metahumans

[silver cloud]

Hello everyone,

I tried adding clothing to a MetaHuman character, but I wasn’t able to get proper results. I encountered clipping issues, so I created and applied a body mask, but the problem still occurred when I played animations.

I also tried attaching clothes using Blueprints, but even after fixing some clipping, issues still remain. I believe the main problem is with weight painting, as I’m not able to do it correctly and don’t fully understand it yet.

Could someone please guide me on the correct workflow or share the proper method for handling this in Unreal Engine 5.7? I would really appreciate any help or advice. @gloomy flame

[hollow aurora]

In MH creator how do you make sure your body matches a specific generic body type ie Genesis 8 male?

[gloomy flame]

Do you use your own weight-paints (MH skeletal mesh as base) or do you use automatic weights (static mesh and transfer weights from MH body)? Do you use simulation (physics) or do you just use kinematic? Bodymask is correct but the shoulders and neck need the facemask as well if you would avoid clipping at that body part (and probably a bit of Max Shrink Distance for the neck depending on the outfit). Facemask: Start painting black from the bottom of the UV and keep the upper edges white ... (otherwise your inner mouth would be transparent too 🙂 ) - Face has slightly other deforms than the body (even at that area) compared to the combined body so even if it matches perfect in the cloth preview it might clip at the shoulder/neck in the Metahuman Creator preview if you miss the facemask. It's called Face Map Texture but it's more like a shoulder/neck texture. About weightpainting... I rarely did this in UE (you could do that but I don't like that white color ...compared to red/green/blue/black it's hard to see what's painted with how much weight - screenshots). I always use Blender for that. Or used ...starting with MH and ChaosCloth I rarely weightpaint ... it's either automatic weights (TransferSkinWeight) for close body parts or simulation (and simulation weight paint in the Cloth Asset) for dress and capes, .... Maybe one more thing not that much of an issue if you use body mask already but just to mention... the LODs in the cloth asset preview are bugged. If you load a MetahumanBody as skeletalmesh and an anim in the (red icon) Cloth Asset LODs only switch correct for the cloth parts... the body always remains ins LOD0 - but LOD2 switches the weights (no more detailed bones at clavicle but spine_04 instead) so you might clip at LOD2 (without mask). You can force the preview to be sync with r.SkeletalMeshForceLOD 2 (and -1 back to auto).

[rich glen]

I have been getting these errors for days now and have tried all the fixes I've seen around the web with no luck. I have run out of ideas, can anyone here shed some insight?

Copied from forum post that never got resolved: **I’ve used Metahumans from the Metahuman creator (web) in my project and been able to build to Android without issues. Then I added Metahumans from the in engine Metahuman Creator into the project and that’s when this issue with the packaging arrived. A few times the build has actually been successful and the cooking error hasn’t showed up, but it fails most of the times I’ve tried. It seems the actual asset it fails on differs from each time as well. **

Using 5.6.1. This is incredibly frustrating as it’s stopped development in its tracks. Has anyone found a solution that doesn’t involve C++?

I’ve personally tried:

Recreating the bindings and assigning to Meta BPs

Rebuilding the bindings via right click

Adding the entire Metahuman folder to “Additional Asset Directories to Cook”

Deleting Binaries, Build, DDC, Intermediate, Saved, Android ASTC folders

Removing all legacy Metas and assembling only one 5.6 Meta

Every time, it is a gamble of what bindings fail and what don’t. Occasionally, I’ll get a good package when everything lines up right, but it fails much more often than not. Like maybe 1 good package out of 20 attempts. It’s just not feasible for iteration. Please anyone?

This is for a production build that has previously been working fine up to this point.

[silver cloud]

i am trying to weight painting the shoulder but i cant find solution where is my problem i rotating the shoulder the under arm is but its strech

[gloomy flame]

I would not use the body for weightpainting but the CombinedSkelMesh (your's missing the neck and parts of the shoulder) and then use the "DataTransfer" modifier in Blender to copy the weights from the CombinedSkelMesh to our shirt (source = your Combined MHC mesh imported into blender). This gives a start... and then you could continue with fixing some parts. But ... you would end up with almost exactly what you get if you are just using the TransferSkinWeights node in the Cloth. Especially for a T-Shirt this should be fine (no need to do anything in Blender or Maya here).

[hollow aurora]

Any groom experts here? Is it possible to preview hair physics in the editor by simply scrubbing in Sequencer?
Or is it necessary to either simulate and or render out?
Imagine a character with long hair either running or simply shaking head.
I need to be able to have inertia in the hair and preview in editor.
Similar to this
https://www.istockphoto.com/video/young-long-hair-man-shaking-head-gm912867864-251299994

[gloomy flame]

You can preview hair physics by simply drag and drop the groom asset into a map and pull it around with your mouse (move/rotate) - no need to start anything just move. I usually do this to check if imported guides look fine or rigged ones are better and if rigged how many rig guided points, changing the curves in physics, stiffness and so on (and then again after generating haircards, checking LODs, fps using multiple of them, ...). I think this is a lot faster then using the sequencer. But if you are already happy with physic and would super-fine tune in slow-motion I see no reason why this should not work. Could take a while to trial&error that way tho.

[gloomy flame]

...and you can easily make the guide(s) visible (red)... so you see why your hairs move like they move, if strands smoothing makes sense (or it's getting too much async with guide, ...).

[silver cloud]

@gloomy flameHello,

Could you please create a short video to demonstrate this process? I saw a tutorial on YouTube where only the body mesh (similar to the one shown in the image) was used, and the creator automatically transferred weights to a T-shirt and then refined it with weight painting.

I understand the basics of weight painting (red = full influence, blue = no influence, and gradient colors = partial influence), but I’m struggling to apply it correctly. When I try, I keep getting stretching issues, especially around the shoulders and underarm area. I’m not sure which weights I should adjust to fix this. Even when I paint areas blue, the stretching still occurs.

I plan to use Blueprints in Unreal Engine to apply the clothing, so I want to make sure the weight painting is done correctly.

I would really appreciate it if you could guide me or show the proper workflow. Thank you!

[gloomy flame]

Streching is not the issue. Think of it like that: Your Blender T-Shirt is turning into a one block real-life metal armor a-posed T-Shirt. It's solid and no stretching now try raising your arms. It won't work. What can you do? You can separate the body part from the arm parts but... as soon you raise your arms you would see a big hole below your shoulder between your metal-body and your arm-parts. How could you fix that if you would not get stabbed? You could start by adding an edge-loop... flat metal ring between your solid metal body and your solid metal T-shirt arm parts. This would cover the hole a bit but it's not perfect. Now add one more ring. It's getting better but still not perfect. Before we repeat and start creating a chain-mail we freeze this moment with raised hands, one solid metal body, 2 solid arm parts and a few edge-loops covering the hole below the shoulder poorly and switch the material back to fabric. If we combine all those parts ... the stretching is back, yay ... Fabric stretches so we may raise our arm but because we have more edge-loops now the stretching is smoother as it's split between all parts now. That is how far you would get with weight painting in Blender (better topology use quads, ...) and that's perfectly fine and performant for games. You can download some of Epics cloth for metahumans and check how it looks like (topology ignore the weights). Streching is not the only reason why we can raise our arms in real-life... we even pull the hole fabric upwards and unfold and spread out folds if we raise the arm. That's not the weight-painting you currently do. You could, in theory add some weight from your upper-arm to your lower body-part of the T-Shirt to fake pulling the fabric. But this would fix only one pose, messing up a lot others. Instead you would use real physics (and paint what should get simulated and where should the collision happen).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn7WWhBycnc&t=148s

[hollow aurora]

Groom physics question. Is there any way to make your hair simulation non symmetrical?
ie by playing with guide, strand and physic properties I have the desired underwater effect, but I would like to make it less symmetrical.

[gloomy flame]

You can split your hair into more groom groups and change the physics for every group different and/or use different custom niagara solver.

