Epic Games Unveils MetaHuman Creator – Capable of rendering realistic human models in real-time

Epic Games has just given us a first look at their new browser-based app called MetaHuman Creator. Epic Games claims that this new app is able to cut down the time it takes for game developers and creators of real-time 3D content from weeks or months to just under an hour without sacrificing the quality level. MetaHuman Creator runs in the cloud via Unreal Engine Pixel Streaming.

Epic Games’ MetaHuman Creator is the future of 3D content

In addition to speeding up the complex process of digital human creation, it also enables teams of all shapes and sizes to more easily scale and make many types of characters. This will help developers meet the demands of next-gen platforms and high-end virtual production. You can check out Epic Games’ full announcement down below:

MetaHuman Creator enables users to easily create new characters through intuitive workflows that let them sculpt and craft results as desired. As adjustments are made, MetaHuman Creator blends between actual examples in the library in a plausible, data-constrained way. Users can choose a starting point by selecting a number of preset faces to contribute to their human from the range of samples available in the database.

There are also a variety of hairstyles developers can use based on Unreal Engine’s strand-based hair system or hair cards for lower-end platforms. There’s also a set of example clothing to choose from, as well as 18 differently proportioned body types.

When ready, users can download the asset via Quixel Bridge, fully rigged and ready for animation and motion capture in Unreal Engine, complete with LODs. Users will also get the source data in the form of a Maya file, including meshes, skeleton, facial rig, animation controls, and materials.

Once in Unreal Engine, users can animate the digital human asset using a range of performance capture tools such as Unreal Engine’s Live Link Face iOS app. Moreover, Epic is currently working with vendors on providing support for ARKit, Faceware, JALI Inc., Speech Graphics, Dynamixyz, DI4D, Digital Domain, and Cubic Motion solutions or keyframe it manually. Animations created for one MetaHuman will run on other MetaHumans, enabling users to easily reuse a single performance across multiple Unreal Engine characters or projects.

Epic Games will be releasing two fully finished sample characters for developers to test out explore, modify, and use in projects running on Unreal Engine 4.26.1 and later. MetaHuman Creator will be available as part of an Early Access program within the next few months. You can also check out the MetaHuman Creator sample video right here:

For more information on MetaHuman Creator and to sign up for Early Access updates, you can check it out here.

Pokdepinion: To shave off that much time to create something that would typically take months is just impressive as all heck. Looking forward to seeing the future of MetaHuman Creator.