Stylized Metahumans in Unreal: Getting a Near-Exact Shape Match with Mesh-to-Metahuman

[@oberdoofus]

Very awesome! Look forward to seeing more!

[@locodrome]

Lots more coming!

[@matiasmarek7377]

You, Sir, truly are Mr Incredible! Thanks for sharing Anthony! This mixed with MHuman animator sparkles my imagination with possibilities. 🔥

[@locodrome]

You are much too kind my friend! Yeah - when I saw how this worked I had to document it - really opens up the possibilities, and I'm sure the next version of M2MH will be even better

[@sidkr]

I have no idea what most of this means but you are a great teacher so I watched the whole video. 😂

[@locodrome]

Hahaha well I appreciate that! That’s very kind of you to say.

[@Drakmour666]

Oh damn. I didn't understand 90% of steps since I am a very beginner at using UE, but you did exactly same thing that I plan to implement in my game. I need to turn anime style character face into a methuman to use all those face expression controls to make procedural animations for different situations. Not to make every expression by hand every time, just to make certain rules and add them when I need from a in-project "library". I hope one day I'll manage to do so, I guess with Metahuman this is possible. Keep the good work! Looking forward for more videos about stylized custom stuff for metahuman!

[@locodrome]

Good luck! Its definitely doable!

[@PugLifeStudio]

awesome job. I'd like to see this in a short movie.

[@locodrome]

Coming soon!!

[@pawrific]

you are a genius!

[@locodrome]

Hardly! Just patient - it’s a pretty detailed process.

[@antoniogarciapalacios1690]

Thank you for this tutorial, its awesome! I have a question. I'm trying to replicate this on 5.5, but on the 2nd M2MH, new SK mesh seems to loose some of the likeness again :( Any changes on your workflow for the newest versions?

[@locodrome]

Ooo - good question - I haven’t tried this in 5.5 - I’ll give it a shot and get back to you. If I don’t get to it soon, you can remind me at [e-mail] - and if you figure it out before I do, I’d love to hear!

[@LastRally]

very exciting - how did you get the texture to look like that?

[@LastRally]

referring to the end result stylized texture

[@locodrome]

Thanks yeah - its a custom toon shader I'm developing! Still needs a lot of work @@LastRally

[@LastRally]

love the direction@@locodrome

[@locodrome]

Thank you!! I'll post about it when its in better shape @@LastRally

[@lagonzaco1]

hello! How do you change the eyes basecolormap???? THANK YOU!!!

[@locodrome]

The original Metahuman eye material is a pretty complex procedural material - you can just disconnect the Basecolor pin and add whatever you want, but that won't match up with the other maps going into that material. The eyes on this character are a custom cartoon eye material that I built - it has six layers - base, iris, pupil, catchlights etc that can be adjusted in size, scale, position procedurally. I just fully replaced the original Metahuman eye material with mine since the look I'm going for is more stylized.

[@P3_AnkitSaroha]

hello sir, conformed mesh obj not generating in my file and i'm also confused about FBX export settings for unreal i'm new to unreal please guide

[@locodrome]

1. If the conformed mesh is not generating then you may not have used the command line “mh.Identity” string before running the M2MH process. The other possibility is you are looking in the wrong directory 2. There is no manual Unreal to FBX export in this process afaik. When I do need to do it I just use the Asset Actions -> Export route with the defaults and it works fine.

[@jysn101]

Thanks for sharing, one Question, i'm not sure if i missed it, but my Conformed mesh is Quads, yours is tris? is this correct.. 5.3?

[@locodrome]

The automatically exported face_conformed.obj? Yes that comes out as tris, and yes I'm on 5.3

[@jysn101]

i was being a dumb dumb and using the wrong file! works fine.

[@locodrome]

@@jysn101 Haha glad to hear it! Its a complicated process - easy to miss a step. Would love to see your results.

[@omarkhtamimi]

Hello, wonderful tutorial, Can you attach this metahuman head back to a metahuman body?

[@locodrome]

Yup. Its a normal metahuman head. If the head/body seam is visible you'll want to be careful about shaping the head's edge so it lines up correctly, but yeah it comes straight out of M2MH so it works with any metahuman body.

[@omarkhtamimi]

@@locodrome great to know!

[@nataschafarmer1980]

I'm trying to use a one eyed creature, yet when i try and put it through the metahuman identity solve, it says scan failed. Can you give me any tips on getting this to work? Thanks

[@locodrome]

I’ve never tried that. Maybe during M2MH, only use one eye’s solver markers? Either left or right, but make sure there is only one set of eye markers. The other option if you know Maya is to use something like Metapipe.

[@MrJonathanwolff]

Hi there this is great. Am I correct in saying the only paid for element of this process is faceform Wrap. Just a newbie trying to get my head wrapped around this (pun intended)

[@locodrome]

That is correct. There are some Blender plugins you could explore like Softwrap, but I haven't tried them out - I love the node based workflow of Faceform. I'm a relative newbie myself, so I can relate - lmk if you have any trouble!

[@MrJonathanwolff]

That is so kind. That’s a pretty impressive tutorial for a relative newbie 😮. Keep up the great work 👍

[@iamlycilph]

Wowww