Using Mesh to Metahuman in UE5 to recreate Balthier

Laura's Character Art Classes: outgang.studio
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M2M quick-start guide: docs.metahuman.unrealengine.c...
In this video I take my WIP Balthier fanart from Final Fantasy 12 and convert it into a Metahuman using Epic's Mesh to Metahuman update from a few days ago.
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[@RossLeonardy]

You did an excellent job, but i cant look away from how good the stylized ps2 design still looks today 😭 for that reason alone i think character art will never go away

[@Outgang]

Yeah Square did a great job with the remaster of ff12.

[@F11290]

Amazing work showcasing this new tech, and I love the commentary and editing!

[@grayter]

I'm digging these game character break-down videos also..I haven't found anyone else doing such content..it's interesting and helpful to get a look at and examine the characters many of us are familiar with seeing and even playing as..even though I'm not in my character modeling mood lately, your videos have given me plenty ideas and insight as of recently.. -Gray

[@Outgang]

Thanks for the kind words Gray! Now go do some character art ;)

[@gabrielmoro3d]

Tested it out myself following your instructions and I'm in love. Amazing!!!

[@tinyrainbow0505]

Thank you for this demo, Laura. It's fascinating how advanced this technology is, but I find myself still drawn to the stylized model of him more. Currently, metahumans have an uncanny look to them, regardless of the emotion they're displaying. As the metahuman technology becomes more widely used and realistic games become more affordable and popular, I believe that stylized and semi-realistic character art will become increasingly popular.

[@tomoyaogawa4485]

Epic team has been doing such a fabulous job of creating a cool game engine and tools. I mean, am I dreaming? because this is unreal to me. It's just bloody cool.

[@gabrielmoro3d]

Your explanations are the best. This is exciting, it's going to speed up so much stuff!

[@frefredy]

Woooooooah it’s great to see Metahuman with a concrete example on a starting mesh that comes from out side of the software… It makes me eager to try this out 🤩

[@Outgang]

Soon you'll wonder why you spent three years learning everything from scratch XD

[@laeianimation]

Almost woke up my neighbors laughing at your jokes, Laura... the "future jobs" one cracked me up. Looking forward to more content like that!

[@claral.vegelgrady1156]

I'm very happy to finally see some other character artist using this really as a feature and not seeing it just a "job thief". Thank you so much!

[@ultimaweapon6]

I find it interesting you chose balthier. Im happy you did. Also im loving your channel. Im also more curious what youve worked on and what you do as a visual effects artist

[@CoolSmek]

Thanks for introducing me to this character! I haven't played FFXII so I had no idea. Super unique character, Balthier's ascetic is very particular and I like it.

[@ThousandBlade]

would be fun to see you trying to make a digital version of ur self and see how close u can get

[@Outgang]

Yeah I've been thinking of that haha. I actually have a detailed 3d scan of my teeth on my computer I've been meaning to use.

[@anandhg4286]

I SECOND THAT!✋

[@TheSatzy6699]

Wonderful 👌🏻

[@newsonomamashine]

"No Epic, i am not a robot, even when i sound like one" Touche! Great video. Is it possible to replace the body too? something with the default body proportions is not quite right.

[@Outgang]

You can edit anything afterward.

[@MrBmxerFTW]

This is currently my favourite 3d art related channel, awesome work. Also will you ever be touching on game ready hair cards?

[@Outgang]

Thanks Vnder! Did you check out Andreea's hair videos on this channel? There's two of them.

[@MrBmxerFTW]

@@Outgang cheers, will have a look at them!

[@swordofkings128]

2:32 I've had this problem with washed out vertex colors from Blender in Unreal 4. I tried multiplying the vertex color with itself fixes this (at least when going from blender to unreal) but I also don't know if that's the right way to fix that.

[@Outgang]

It's a color space issue (linear vs srgb) and it's a confusing topic. I should probably make a video on that.

[@swordofkings128]

@@Outgang I had no idea, thanks for the info!

[@XsK5]

This is so fascinating. As a final result I agree that they all look very similar, but you can just make a few tweaks in maya and zbrush, as you said, and you are good to go. It gives you a perfect topology, textured and rigged character in no time. For small studios this is going to be a game changer.

[@Outgang]

It's a suuuper good indie tool. Some clever teams can speed up creating their characters by a lot.

[@neoviva]

thank you！love you

[@federicoperini3446]

Great work. I like ff12 a lot too:)

[@Jawa_Joose]

It would be interesting to see how it would've looked using the ps2/hd remake model as the base.

[@everett818]

I'd love if they gave us the ability to import and rig an entire body into metahuman in the future.

[@omaior20]

I think there will be less character artists per studio. We as artist see the importance of uniquenes on a character made from scratch but for a player just a basic metahuman head would look just good enough for 10\10 on metascore review.

[@Outgang]

I believe so too. Good enough is good enough, as they say. Indie studios can gain a lot by using Metahuman assets.

[@shaungibson4527]

How would it look if you used the original ingame model?