[novel dust]

i made hair in blender, exported as abc, followed a tutoprial and i still get this issue, idk why i followed the whole tut sep byy step, pls help

[hollow aurora]

Animation challenge.
I have body animation applied as animation sequence in sequencer (after deleting the default MH Control rig)
I also have facial animation applied.
But now I need to tilt the head back so the character is facing the camera! (see attached)
You can't simply add a transform node to the face-head as the pivot point is not at the base of the neck.
How can I tilt the character's head back while keeping the current body pose and angle?
If I add the Control Rig back to tilt the head, then it overrides my body animation.

[gloomy flame]

That's fine if you first time drag/drop it into the metahuman creator. Just switch it to the Metahuman GroomPipeline in the (orange icon) wardrobe item.

[novel dust]

Oh my good dude, thanks a lot, i did the tutorial 5 times thinking i was doing something wrong, preesh it man

[gloomy flame]

I'm not sure in the sequencer... I've created an anim layer for my head rotation stuff in my anim_bp for my manequins ... have to migrate it to MH as soon as I've migrated all of my chars (I've a lots of anim layers there for different stuff):

[hollow aurora]

Thanks! Lots of new features I wasn't aware of since 5.4
The proper solution for Sequencer I think is the new 'Layered' control rig.

[spiral flume]

I have a cloth asset, when I use import from static mesh, the preview looks fine (pic 1), but when I convert the static mesh to skeletal mesh, to edit the weights manually instead of doing a transfer skin weights in the cloth asset, the front of my hoodie behaves weird and I don't know why?

Interesting, that's just the preview that made me worry. I let everything evaluate and the hoodie still looks the same on the character.

[spiral flume]

Not sure if my way actually works correctly. I want to manually skin the hoodie, because of its oversize the transer skin weights pins parts of the sleeves to the body. So I converted the static mesh to a skeletal mesh and did the weight transfer in the edit weights tool of the skeletal mesh editor. And that weight transfer is also, what makes the preview broken in the cloth asset editor and also in the rig editor for example. How could transfering weights have such an influence on the mesh itself?

[spiral flume]

I'm losing my mind over this. For testing I painted weights for the hood to the lowerarm, so I can instantly see, that something is working. Skeletal mesh in control rig works. But the outfit applied in the MH creator doesn't move the hood. It is somehow ignoring the skin weights from my skeletal clothing mesh and gets it from somewhere magically /s

[gloomy flame]

What's nodes do you use in your ClothAsset? Source is your painted SkeletalMesh and you only use RenderMesh?

[spiral flume]

Yes, only import skeletal mesh with render mesh only and that directly into the terminal, with LOD generation.,

[gloomy flame]

Looks fine. Did you Force Graph Re-evaluation in the outfit asset if you changed something and reattached it in the Metahuman Creator (if you skip the last part then you might see something chached old).

[spiral flume]

I even deleted and recreated the cloth asset, outfit asset and wardrobe item, but nothing had changed

[silver cloud]

same problem with me

[gloomy flame]

I used SkeletalMesh only for a short time (because I expected that I have to use it as in the past) but switched to static-mesh soon. I even had issues adding an inpaint mask for improving the automatic transfer with a SkeletalMesh as cloth (while it shows me the mesh without issue for painting if it's a StaticMesh import instead). https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/Dl20/unreal-engine-panel-cloth-transfer-skin-weights-node Updates in MetahumanCreator are another story tho. It usually takes a while until you see the result (reattaching always takes time) and I had some issues with stockings that seemed cached somehow.

[spiral flume]

Yeah, the algorithm from closest point on surface is completely different from what a transfer weights in the skeletal mesh editor does. I think I can loopback that. First using the transfer skin weights node, assemble the character, then create a skeletal mesh from the static clothing mesh and transfer weights from the assembled clothing skeletal mesh. Finally switch the cloth asset to that skeletal mesh

Completely another topic: is creating a high-neck collar without clipping even possible? That neck deformation comes from the face skeleton, I'd guess? But clothes are only skinned the body skeleton. I'm using the exported combined skeleton mesh, but that is just the body skeleton IMHO.

[gloomy flame]

Yes, you need a mask in the wardrobe item:

[spiral flume]

That would just hide the clipping, hmm. Problem 1: different sizes would need different hide masks, but I can use only the smallest common hidden surface for that. Problem 2: head hidden face mask doesn't exist in 5.6

[gloomy flame]

Why would you change the UV for different sizes?

[spiral flume]

Problem 1 may be not such a problem, I'd imagine the collar height will stay mostly the same on different body shapes

[gloomy flame]

Actually I create the mask in Blender.... selecting (inverted) the visible faces from the face mesh. But the UV-map of metahuman face is always the same.

If there's no hidden face mask in 5.6 ... then I guess I would workaround with a bigger cloth or something. Not optimal.

[spiral flume]

Not changing the UV-map of the metahuman face. It's just that e.g. the collar height could be different when creating a clothing mesh for e.g. a bigger body shape. So I need to paint that hidden mask, that it only hides those parts which are hidden by the clothing of every size in common

[gloomy flame]

I'm not sure... you mean if you strech the neck but would not strech the collar? Shouldn't it be relative anyway? Half-neck is half... and always same UV (half neck) distance on big or small ones? But if you don't have a mask for face in 5.6 then this could be an issue. 🤔 As far I remember you can't combine different skeletons as base in the Cloth-Asset. So if you need the body as well (which is not on the face mesh anymore) then you miss a thing. I made a full-body suit including the neck and the mask worked fine but I'm at 5.7.

There's not even the head mask in 5.7 but even a shrink in option where the (usually too big) skin gets smoothed into the neck again:

[spiral flume]

I had that with underwear for example. If I would place the top line of the underwear on the same topology line of the body on a bigger body shape, as it would be placed on a thinner body, then it didn't look that good. So it was placed differently. But yeah, for a collar I'll probably manage that it stays the same over different fittings.

[spiral flume]

although the shrink distance requires that you add grayscale values to the mask on what should be shrinked how much. Just black/white doesn't trigger any shrinking IIRC.

I think I have to make this bodysuit as only 5.7 compatible due to that it needs a face hidden mask

[gloomy flame]

I've no greyscale. 1st with shrinking. 2nd no head mask. 3rd headmask without shrink (skin is clipping at the end of the neck and is visible at animations).

[spiral flume]

Fascinating. Because the tooltip of the max shrink distance is just talking about values between the max cull and min keep value. That's why I said that. Good to know that tooltip isn't completely accurate or I have a hard time understanding it correctly 😅

[gloomy flame]

Maybe if you wanna shrink smoothed over a larger area if you ... would show some skin somewhere else? Dunno.

...and it's a bitmap and no vector-graphics so there would always be a fine grey line at the curves between pure black and pure white.

[spiral flume]

Indeed. I forgot about that.

[hollow aurora]

Is anyone using Substrate materials with your Metahumans?
What are the advantages if any? Any hiccups?

[gloomy flame]

Rarely... I changed one for different fuzz. Maybe if you wanna add some Glint that is not destroyed by TAA/TSR.

I think the advantage is that you get access to further inputs (fuzz, glint) and probably more native bsdf. In UE3 there was sparkle at snow easy possible. In UE4/5 almost all snow was just white as TAA smoothed all that fine sparkeling. The hiccups... I think I got instant about 100 instructions more at my material just because changing to substrate. So I'm not changing all mats to substrate if there's no need at this point in time.

[viral jacinth]

Does anyone have any advice for conforming both a custom head AND a body?

Both match metahuman topology so I can conform them, but I can't make them work nicely together.

For example the body is fine but the head is massive and the neck isn't right

What's the usual process for this, I'm using face form but that's having texture issues with the body

[gloomy flame]

As far I remember there where issues in 5.6 about that. What version are you using?

[viral jacinth]

I'm in 5.7 now

I can't really merge the meshes as they have different textures

This is about as good as I can get it

Trying to make it a spoiler but couldn't, there it is anyway

Tree trunk neck

[spiral flume]

Btw. do we still have the issue, that we can't use sim meshes if there are multiple cloth assets in an outfit assets?

