much. only we need to do, is enjoy the animation.

[@belivaboy]

How do I shade the fur

[@nfarquhar]

You can download the project for free, and have a deeper look at the shading setup for the fur

[@belivaboy]

@@nfarquhar Thank you so much

[@asier7400]

But... this is create in Maya

[@MCJams]

The title says fur in unreal but he's not working in unreal.

[@MagicSwordFilms]

Unreal is just the platform you put stuff in, usually you make your assets in a DCC and import.

[@MiniSlac]

Hello UE4 users!

[@bablidinkar8956]

Which year ue 5 launch

[@EmperorPWNZ]

2014

[@bablidinkar8956]

@@EmperorPWNZ by mistake ue 4

[@EmperorPWNZ]

@@bablidinkar8956 I dunno should be in 2021-22

[@lpnp9477]

This fall

[@maddiehad]

they forget to tell you in takes forever to import a groom.

[@nfarquhar]

not sure if I mentioned it in the video, but when importing there is a generate guide curve percentage or something, if you set that number super low, it will import really quickly. the slowness comes from unreal computing guide curves on the groom.

[@maddiehad]

@@nfarquhar thanks for your feedback I figured that out once all is loaded on ram even the yeti groom seems pretty responsive. If I ever finish my animal project I will send you a link. thanks again. Great work btw.

[@Domtha1st]

Poggers

[@wojciechlesniak6096]

60fps pls

[@CodingWorm]

help a brother out