Stylized Metahumans in Unreal: Getting a Near-Exact Shape Match with Mesh-to-Metahuman
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- Mesh-to-Metahuman (M2MH) is Unreal's excellent tool for taking any face mesh and rigging it as a Metahuman face - this is really useful if you want to use facial mocap from MH Animator, or just use the FaceControl rig board inside the engine. My problem with M2MH's default output is that in order to safely fit the rig, a lot of the more stylized elements of a cartoony sculpt get rounded off (as you can see in the results at the end of Step 1).
As it turns out, the Metahuman Identity asset has a workaround for this - one that I have not seen documented extensively. I learned this by following the discussion and steps laid out by "JMelf" and "The_Distiller" on the Unreal Forums (here: forums.unrealengine.com/t/new.... This is faster than setting up a custom morph, and requires no 3rd party paid scripts like MetaPipe.
The major insight is that by using the console command "mh.Identity.ExportMeshes 1" before you run the M2MH Identity Solve, you automatically get an extra conformed mesh that matches your target exactly, but also works for Metahuman components. You can then sculpt / wrap / edit this, and use it in a second round of M2MH (via the new 'Configure from Conformed' option) to get an exactly matched Metahuman head. Sometimes there is a need for some minor manual cleanup, which can be done via sculpting / smoothing.
Note that there is an optional step I follow where I check some of the eye movements with the paid plugin MeshMorpher from the excellent @PugLifeStudio - this is not required, its just useful. You can also use it to fix things like the eyelids using morphs and Bonesnapshots if that is your preference vs. sculpting.
Good luck, and would love to hear about results and approaches building on this workflow.
00:00 Intro
00:09 Step 1: Basic Mesh-to-Metahuman (remember to do "mh.Identity.ExportMeshes 1" first)
02:59 Step 2: Wrap conformed mesh around target mesh
04:21 Step 3: Second M2MH process using conformed mesh
06:54 Step 4: Manually cleanup any problem areas
09:20 Final Result
@UnrealEngine #metahuman #stylizedcharacter #autorigging
Music: Bitchin' Fanfare by Martin Landstrom / Epidemic Sound
Original Stylized Target Mesh: Cartoon Dracula Head by Malicki (www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/ch...) 
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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!
Good luck! Its definitely doable!
Very awesome! Look forward to seeing more!
Lots more coming!
You, Sir, truly are Mr Incredible! Thanks for sharing Anthony! This mixed with MHuman animator sparkles my imagination with possibilities. 🔥
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
awesome job. I'd like to see this in a short movie.
Coming soon!!
I have no idea what most of this means but you are a great teacher so I watched the whole video. 😂
Hahaha well I appreciate that! That’s very kind of you to say.
you are a genius!
Hardly! Just patient - it’s a pretty detailed process.
Wowww
Hello, wonderful tutorial, Can you attach this metahuman head back to a metahuman body?
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.
@@locodrome great to know!
hello! How do you change the eyes basecolormap???? THANK YOU!!!
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.
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
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.
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
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.
very exciting - how did you get the texture to look like that?
referring to the end result stylized texture
Thanks yeah - its a custom toon shader I'm developing! Still needs a lot of work @@LastRally
love the direction@@locodrome
Thank you!! I'll post about it when its in better shape @@LastRally
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?
The automatically exported face_conformed.obj? Yes that comes out as tris, and yes I'm on 5.3
i was being a dumb dumb and using the wrong file! works fine.
@@jysn101 Haha glad to hear it! Its a complicated process - easy to miss a step. Would love to see your results.
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)
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!
That is so kind. That’s a pretty impressive tutorial for a relative newbie 😮. Keep up the great work 👍