[gloomy flame]

How did you import the head? fbx?

Looks like you have a different scaling or something. Did you change this in Wrap?

[viral jacinth]

Head and body are exported obj files from faceform

Imported via right click in unreal

Then dragged to the head conform part in creator

[gloomy flame]

I had issus with obj files (don't remember which ones) so I imported them in Blender and exported it as fbx.

[viral jacinth]

Scaling is okay I think, it's just when I'm wrapping to metahuman topology, the body and head are missing the neck area I think. It's not a problem with the head usually, but now I'm trying to connect a custom body it's all going wrong

I can try fbx

Does metahuman creator fill in the neck though? I tried lining up the head and mesh (the wrapped versions) in blender and they didn't line up so I don't know how people are managing to make this ever work

Well not the neck, it's like the area below the neck and above the chest

[gloomy flame]

you would use a combined mesh as source? Usually I always wrap head and body separate... and then use them in MetahumanCreator (one conform for body and then the one for the head). It should find the shoulder section automatically (UVs, ...) but you should not drag the head too much around (in wrap to get it to the MH head).

[viral jacinth]

Hmmm, I'm doing exactly the same as you then

My source meshes are also separate

I align and scale the metahuman head mesh and pre wrapped before wrapping

I'm also having an issue with the wrapped texture of the body where in the wrapping program, the texture of the body when applied turns the mesh all black

No idea what's happening there either

[gloomy flame]

This was one of my first tries with wrap3d (I figured some problem-zones that make issues at clothing afterwards ... but as you can see the head and body fits together (even with a not perfect identical shoulder line ... like the wrap streched it different).

[viral jacinth]

Hmmm, damn

Not a clue, I can try fbx tomorrow but that's all I got

May I DM you? I won't badger

It's positive that creator fills in the area though. At least means I am the error, which I can fix

I noticed my head mesh doesn't have a big lower neck/upper chest area. Is that usually an issue?

There is a whole complete head and body though when combined (source meshes)

[gloomy flame]

I remember one strange neck issue myself in the past where I added an (unrequired) translation in Wrap3D "to look better". This was not necessary and I moved my previously split body. I had a combined mesh... splitted it (and all the transform was fine) then I imported it into wrap3d and move the head once... so it was not matching the translation to its original body. As far I remember this streched the neck in UE afterwards.

[viral jacinth]

I have had issues with face form moving the meshes a bit, I will try and do it all from scratch, then import fbx instead

Thanks by the way, this is madness trying to figure out alone

[hollow aurora]

Only the right eyelash on my Metahuman appears glitchy...maybe I'm seeing the hair cards?
Has anyone had the same thing happen? What's the solution?

[gloomy flame]

Looks like some wrapping issue? If yes... then re-wrap again or blend an eyelash from an existing MH preset (just a bit to strech it out).

[hollow aurora]

Thanks. Its a render issue. Hair strands lose their translucency when rendered in front of another groom it seems. Not sure if there is a CVAR that will help.

[spiral flume]

Is it normal to see the UV seams at UE Optimized (High) export? In UE 5.6

[hazy hatch]

Are there any information on the newer "srmf" baked input? this was ORM before wasn't it? I'm trying to customize, but not sure how to best go from an ORM bsaed workflow to SRMF

[jagged fulcrum]

are you using virtual texture?

[spiral flume]

not in 5.6

[jagged fulcrum]

this might help to reduce it a bit, i have similar issue, i haven't solve it yet, i even rebake the bent normal. i think it is related to SSS https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/metahuman-uv-seam-skin-tone-inconsistency-with-static-lighting-settings/2652500/7

I ended up making new more simple shader though

[spiral flume]

Yay, another thing to bake /s. Baking would not be the problem. But if you say, it doesn't work completely as a workaround?

at least setting static lightning to true resolved the problem for my overview maps. But for the game, I don't want to really set that

[jagged fulcrum]

yeah, i havent solve it yet, i just avoid the issue by making simpler material

[jagged fulcrum]

When you're conforming the body, there are both body and head mesh fields. You need to fill in both meshes so the head matches the body properly (position and scale). If not, it will fall back to the default MH head size. Also, the head mesh you use for body conform wont affect the face itself just the overall head to body proportion

[gloomy flame]

Anybody knows a way to read and add attributes to a Groom *.abc file? I would add haircards to a groom-asset from the market-place using Epics hair card plugin... but as usual the "groom_group_cards_id" attribute is missing at the groom asset. So it's either everything in one haircard group with just one simulation group possible or no simulation at all (which sucks if you have different simulation settings for the strands, ponytail, bangs, ...). The author added the alembic file as source... so far so good ... but neither Blender nor Marmoset could see or differ groups based on groom_group_name. UE does differ at importing ... but for whatever reason groom_group_name is not considered as groom_group_cards_id ... and you can't create card-groups if that attribute is missing. Could Houdini do this (afterwards) ... or is it blind to such attributes as well?

[gloomy flame]

...nvm. I was able to get a separation by selecting the tips manually in Blender and using CTLR+L to select the hole hair afterwards. Looks good now. I've got my hair card groups now so I can generate one haircard group per groom group. I don't understand why the hair-card-generator requires different groups here and not just uses the groom groups. In my opinion you would alyways get the exact same simulation with cards as you do with strands to avoid physics LOD-switch issues (and one hair-card-group is too less in most cases if you enable physics in at least one group).

[worn willow]

My first attempt at making an editor utility that swaps out clothing in edit for characters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCxQguXBqpY

[viral jacinth]

@gloomy flame thank you, I'm getting there slowly

[jagged fulcrum]

is that hair card material and texture generated too?

[gloomy flame]

Yes it's creating the textures and the cards (only the mesh-helmet for far away LODs has to be created manually - but that's some easy convex from curves conversion anyway). There's a material and a material instance for strands/cards/helmet from Epic (engine folder). The textures that are required for it are generated from the haircard plugin and you can choose how you would handle your atlas (like using the same spot for a few LODs with reduced flyaways or reserve a bit of texture-space for following LODs). For the helmet it's just rightclick on the groom if the hair plugin is enabled.

[jagged fulcrum]

nice, i think the last time i try, it didnt work well, it looks actually good. i will give it a shot

[shy hull]

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to pack an .mhpkg file for my modular asset pack. My current setup has a separate OutfitAsset (OA) and WardrobeItem (WI) for every single slot (boots, gloves, torso, etc.).

However, the validator won't let me proceed, flagging an error that there should only be one Wardrobe Item for the main asset. It seems like it expects a single entry point, but my project is modular.

What is the best way to handle this?

[hasty sparrow]

Hye Guys, does anyone know how to make a Metahuman focus on a camera (For Sequencer). I added the control rig of the Face in the sequencer, select the control for controlling eyes, then in the Editor switch to Animation mode where I add a contraint to parent it to the CineCamera Actor. It keeps giving me this warning, Can't see a checkboc to make the camera spawnable in the sequencer either. Does anyone have any idea about this?

[fluid basalt]

best videos for me to watch to understand how to use livelink with my metahuman?

[hollow aurora]

Exploring the new Metahuman LiveSync workflow.
When I bake my A-Pose+ animation sequence the resulting animation sequence is missing the body for some reason. Just arms and legs!
Can someone suggest what I am doing wrong?

[spiral flume]

That is the hide mask of the outfit. MetaHuman removes everything covered by clothes.

[full ferry]

Does anyone know if I can optimize metahumans for a different art style? For example, kinda realistic but with a touch of the cartoon aesthetic? Please ping me

[hollow aurora]

Constantly crashing when Assembling changes to a Metahuman that assembled without error before.
The Crash log is useless.
"Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION 0x0000000000000000"

Has anyone had the same issue?
What did you do to solve?

[vivid igloo]

Can someone told me how to use these data and transform them into anim sequence？

[vivid igloo]

I only find a post on official forum , use take recorder while playing these playback. Too dumb to use.