[@Outgang]

I don't have access to it but it would be an interesting thing to try out for sure.

[@Idk_bro12340]

How do you customize(minor changes) the metahuman head in zbrsuh and import back to ue5 without breaking the rig ? Would be helpful if you made a video about it next

[@Outgang]

If the changes aren't major using an additive morph in ue5 could work well and a lot can be done through a normal map alone.

[@Idk_bro12340]

@@Outgang additive morph ?

[@Outgang]

@@Idk_bro12340 We'll get to that on this channel at some point :)

[@Outgang]

ue5 probably doesn't use additive morph as a term, think about it as a displacement map.

[@alexeidmitriev6235]

Out of a job? Hell no! But the job itself is definitely gonna change and evolve, kinda in the same way af it did with the introduction of sculpting, DAZ, scan data, pbr and tools like painter for texturing. It basically les and less tech bound, and more art driven. So nah, we good, still got a paycheck to get at the end of the month. But the market is once again going to get flooded with a bunch of metahuman DNA in the face, like with every other tool that lowers the bar for easier entry. So gotta git good(er).

[@digitalzenith6527]

Thanks for this Laura! You managed to stay close to your original design. A lot of others here on youtube get really far from it. Also I used to love Final Fantasy back in the day when I was a teenager not realizing how cheezy and gay it was :) No offense to anyone. Just stating facts.

[@picklejho69]

I think I'll wait to use metahuman til it's at the point where I can't immediately recognise it as a metahuman character. I think your original sculpt looked so much better than the metahuman one. Kinda like Arcane meets FFXII. Best final fantasy BTW, fight me about it.

[@Outgang]

Yeah I don't like the result as is either but I'm curious to see what I can do on top of it to get rid of the "metahuman" look. The challenge is very interesting.

[@guisampaio2008]

Is it dubbed? The lips doesn't seem to sync or am i imagining stuff?

[@Outgang]

No there's a slight delay because of the camera that I don't always remember to fix.

[@Patrickvskot]

My favorite FF)

[@jaddadda5436]

THATS COOL AS FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[@UonBoat]

Please condiser putting a de-esser on your voice track.

[@jack-hale]

what earphones are you using laura? im in the market for new ones lol

[@Outgang]

They're Sony 1000xm4s

[@jack-hale]

@@Outgang Excellent! thank you!

[@TheNerd]

The most Important part is that even beginners can use Metahuman to "make their waifu", get in in the engine and prbly make some animations or play with the shaders (without investing insane amounts of money). And thanks to Blender you can find out if sculpting is sth you want to do for free.

[@adorethered]

I'm really sad that they won't be supporting anything but maya for export. I'd been fighting with an export to reconfigure the skeleton to be used in a template I'm working with. sadly it appears that won't be the case. Ah well. I guess I'll just stick with the old fashioned way of doing things for now.

[@Bobbiethejean]

I don't think we're going to be out of a job "soon" per se, but I do think our jobs will be changing significantly over the coming years. In particular, we're going to be seeing more integration of AI tools such as Dalle-2, Imagen, NeRF, Nvidia Canvas, and the like. For the foreseeable future, I think they're going to help us more than hurt us but the day may very well come when that changes.

[@shakaama]

i can't figure it out. are you french or german?

[@Outgang]

Haha that's usually NOT the thing people can't figure out about me! I'm from the french part of Canada :)

[@shakaama]

@@Outgang oooooooooooh no wonder. I had a job as the french interpreter, buuuuuuuuut their clients were french canadian. we almost couldn't speak to each other. and they were insulted. I was fired. They asked me what's the difference. I said... well, you know how we have souther people in america, and although they speak english, it's not quite english, that's the diference between parisian french and candian french. I was glad to go, I was in a severe wreck... was even on the news, with choppers flying overhead and they were like, so can you still come in? I was like turn on the news, that's me, I'm not coming in.

[@legacylee]

I came so close to making Mr Miyagi from Karate Kid and the T-X, I'm wondering if you added an asian characters eyes to get closer to what you were aiming for, just a thought.

[@tytotech9498]

Gonna start using metahuman to retopologise my characters so I don't have to

[@Evergladez]

I was curious about this since my computer doesn't run unreal 5 to great and while some nice improvements have been made metahuman just feels over all too limited for me. The great part is you can speed up the workflow by creating a face that's close to what you want maybe using a pic to 3d software for the body, retoping them together and you've shaved off hours of work. As far as 3d artist jobs, I feel like after photorealism has become the standard across the board we'll get bored and want to push further. Kinda like plastic surgery and thus character artist won't truly go out of style, we'll also be able to have faster turn arounds.

[@irabiur]

Impressive ! But I don't think it will make the character artist job disappear. I don't know a lot about MetaHuman but it seems to be about realistic characters. As long as there are stylized projects, I think guess will be jobs for us. And if you need a really specific type of face or body, for now MetaHuman can have its limits. And it doesn't manage to do creatures for now, does it ?

