Wow! eBook
Reimagining Characters with Unreal Engine's MetaHuman Creator: Elevate your films with cinema-quality character designs and motion capture animation
Author(s): Brian Rossney (Author)
- Publisher: Packt Publishing
- Publication Date: 29 Dec. 2022
- Language: English
- Print length: 356 pages
- ISBN-10: 1801817723
- ISBN-13: 9781801817721
Book Description
Discover the power of Unreal Engine 5 and the MetaHuman Creator in this illustrated guide to develop realistic digital characters, infusing them with full body and facial animation
Key Features
- Create realistic characters using the MetaHuman Creator using a mixture of preset and custom tools
- Import your character into Unreal Engine 5 to access more editing options and begin animating it
- Combine face and body motion capturing to fully animate your digital humans
Book Description
MetaHuman Creator (MHC) is an online, user-friendly 3D design tool for creating highly realistic digital humans that can be animated within Unreal Engine (UE) and enhanced with motion capture technology. This means that filmmakers and game developers now have access to a high quality, affordable solution that was previously only available to specialist studios.
This book will focus on using UE5 and MHC from a filmmaker angle. Firstly, you’ll understand how to use the online MHC to create a digital character, changing its facial structure, body type, and clothing. After that, you’ll learn all the necessary steps to bring the character into UE5 and set it up for animation. Then, using an iPhone and a webcam to capture face and body movements, you’ll mix these motion capture files, refine the animations using the MetaHuman Control Rig, and save these takes to be reused and edited again within the Level Sequencer. On top of that, you’ll learn how to create a rendered video file for film production using both the Level Sequencer and a VR Cinematic Camera. By the end of this book, you’ll have created your own MetaHuman character, as well as face and body motion capture data, and learned the necessary skills to give your future projects further realism and creative control.
What you will learn
- Create your own bespoke character using MHC
- Develop custom faces based on real people
- Utilize Blueprints to take control of your digital character
- Retarget animations using the Unreal Mannequin
- Use DeepMotion and Live Link for complete body and face animation
- Use the Control Rig to refine animations
- Export and render your character
Who this book is for
This book is for filmmakers and hobbyists who are planning to make a film using Unreal Engine for the first time, having worked in live action or purely digital media previously, either professionally or as a hobby. No experience with Unreal Engine is required, however it is useful to have some knowledge of 3D development applications and concepts like wireframes, skin weights, transform tools, and motion capture. It is recommended that you have access to an iPhone X (or a later model). Alternatively, you can use a free or paid version of Faceware, along with a basic webcam.
Table of Contents
- Getting Started with Unreal
- Creating Characters in the Metahuman Interface
- Diving into the MetaHuman Blueprint
- Retargeting Animations
- Retargeting Animations with Mixamo
- Adding Motion Capture with DeepMotion
- Using the Level Sequencer
- Using an iPhone for Facial Motion Capture
- Using Faceware for Facial Motion Capture
- Blending Animations and Advanced Rendering with the Level Sequencer
- Using the Mesh to Metahuman Plugin
Editorial Reviews
Review
“The book is designed for professionals and hobbyists who don’t have time to learn about all the technology behind the magic but want to get to work on their projects quickly. This is why Brian’s book is an effective reference – it gradually introduces you to key concepts surrounding digital characters, along with how to use and navigate around Unreal Engine’s MetaHuman Creator.
On top of this, he collates the most efficient ways of working, particularly in terms of getting MetaHumans to work with Mixamo animation libraries or bespoke body motion capture through DeepMotion. So, get up and running with creating your own highly realistic digital characters and animations for your film project – something that, until now, was only imaginable for huge animation and film studios – without all the stress and heartache.
Happy filmmaking!”
—
Ciaran Kavanagh IATSE, Cinematographer at CBS Warners
“This is the first book that covers creating Unreal Engine MetaHumans in-depth. Not only it covers how to create the MetaHumans from scratch but also retargeting for Unreal Engine and several methods of creating full body and facial animations. Brian has done a tremendous amount of research (so we don’t have to) and laid it out in very simple lay-man terms to understand and follow. The color screenshots are very helpful in ensuring that you are able to follow along. I highly recommend this book if you need to create near-photorealistic characters for your animated films at zero cost”
—
Hussin Khan, Authorised Unreal Engine, Nuke, Adobe & Unity Instructor | CEO @ EFXCO Creative Skills
“I’m a professional 3D character artist and co-author of the book Unreal Engine 5. I found this book to be a great resource for anyone who wants to learn how to create a MetaHuman character and animate it using motion capture data. To me, the highlights of this book are the chapters where the author takes you through the process of creating your own face and body motion captures. Furthermore, this book shows how to use the Level Sequencer in UE5 to combine your MetaHuman character with its animations and lighting.”
— Henk Venter, co-author of the book Unreal Engine 5 – Character Creation, Animation, and Cinematics
“MetaHuman Creator and Unreal Engine 5 allow small studios and hobbyists to create high-quality animations that were previously restricted to large studios.
The author has a lot of experience with these tools and shares in this book the tricks he learned in practice. He explains in detail the MetaHuman editor, Level Sequencer, body motion capture, and facial motion capture. The book also features auxiliary tools like Mixamo animations, DeepMotion, Live Link Face, and Faceware Studio.
This is an excellent guide for filmmakers who want to produce films using MetaHuman Creator and Unreal Engine 5.”
—
Marcos Romero, author of the official Unreal Engine 4 Blueprints Instructors’ Guide and Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5
About the Author
Brian Rossney is a Creative Director and VFX Supervisor at Rossney Pictures. With 22 years of experience working in the film and TV industry, Brian has specialized in post-production and digital visual effects. He has produced commercials and TV opening sequences using 3D animation tools and 3D nodal based compositing applications. With a thorough understanding of the VFX and 3D animation pipeline, and live-action film producing and directing, Brian has lectured at Dublin City University and Galway Film Centre, and had worked as a VFX supervisor for Hallmark and Maravista. He is also the creator of two short films – they are called ‘Apetito’, using Unreal Engine, and ‘1976’, using Unreal Engine and the MetaHuman Creator.