[gloomy flame]

Not exactly. But I had an issue with exporting a metahuman mesh from the creator which was completely messed up while "overwriting" and existing one. I've deleted the old one first, repeated and it was fine. So maybe it gets bugged by cleaning up remnants.

[silver cloud]

In this video you can see that when I added clothes in the character blueprint this issue appears where the pants are behaving strangely in the middle why is this happening and what is the solution please someone guide me

[spiral flume]

looks like a skin weight issue, what method are you using to transfer skin weights?

[silver cloud]

The weight painting is completely correct in Blender but when I import it into Unreal and apply it in the Blueprint this issue appears

[jagged fulcrum]

it looks like truely weight issue even though it is transferred correctly, some tuning still need to be done. you might need to manually remove the weight in blender, for example left knee bone influences right area where actually it shouldnt

[spiral flume]

What nodes do you use in your cloth asset?

[silver cloud]

In Blender when I tested the pants in pose mode they were moving perfectly and smoothly with the leg bones there was no issue there but when I imported it into Unreal this problem started appearing

[jagged fulcrum]

ah, i see, it is not the issue then

[silver cloud]

I did not use a clothing asset I applied it through the Blueprint using the skeletal mesh

[silver cloud]

Then what is the solution can someone experienced with proper knowledge please guide me

This is what I did in the Construction Script I added nodes so the T-shirt and pants attach to the body the T-shirt fits properly but the issue is happening with the pants

[gloomy flame]

Blender works different if you do not normalize your weights. If a vertex just has 0.3 weight on thight_l for example and 0.7 weight is missing (to get 1.0) then Blender says: Ok fine I just move it with the 0.3. UE says: 0.3 on thigh_l ok but 0.7 are missing (?) I've no idea what to do with the missing weight I put it on the root bone instead. It could even differ if you have some minor artifacts from painting more than you would (like painting the left leg but put some paint-dirt on the right leg... just enough to pull it in UE afterwards). I would recommend to normalize all your weight and then select the vertices on your leg and check your influences. If on the left leg is any weight from the right leg (just a bit) then that's causing a lot of troubles.

[gloomy flame]

That's fine. You have to fix the issue wherever you created your weights. If you did not use ClothingAsset but only Blender then you have to check Blender. First I would start with data transfer modifier and use the metahuman combined mesh as base for the weights. Then you can try to improve things if necessary but don't make issues like I've shown in the second screenshot. Screenshot 3/4 are showing a vertex with non-normalized weights = sum of weights is less then 1.0 (issue in UE) and normalized weight (fine in UE).

[hollow aurora]

I seem to be missing hair groom LODs.
Does this mean I need to go back to MHC and re assemble my MH or is there some way to 'force' LOD 0 to always be visible?

[hollow aurora]

If I open the groom asset under LODs I can see that Visible is enabled on all LODs

[spiral flume]

any reason why the skeletalmeshimport would drop faces on the sim skeletal mesh? Importing as render mesh looks fine.

[gloomy flame]

Do you have cards for that LODs? If you switch to strands the hairs should get visible... but are a lot more expensive. I made a test with a 9 grooms in a scene without metahumans. 9x grooms with strands ~ 28fps ... cards 45fps ... without 65fps. Epics own hairs (from the presets) always has strands LOD0-1, cards 2-4 and mesh 5-7. So you might got this presets applied automatically (even if there are no cards yet). But if you are not fully cinematic I would recommend to create cards anyways.

[hollow aurora]

Thanks. Yes was a combination of both LODSync in MH Blueprint and groom LODs not set to strands.

[gloomy flame]

MH-Grooms are a minefield. I think I counted about 30 crashes today (maybe even more) because of grooms. Also RBF seems weird. If I use a LOD0 only groom-mesh as binding base RBF starts exploding at LOD1. I've no idea how he translates this from LOD0 to a non-existing LOD1 source-mesh anyway. It's like rolling a dice. If I use the Face-Export from the Metahuman-Creator that contains LOD0-7 than RBF is perfectly fine from LOD0-7. So why is nobody (including Epic) using it? Asset-Set creators usually stop at LOD0 for everything anyway (so it's a long way until you can use it in a game). I'm not sure if I miss RBF too much at top hair... I think it's more important at morphs for eyebrows or beard.
Crash: Eyebrows was fine with full-cards ... but if you assamble a groom-assets without any active strand-LOD group UE crashes (was tricky to find as I expected lots of other issues first).
Crash: If you use riggid guide for braid ... and assemble... it's not splitting the export from the source. The skeleton still remains unique and if you touch it after export -> Boom.

[jagged fulcrum]

I really like the groom system. It feels like an all in one solution to manage strands, cards, and mesh LOD seamlessly. It's a bit unfortunate that I cant build something like that from scratch, especially for a purely card based system. I could do it on a skeletal mesh using a simpler simulation like Kawaii Physics, but the groom simulation for cards is definitely the best. I've also noticed that the card generator plugin causes a lot of crashes when I enable it

i still need a few strands as guides and initial asset import

[gloomy flame]

If it does not crash or causing troubles then it's fine. The LOD switching (also between different types) is great. I like the idea with strands/cards/mesh as well. But metahumans assemble is not stable (or everything with exports - even exporting a mesh over an existing mesh with the same name could give you a mixed garbage - this is just buggish). If I don't need real strands at the eyebrows (as it's not giving enough more details for the cost - especially if you export optimized) then it should not crash. There's no warning or anything that forbids you creating a groom asset without strands. RBF is ... fighting against normals and I've no idea how they are gathered beyond LOD0 if you only apply LOD0 as mesh. I think I would just keep my LOD0-7 mesh as it works fine but I feel a bit alone with that. Blender is weak with guides that are used in grooms a lot. I was thinking of getting Houdini just because of hairs but they are not really Indie-friendly (in fact I only get a lot of what I may not do... I've no clue what I get for paying - that's not really charming). I managed to set a guide with geom-nodes that is required to keep a braid together in Blender finally (otherwise it would fell apart) but that's pretty much it. Almost nobody sets the hair card groups attribute anywhere which makes creating cards a lot harder if you don't create the grooms yourself (so seems I would create lot more grooms myself than I planned at first).

[uneven imp]

hey everyone - is there any reliable way of adding wind simulation to groom assets in Unreal 5.7? Seems like wind directional doesn't work anymore and I can't seem to find anything related to this topic.

[jagged fulcrum]

I'm not sure, but I still haven't found a way to make it work without strands. It's not really a problem though. My main concern is the package size for something that isn't even used in the game and it is quite big. Blender is actually great, I can create pretty much any hairstyle I can think of. I'm not an expert in Geometry Nodes, but there are tools and built in assets like the new Blender hair system or Medusa Nodes. i put my cards similar with the strands group id, so it is not necessary in my case to have it for cards

[jagged fulcrum]

Is it just about making a custom Niagara solver? I haven’t played around with wind since 5.4, but I believe it should still work. I think there are some tutorials on youtube about this

[gloomy flame]

Assemble seems to require strands. Afterwards you can switch to cards at each LOD (either in the preview of Metahuman or in the assembled BP). The city crowd demo project had metahumans without strands (they used cards).

My issue with Blender is less... the "can't create the hairstyle I want" but more technical... that guides are almost unavailable for you as user but required for physics and other technics (seems even RBF is affected by it). In Blender it's doing some automatic guide stuff in the background. In Houdini you often start with guides and grow hairs around them. You manipulate the guides afterwards as well. In Blender you have some automatic guide grid but if you comb something it's a hairs and guides mix. It's more like shaping all strands together not knowing which of them is a guide and which one is a common strand. If you would create a braid you need to define a guide - and only one - for the hole braid group (or phycis would seperate it until it's complete free).

Medusa plugin looks interesting. But development seems on hold? Do you use it?