[@MrGATOR1980]

Yes i was thinking about that for a while (not even regarding metahuman), if we look at major titles like for exp. Call of Duty, Cyberpunk we have so much 3d scanning in character department already. I think that actually character creation may be inpacted by those solutions if you are kinda artist that go for realism aproach, then yes it can be quite obsolete job in some time (also from time and resources point of view), but stylized characters on the other hand this wont change anything, yes it can actually ment that whole retopology process will become obsolete with some tools and people making just lowpolys may have some problems in the future. Also concepting will be faster. So real artist should be fine but some guys who spend hundrets of hours on likness sculpts are royaly screwed. And remeber we have really good grounbreaking solutions coming in photogametry soon, technologies were announced couple of months ago and when it will go live it may be scary :) thats why i choose to explore unreal 5 more, understand whole mindset and megascans solutions. I was always thinking as character designer, "nah its probably to technical to crazy" but ive tried and i must say it's a lot of fun and finally those programs start to be accesible for creative people that are not 100% about tweeking numbers in some endless menus.

[@MrGATOR1980]

...Ah and ofcourse creatures and fantasy sculpts alien ect. yes its here to stay probably :)

[@adityalokapratama8495]

The method looks interesting and metahuman is a masterpiece. I certainly gonna give it a try. But the end results needs a lot of revisions: the eyes are too big, the lips is too thick, (and as you said) the cheeks need more baby fat, etc. A little bit more time and manual polish will make it better. But good job nonetheless.

[@SVisionary]

There are huge drawbacks for game devs in trying to keep up with this level of fidelity. Sure you made characters look amazing, but now everything else needs to match it's level of quality. I suspect you'll see many companies focus more on stylization over this level of detail. At the end of the day - game design > graphics.

[@KJ-kr9ks]

Can I simp?

[@Outgang]

yes

[@stardusty]

That initial model of Balthier actually looks a lot like you...

[@sthJuniorPK]

Also kinda looks like skinny Steve Rogers lol. I wonder how stylized MetaHuman will let you get.

[@dasaen]

2d artists with AI, fear thy morning my brethren , for the age of men has reached it’s dusk (proceeds to twitter). 3d artists with unreal, yooo yo check this out! this is sick! (orbits left and right). Editing to say that I am a 2d artist, very much afraid of AI art, and always find hope on the way 3d and tech artists are always super happy about any new tool that comes around.

[@pyapor]

Someone will always need to tell the robot/AI what to do, and there will always be certain people that will excel at telling the robot what to do and a great majority that will be mediocre at it.

[@Outgang]

Have you tried Midjourney or Disco Diffusion lately? It's really cool stuff but it's also gibberish from up close and needs a lot of love. You still have a job for now my friend!

[@dasaen]

@@Outgang I need to, I’m starting to see people use it for thumbnails and to kill off unnecessary detail in a painting, going to go for it, so much energy wasted fearing the stuff instead of just being creative.

[@IGarrettI]

I used my David Bowie likeness build and was amazed to see him so well rendered. I even requested Epic to put in some Bowie inspired Haircuts heh

[@RahzZalinto]

How do you come up with these jokes mid video xD lol

[@hamuArt]

So Metahuman not support anime style or any kind of stylized head. But anyway thx for this tutorial!

[@Skycers]

It will be just another tool, users will make it standard, then masters will add another layer outside the uncanny valley therefore something new will appear, so and so on forth ad infinitum, but as I write this I leave this open take nobody's word for it, not even mine (Nullius in Verba).

[@owenrichards1418]

This is insane. The likeness is good, but the characters in the original game have stylized faces, so a 'proper' human won't match up with them completely. The metahuman's cheeks stick out a bit compared to the original. I think that character artists will be here for a while. I do think that the a lot of the basic work will be taken over by tools like this. Character artists will probably be there to do stylised work and creature models. This will take a lot of standard human characters off the table apart from someone who knows how to use these tools to tweak the metahuman model to look like the person they are looking for.

[@Outgang]

Yeah the result is definitely too "realistic" for FF. Art directors are pretty anal (pardon my french) over style, they'll always want us to massage the result of any character creator for sure.

[@MrSanson]

There is ALWAYS this "threat"/ thread ; will artists still be relevant ? Its a bit scary for people that are still beginning . I read the title of the video too fast ... I thought you were going to use : OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 to recreate your character... maybe because I saw this tool a week ago or so. 😁

[@demotko]

还好哈哈哈 我以为国外就不会卡了

[@PecoraSpec]

your sculpt is better.

[@mark-ge2yl]

Looking cool but he looks too feminine. He almost looks like Annie Lennox in meta human. I think giving him a heavier brow and squarer jaw would help. I know final fantasy like their males looking pretty but they also give them that masculine touch that makes them very unique looking.

[@wthoutanymmries]

oh the cognitive dissonance

[@12tale86]

Bro why u sound like a guy??

[@gregorybennings8718]

Might be a tranny. Thought they were using a voice changer or something.

[@freddywayne]

😮! 😬 🤭...... 🤫