[jagged fulcrum]

Yeah, sadly development looks like it's on hold, but it's good enough for me, still use it till now, have less option in blender though. You can manually extend the generated Geometry Nodes setup if needed.
It seems like an issue during export to UE. I've run into this before where the hair looks fine in Blender but breaks in UE.
My previous workaround was to convert the geonodes setup to a hair particle system and increase the render resolution.
but recently I found a free groom exporter plugin that can export grooms properly without baking them, including valid data like group id, root UV, radius, color, etc

[gloomy flame]

I know this one... https://turbocheke.gumroad.com/l/Groomexporter?layout=profile - it's great... but it's missing the hair card groups and the "Button_SetAttributes" is bugged if you use more groups. I've fixed both (most is python anyways). There's no git repo to make a pullrequest tho. Also Blender 5.1 requireds python 3.13 and this one is 3.11. I've started building alembic.dll but ... this drags some time (numpy, imath, ...) so I decided to not use 5.1 for now. 🙂

[jagged fulcrum]

I separate the hair objects but keep them in a single export so the group ID export still works, lol. Yeah, big thanks to the author, it helps a lot. I'm still on 4.3 since there are some plugins I can't leave behind. I'm not great at math, so I really rely on these hair tools

[gloomy flame]

But the groom-group is not the hair-card group. You don't get any entries in the hair-card generator with only the groom-groups available.

"In order to use this feature, a hairstyle must be exported (in Alembic format) with the per-strand property groom_group_cards_id, the property must be a character string type. When this property exists on-import the card group names will be listed in the settings at the bottom of the hair card generation dialog. By default all card groups are combined into a single settings section, which will work exactly the same as if there were no card groups defined for the groom."

https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/Kp2e/unreal-engine-metahuman-hair-card-generator

[jagged fulcrum]

Maybe this is why the cards weren't generated properly. I think I should experiment with the card generator plugin again. I just realized this card id thing

i added the card separately after strand initial import now

[gloomy flame]

Yeah... I've posted you the changes for the plugin. Only 3 lines must be added to the AlembicGroomExporter.py

Afterwards you get this in the Card Generation plugin:

[jagged fulcrum]

thanks man, it will safe a lot of time if i can generate the cards properly in UE, and just focus to make the strands, this is lovely pipeline

[marsh elk]

Thanks so much for sharing this. My coworker is just starting to learn the Blender to UE groom pipeline so this is very helpful

[uneven imp]

Yes I‘m basically trying to add some subtle hair movement in sequencer. Haven‘t found any tutorial that works unfortunately 🤔

[gloomy flame]

I think this should still work same in UE5 (niagara custom solver instead groom springs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fakJzWIZKx4

[uneven imp]

Thanks! I'll try that

[uneven imp]

@gloomy flame thank you so much! It did absolutely work in 5.7 🙂

[gloomy flame]

Welcome. Just keep in mind that custom niagara solver could get expensive compared to Groom Springs if you plan to use them in a crowd.

[uneven imp]

ok. Yea, for now it seems fine for one character in a cutscene. It just looks way more alive

[viral jacinth]

What is the material detail to get rid of the red lines in the eye balls? Is it just editing the diffuse map?

[tidal jewel]

im trying to find fixes for the delay on livelink for metahuman face while keeping the graphics generally the same
any fix?

[hollow aurora]

https://vimeo.com/1186977200
The recent Artemis II mission served as inspiration for a short space themed cinematic

[spiral flume]

what is this, that in UE 5.7 the brush for painting weight maps in the cloth asset can't be smaller than 0.365055 ...

[spiral flume]

Is there any way to create resizeable parametric clothing with extra accessory bones?

[edgy cave]

Can anyone tell me how exactly do I have to export the char as an .fbx file? No matter how many times I've tried! I wasn't able to! I am not sure where exactly I am making mistakes!!

[gloomy flame]

Char as character? You can't. You can export only parts and you would loose attributes (if you plan to reimport). You can export body, face, combined and after you assembled then even cloth. There's no possibility (without paid plugin) to export grooms (grooms are .abc anyways not .fbx).

[cyan orbit]

Hi, is there a way to dynamically subdivide metahumans (or generally skeletal meshes) at runtime/rendertime like you would be able to in an offline renderer more more fidelity?
I'm familiar with the possibility of subdiving skeletal meshes via the new mesh tool, just wondering if there's a less destructive version of that hidden somewhere 🙂

[gloomy flame]

I don't think this is possible. There are LODs that swap meshes that are created already. There's nanite (but that's not really subdiv) as well as remesh in the cloth (you could get lots more poly if you like but it's not quads afterwards anymore).

[jagged fulcrum]

I even considered the metahuman high assembly too dense. Anti aliasing already helps preserve visual quality in most rendering cases. unless the goal is something like wrinkle normals, subdivision isn’t really the right solution either

[cyan orbit]

Aye, Nanite comes with its own limitations, translucency not being supported being the main one.

[cyan orbit]

The goal is maximal visual fidelity in super closeups, where at default metahuman face resultion, poly faceting starts to become obvious, especially in areas around the eyes.

[gloomy flame]

You can export the assembled Metahuman, do "subdivide" and reimport as common fbx. You would loose a bit of pipeline-comfort tho. The strength of Metahumans is the shared topology. Can you share a screenshot of your poly-faceting? Are you sure it's an issue with the polys and not some normals-issue or something baked wrong?

[jagged fulcrum]

You can separate the eye parts that use translucent materials. I think most people do this. Nanite is not automatically subdivide the mesh. but if you subdivide it to certain level. it wont break the FPS

[south whale]

hello, does anyone know what is the proper workflow for sculpting using metahuman base mesh on zbrush - import it to unreal - conform metahuman?
I tried merge and welding the head and body - sculpt - then split it again - export fbx, and that got my mesh destroyed

[simple forge]

I would check to make sure your mesh has the right vertex count

[gloomy flame]

If you messed up the topology then you can use Zwrap plugin for zbrush or Wrap3d standalone to wrap again the metahuman over your mesh.

[south whale]

Im pretty sure the vertex count did not change, since all I do is just merge it - move it around- split it again

[south whale]

Yeah, I decide to do this in the end. Turns out I can still conform the body with the combined mesh, so I just need to wrap the head

[fervent tree]

Even if the vertex count didnt change, the vertex order probably did

You could fix it by copying the vertex order from a metahuman base head to the one you sculpted and then import as fbx to ue

It can be done in maya natively and blender (free plugin)

[south whale]

apparently this IS the solution
I never heard about vertex order before, so I went and do a quick research
and it works! I learned something new today, thank you sir 🫡

[fervent tree]

No problem mate 🫡

[spiral flume]

What could be the problem, if MetaHuman Creator fails to transfer skin weights for LOD 1, but LOD 0, 2 and 4 from the clothing works?

LogChaosClothAssetDataflowNodes: Warning: TransferSkinWeightsNode: Transferring skin weights failed.
LogChaosClothAssetDataflowNodes: Warning: TransferSkinWeights_SimOnly: Transfer Weights Failed.
Failed to transfer skinning weights from the source.

there is no such error during setup in the cloth asset..

[worn willow]

More programming for clothing metahumans using my editor utility I wrote. I added dynamic mask creation to fix poke throughs amongst other fixes. It will continue to evolve, but, all the pieces seem to work now. Body masking in general sort of worked before, but, now I have made it much more reliable and with the new mesh painting approach to dynamically creation meshes in the UE editor, it is pretty much where I want to be. I am going to send this next week trying to bring in more mesh clothing from differen sources incuding Poser and FAB, and then integrate Parametric clothing into the editor utility UI in addition to skeletal mesh clothes. I am not sure what I will do with all this it was written for use in our small studio for Metahuman NPC character creation. I have considered turning it into a plugin and put it out and FAB, but, that seems it would be a lot of pain for very little gain. Maybe I will just put it out as a demo project and make it available to people interested in it. Have any of you in this channel had any experience turning stuff like this into a FAB item or sample project? What would you do? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FId54V9O9RU

[slim sage]

Marvelous Designer Study - Cloth Physics and pattern
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/x36EVY

[viral jacinth]

any idea why the eyes are doing this?

I have re assembled 3 times and it won't fix

its not the metahuman, not sure what it is though

can't replicate the issue in other levels

goes away if post process volume is turned off

eh

seemed to fix

[wary ridge]

Question. How do I go about making a wardrobe asset that I can attach to my metahuman?

Because I have an asset I wanna use, but I can't detach it because it's apart of an outfit.

[gloomy flame]

Wardrobe asset (orange icon) is based on a outfit asset (yellow icon) which uses a cloth asset (red icon). If you would seperate a part you can probably do it in the cloth asset and create a new outfit asset... or if it's already a combined mesh in the cloth asset you can export the mesh and reimport it with the parts you need.

[wary ridge]

Is there like a tutorial on that from recently? I'm a visual learner lmao

[gloomy flame]

Depends a bit what you are trying to do. But this should cover most: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/unreal-engine/creating-parametric-clothing-for-fab?application_version=5.7

[wary ridge]

Well I use 5.6.1, does that matter?

[gloomy flame]

...there are even other tutorial especially if you would create simulated dress, ...

I think it does not differ that much in 5.6 but there' the same in 5.6: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/unreal-engine/creating-parametric-clothing-for-fab?application_version=5.6

[wary ridge]

Basically all I'm trynna do is put the tie into the untextured shirt

Not my assets. They're bought assets

[gloomy flame]

Tie could be simulated... at least it would make sense. So you have 2 assets one with tie and the other one without that should get the tie (just the tie nothing else) right?

[wary ridge]

Yeah no the one with the tie is a full outfit unfortunately

The untextured shirt itself is separate

Quantum Assets made the full outfit with the tie and the long shirt (and more, but you can't see that) and somebody named Cindy made the first one

[gloomy flame]

Yes there is still a chance the meshes from the combined asset are separated. I've done this before for a combined asset from fab. I bought a causual coutfit with sneakers (combined) but would only use the sneakers and I ended up with this

[wary ridge]

And I was going to try and reach out to Quantum, but there's no message thing on Fab

They are dw

The tie unfortunately isn't, so I have to seperate that

[gloomy flame]

Can you check the "Mesh" or "Meshes" folder? QuantumAssets usually have them.

[wary ridge]

Hey uhm?

[gloomy flame]

I've created the foldername myself... so I know from which trader I got stuff (just in case there are issues later). Where did you import your outfit?

[wary ridge]

I imported it from my library in Fab!

Would you like me to do that another way?

[gloomy flame]

No... it's fine from fab. But there are folders that contain your outfit.

[wary ridge]

Tie is stuck to the shirt, rip

I know how to separate the mesh in Blender, but then it's bringing it back into unreal which is the problem

[gloomy flame]

I see. You can just export the SKM_Shirt_Close_Tie as .fbx, open in in a DCC (Blender, Maya, ...) and remove the shirt. Then import the tie alone.

If you've seperated it in Blender already then you are good to go. Just import it again.

Do you have some issues at import?

[wary ridge]

Hold up I'll import it

Is this right? Or is that right?

[gloomy flame]

depends... if you would match it to another cloth part then I would even export the other shirt and sculpt it a bit. Your second shirt is a bit more open.

[wary ridge]

Could I actually export the casual shirt and attach it in blender to the tie? Could that happen?

[gloomy flame]

Yes, you can export the other shirt as well.

Currently I'm migrating old UE4 cloth for my metahumans created years ago in Blender. I start exporting the combined mesh and sculpting the old cloth (drag, drag, drag) until it fits the Metahuman. Afterwards I usually repaint a few of them (low res textures) in Marmoset and finally I import them in UE, create a cloth asset, outfit asset, and wardrobe item.

[wary ridge]

Are they meant to look like that or should I remove the skeleton?

[gloomy flame]

You can remove the skeleton that came with the tie. Both are Metahuman-Skeletons. They look like this yes. But you would use one (or none) finally. You should have vertex-groups with weights (skeletal mesh) already that should be fine.

Just reparent it in Blender to the shirt skeleton.

It depends a bit in this case if you try to make a tie that follows the shirt... or if you would make a tie that follows physics and hang/swing around freely.

...but in both cases you would start with matching the sculpt to the shirt you would use.

[wary ridge]

Do I name it the same title as what I imported it as? Or do I call it something else?

[gloomy flame]

I would give it another name. It's a new mesh. You could still consider to use the combined Quantum outfit at some point.

If you export from Blender and import into UE you have a few possibilities. You can use it as skeletal mesh again. Then choose the skeleton at import in UE that was used already for the other shirt. Or you can export it without the skeleton as static mesh and use Transfer Weights node in the cloth asset afterwards and/or paint some "this parts should simulate and swing around) in the Cloth Asset later.

[wary ridge]

[C:/Users/milly/OneDrive/文档/Unreal Projects/HenryandRick/Content/Fab/MetaHuman/Suit_Shirt_Close_Tie/Shirt and tie combined mesh.fbx : 'Combined_Shirt_and_tie', StaticMesh] No smoothing group information was found for this mesh 'SKM_Shirt_Close_Tie_003' in the FBX file. Please make sure to enable the 'Export Smoothing Groups' option in the FBX Exporter before exporting the file.

That's what it said when I imported it

[gloomy flame]

Cloth usually is smooth.

[wary ridge]

Was already shaded smooth when I imported them to Blender

[gloomy flame]

Did you export the smoothing group (second screenshot bottom)?

[wary ridge]

You know

one sec

Yeah no that's my bad

Got it in Unreal as a static

[gloomy flame]

Ok then create a new cloth asset.

[wary ridge]

Should I have "create cloth asset" as an option?

[gloomy flame]

rightclick empty and search for cloth

[wary ridge]

Got it

But unfortunately this happens for some reason

[gloomy flame]

That's fine. You have to select a source skeleton mesh for Transfer SkinWeights.

[wary ridge]

Is it meant to look like that or am I missing sum?

[gloomy flame]

Uhm... there should be skeleton somewhere... but you don't choose it in the details yet. How is your graph looking actually?

This is a simple graph setup for a static mesh without simulation. The other one the default that's prepared for simulation.

But either way you would most likely start by selecting a base metahuman for the TransferSkinWeights node.

TransferSkinWeights is what you usually do in Blender as a first step (automatic weights) ... it's a bit more accurate as you can use inpaint weights (and inpaint weight maps to exclude). But same as in Blender it's like you have a base mesh already that is weight-painted (the Metahuman) and a cloth mesh without weight yet (which should copy it from the body parts below).

[wary ridge]

Why are there so many steps lol?

[gloomy flame]

Well that's the most important step. The other ones (creating outfit asset, creating wardrobe asset) are easy.

[jagged fulcrum]

i usually use direct skeletal mesh for non simulated cloth, just curious if there are some benefit using cloth asset, or maybe more like better arrangement

[spiral flume]

Only if you want to have resizeable clothing. Otherwise it has a bit of downsides (no custom weights for example)

[spiral flume]

Why 3 times TransferSkinWeights tho?

[gloomy flame]

It's fine as well but I would keep my sources all together, cloth, grooms, metahuman-preassembled. Also you could swap cloth with other chars if you like. Sometimes I got better results with inpaint than with manual painting in Blender. From a pipeline perspective... I just have to get a static mesh and I'm done in Blender, start painting in Marmoset and then put it all together and decide where to simulate afterwards. And I can deal with the LODs at one place.

[gloomy flame]

Because I copy the weight from LOD2 for LOD2, ... LOD0/1 has a lot of weight on the helper bones around the shoulder. LOD2 stops using that bones and has most weight on spine_04 ...at leat at 5.7 (but I guess it was already the case 5.5, 5.6). If I use a cloth without a body clipping mask then the LOD2 metahuman body would clip through the cloth more easily even if it was perfect weight-painted for LOD0.... because the painting for LOD0-cloth does not match LOD2-metahuman anymore (it's like putting a solid brick under a super detailed T-shirt at that LOD level). LOD2 is still perfect visible so should look ok.

[spiral flume]

thanks for the explanation

[mellow notch]

Hi! Has anyone ran into this issue when creating a binding asset for custom grooms? I created some hair for my character in Blender, it imported fine, but when creating the binding asset, it gets stuck at 0%. It doesn't progress or finish, but it is using CPU. I tried to resolve the issue with the information I could find online, but no luck so far

[gloomy flame]

Hard to say. Do you see anything in the Output.Log window?

[mellow notch]

I unfortunately can’t access the Output Log because the editor is completely unresponsive while this is happening

[gloomy flame]

You can open it via text editor. You can find it in YourProjectName/Saved/Logs/YourProjectName.log

But anyway usually creating the binding (right-click on groom asset) should take 1-2 seconds. If it takes longer I guess something went wrong.

[mellow notch]

Right, I thought so. I checked the log, I assume the issue is this: LogSkinnedAsset: Display: Waiting for skinned assets to be ready 0/1 (SKM_character_metahuman_FaceMesh). I read a couple of posts with the same error (like this ), but none of those solutions work for me

[gloomy flame]

Is "SKM_character_metahuman_FaceMesh" still open in some window? Saved already? I remember that waiting for skinned back a few years ago when I was dealing with anim assets/retargetting but never faced it with grooms.

[jagged fulcrum]

You can try dropping the groom and the head at the same location in the level. Make sure they have the same scale and that the groom isn't positioned too far from the head scalp. It's possible the process gets stuck because the binding cannot properly find the correct vertex indices and keeps looping through all vertices to search for nearby ones.

If the size is different, then might need to adjust export import workflow

i think usually i need to scale it by 100

[jagged fulcrum]

I think I have a similar issue with this, but not with grooms. In my case, I reimported the MH skeletal mesh while there was an active Blueprint hard reference to it. The import got stuck forever. After I removed the reference, I was able to import it

[eternal fiber]

Ready to use metahuman character done, available for new project's
DM

[mellow notch]

Thanks, this was it! Hair was dropped at world origin while the head was way up on the Z axis, so I ended up going back to blender, setting the hair at the correct location there and applying, then exporting again, and the binding completed. Thank you both for your help! @gloomy flame @jagged fulcrum

[orchid meteor]

@rotund ruin just saw your job offer in #freelance-jobs re MH retargeting -- you're not accepting friend requests nor DMs from non-friends
I think people interested in the gig might have a hard time reaching out :/

ref:
#freelance-jobs message

[gloomy flame]

Does somebody know a fix for this. Happens with Epics Cloth as well with the ones I created myself. Bright/Dark and mixed roughness feeling -> seems like some normal/tangent issue. Especially in "hands up" Pose. I can't remember such issues with traditional skeletal-mesh cloth in the past. I guess it gets worse from Cloth Asset -> Outfit Asset so maybe it's even some "magic" that happens in the Outfit Asset which puts too much "glue" somewhere. But I'm pretty sure some of those has worng normals (screenshot is Epics Techwear).

[jagged fulcrum]

It looks like the UV is stretched. It's possible the remesh algorithm changed, so I can't really predict the result. In my case, when I use remeshing tools like the UE skeletal mesh simplify tool, the UVs get messed up in some areas. I tried to keep the main LOD intact from the DCC and use it just for lower LODs

[real linden]

Does someone know where I can get a preview mesh that includes the head? I'm stuck with preview skeletal meshes that have no heads, but It's hard to preview animations with that. (m_med_nrw)

[gloomy flame]

Maybe a bit. 🤔 I think streched faces are hard to avoid under the arm. But the issue seems more inside/outside mismatch of normals. Even LOD0 has the issue. It's not only streching the albedo (I would expect this) t's even glossy where it should not be and pure black in contrast to very bright zones (no matter which color the albedo has).

[jagged fulcrum]

I see, could it be a skinning issue? Maybe the DNA is mismatched between the head and body. I think both the body and face have some shared corrective bones

I just realized recently that facial animation uses curve based animation for the DNA to evaluate the bones and morph targets. I usually export translations for facial animation, but I should actually use curves so the animation can be used for other MH faces as well without breaking the face.

I think I need to dig deeper into the body corrective system too. I actually want to add some corrective bones, but it seems the evaluation is exclusive to the MH rig logic

I remember doing some tests moving some MH bones in the DCC. It ended up with the bones going back to their initial positions in UE, causing weird deformations since the skin binding was initialized using the modified bone translations. This didnt happen before Metahuman had body DNA.

[viral jacinth]

please, why?

why it using so much ram for a single MH?

[spiral flume]

MH creator shows deformed backfaces as black spots I think. At least, that's the feeling I got working with it

[gloomy flame]

Did you find a way how to workaround? The mesh is fine... until it's dragged through the Outfit Asset it seems. Also the screenshot is Epics Techwear outfit where it happens as well.

[spiral flume]

thick meshes are prone to getting their inner backface pushed trough the frontface in areas like under the arms or the crotch. If I can I deactivate the back of a thick mesh e.g. in Marvelous Designer, so I only have the front and side as vertices. If not possible, having a thin sim mesh and painting a relax map on the sim mesh often helped to relax the back and front of a thick mesh in those areas in the same amount, so the backface of the back vertices didn't push through anymore.

even thin meshes are prone to getting their vertices deformed unnaturally in those areas, a relax maps helps here too

[gloomy flame]

Sounds like relax map is worth a try. Thanks.

[spiral flume]

the relax map and other skinning maps for metahumans are a different node than the normal weight map node and the result will not be reflected in the cloth asset simulation preview. You need to preview it in the MH creator.

[viral jacinth]

What is the definitive way to mask the body and head areas on metahumans now?

[spiral flume]

That's a typical example I have to relax in basically every cloth I've done so far. The pants even don't have a back side. 2nd image is the result in MH creator after painting the relax map with a value of 0.5

Also you must open it in the dataflow editor to paint those skinning weight maps, the standard cloth asset editor doesn't allow you to paint the skinning nodes.

[spiral flume]

Add a hide faces mask for body and head (head UE 5.7 only) in the wardrobe item asset

Or where you asking, on how to create them?

[jagged fulcrum]

this looks good, is it something like smoothing the weight? or normal/tangent?

i think should consider moving to data flow even for regular skeletal mesh

[spiral flume]

Yeah, I think is smoothes the weights

[viral jacinth]

Can you explain this a little more? I know I need a mask texture which I can create but what do I do with it?

I tried this alpha creator tool on fab but it doesn't work. I want to avoid the metahuman creator wardrobe asset work because I don't understand how I am adding a texture to it.

And that is just the body

All the materials are insanely complex and trying to find where to put the mask ends up with me just breaking everything

They seriously need to simplify this task, it does my head in

I don't think it's as simple as adding the mask in the body material area within the creator ?

[gloomy flame]

You have to add it to the wardrobe asset. 5.6 body ... or 5.7 body+face. I'm not sure if I can follow you about the materials... you don't have to specify anything in the wardrobe asset. If you don't add those parameters for materials then you can just use the cloth as-is without any silders in Metahuman-Creator to override the albedo or something.

[viral jacinth]

I don't understand, sorry

But my clothing is not a wardrobe asset

It's a skeletal mesh that's not in the wardrobe area within the creator

why can't they just add a fucking opacity mask option to the fucking materials my god

[spiral flume]

A skeletal mesh should also be converted to a wardrobe item IIRC

[gloomy flame]

Create a Clothing Asset (red icon) and add your meshes there, create a Outfit Asset (yellow icon) either parametric or simple and add the Cloth-Asset and the Skeletal Mesh as reference there, create a Wardrobe Item (orange icon) and add the Outfit Asset and the Body/Face mask to hide faces there.

[spiral flume]

Because it's not a opacity mask, it literally removes the masked vertices completely from the assembled mesh

[viral jacinth]

But then I get errors that I can't make the mesh a wardrobe item because it moans about levels of detail

[viral jacinth]

Well why are they doing that?

Why remove vertices when hiding is less destructive

I just have to get this problem nipped in the bud because it's been 6 months

[spiral flume]

Isn't it enough to drag and drop the skeletal mesh to the skeletal clothing area in MH creator?

[viral jacinth]

I try that and it moans that the mesh needs at least 4 levels of detail

[gloomy flame]

I'm not sure but hiding still leaves the faces there and probably this messes up AO where some faces think they are inside and are shadowed.

[spiral flume]

ignore that, if you don't need 4 LODs. Or you create the necessary LODs.

Otherwise create a proper cloth asset, where you can use the remesh node to automatically create LOD 1-3

Then you can simply use a static mesh instead of a skeletal mesh (sim mesh not required, I use it in my workflow)

Note: custom weights are not supported by the cloth/outfit asset workflow

[gloomy flame]

I prefer cloth asset for the LODs anyway. It's a lot easier - especially for lower LODs where you even remesh.

The only issue about LODs in the cloth-asset is the bugged preview ... the metahuman always stays at LOD0 for whatever reason if you don't force it via console.

[spiral flume]

Use the dataflow editor, it correctly selects the right LOD for the preview mesh too in the simulation view

[jagged fulcrum]

bruh 😂

[viral jacinth]

It would save constant headaches and broken projects

[viral jacinth]

The problem is, it doesn't add itself to the area within the creator

[viral jacinth]

They are rigged to the metahuman skeleton

But this is what I mean, I am still confused on what I am doing because we have completely shifted the workflow to creating an outfit

I just need body parts hideen

[spiral flume]

static meshes are also getting rigged to the metahuman skeleton in the cloth asset (transfer skin weights node). although with sadly less control. I use the cloth/outfit asset for resizable clothing only due to this.

[viral jacinth]

Thank you for your help, is there a proper YouTube tutorial on this if you know?

[spiral flume]

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/unreal-engine/creating-parametric-clothing-for-fab

[viral jacinth]

I know about that method but I don't need it, it's just more work and more headaches and more crashes and a massive drop in quality from what I have

[spiral flume]

contains basically everything about resizable clothing

[viral jacinth]

I really don't want to make a new clothing asset

It's already rigged, it's everything it needs to be

[spiral flume]

than you can use cloth/outfit asset just to generate the LODs

[viral jacinth]

There must be a way to hide parts of the texture on the mat

[viral jacinth]

What do you mean

[spiral flume]

give me a short moment

[viral jacinth]

If I go on unreal now, I will still be stuck and get nowhere

[gloomy flame]

You can duplicate the skin mat of the metahuman, use the same mask that you would usually drag into the wardrobe item and use it as opacity mask... however I think you are working against the system if you do that. Default -> Metahuman has wardrobe items for your cloth... and grooms for hairs.

[spiral flume]

Create a ClothAsset to remesh LOD 1-3 from your skeletal mesh (img 1). Create a OutfitAsset and select Simple Outfit (img 2). add your LOD cloth asset to the array variable (img 3), evaluate the dataflow graph (img 4, if automated evaluation is not active), save it, right click on the outfit asset and select convert to skeletal mesh (img 5). That should give you your skeletal mesh with auto generated LODs 1-3

[gloomy flame]

...also the mask in the wardrobe item is more than just hiding. Especially at the face the shrinking is important.

[viral jacinth]

It's not that easy though, if it was I wouldn't be here, I can't remember exactly what the issue is but it doesn't work

[jagged fulcrum]

i think there is selection node on dataflow, maybe just select the faces you want to be visible as render mesh, not sure if this is exactly waht you need though

[viral jacinth]

Thank you, I will save this for other outfits that I want to make into proper wardrobe assets

I just need a method that doesn't include me remaking the whole mesh, editing vertices, all that kinda stuff which is insanely intense for such a simple task

[spiral flume]

Never got that running to remove just faces from a render mesh. It always removed the complete render mesh for me. Any hints on that?

[viral jacinth]

I'll try again tomorrow, but I think the problem is is that all these materials are material instances and this is where it becomes a nightmare

[spiral flume]

remeshing preservs the skin weights. Although there is this: #metahumans message

[viral jacinth]

The outfit is already perfectly weighted, I don't want to re weight anything

You can't add opacity maps to instances and the parent is complex to the degree that you can't drag an opacity map to it

[spiral flume]

It's perfectly weighted for a LOD0 metahuman, but have you tried if the weights work with LOD2/3 metahumans?

[viral jacinth]

I don't believe there are issues but I always need lod0 anyway

As this is cinematic work

I still don't know what process to take

[spiral flume]

understandable

[viral jacinth]

I hate being a pain but I want to avoid processes that are too far from what I need because it's going to make my project even more broken

Metahuman creator is also extremely, extremely slow

For no good reason I might add

My pc uses 19gb of ram just loading that window

[spiral flume]

btw. you can create wardrobe item assets in the content browser too. Just tried that for a random skeletal mesh, just select the right pipelines for it and you can add your hide mask in there. that wardrobe item can then be dragged into the the skeletal clothing area of the metahuman creator and outfit the character with it.

[viral jacinth]

This sounds good, what are the right pipelines?

[spiral flume]

look at the screenshot

[gloomy flame]

You don't need to change anything of the complex parts? Just add the opacity mask. Like use the material attributes that go into the final node... split it up once and do make material attributes and only use your mask there. It's the same mask as you would use in the wardrobe item. But just hiding was not enough for my neck parts... as the face-mesh of the metahumans even uses morphs and a different skeleton than the body. Just hiding would leave the neck with an offset (even if the skin is hidden).

...that's when the shirinking gets important (which is the next parameter in the wardrobe item below the masks).

[jagged fulcrum]

ah, my bad, i though it could work for render mesh

[viral jacinth]

That's fair, thank you

Let me try that, hopefully it work out

[spiral flume]

would love to remove some faces via selection from the render mesh, like MH creator does for the body/head. That would save a lot of vertices sometimes.

[gloomy flame]

Interesting. So it seems you can bypass the ClothAsset/Outfit asset that way?

[spiral flume]

Yep

[gloomy flame]

I would still use the ClothAsset coz of the LODs. But good to know.

[spiral flume]

If I don't need resizable cloth, I'd even prefer a skeletal mesh with custom weights. Although I pre-generate it via cloth/outfit asset for transfer skin weights node and the remesh LODs node (if not possible to create better quad meshed LODs in Marvelous Designer) and then improve on the skin weights within unreal skeletal mesh editor.

[viral jacinth]

I appreciate both your of time tonight, may I talk again tomorrow once I am on the pc again

Same time approx

[spiral flume]

As said, you could combine the cloth/outfit asset and skeletal clothing together, thanks to the "Convert to Skeletal Mesh" action of the outfit asset

[viral jacinth]

I don't think it is a cloth asset it's just a rigged skeletal mesh

[spiral flume]

Ah, that answer was for Neutronux ^^

[spiral flume]

But the MetaHuman Skeletal Mesh pipeline is exactly for rigged skeletal mesh use cases like yours.

[spiral flume]

Ooh, also a trick I learned to use with resizable clothing. Pushing the arm lengths to the max length of the respective height creates more space between upper arms and body to better prevent accidental skinning of body cloth parts to the upper arms

[viral jacinth]

already I don't know wtf to do again

These are my body materials

there's no option to put anything anywhere

why do I have a head material as the body's parent

Argh, what do I do, I just want a normal useable metahuman

[spiral flume]

Do not right click on the skeletal mesh, that's not a skeletal mesh action. right click on any empty space, enter wardrobe or use the submenus

[viral jacinth]

Okay i've done it but it won't apply

moaning about levels of detail again

also, once it is in the as a wardrobe item it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove

So, what am i doing now?

Refusing to apply, even if it does, what is the next step, I need the body masked not the outfit

this is impossible

I am just staring at the monitor

any ideas?

I need to break this loop of try for 5 hours, nothing works, try again, nothing works

[spiral flume]

The LODs is just a warning that can be ignored. Can you show me your Wardrobe Item asset?

[viral jacinth]

can't be ignored here, pops up with that error whenever I click

[spiral flume]

that looks correct 🧐

[viral jacinth]

It;s rigged fine, skeletal mesh moves with skeleton

it just wont f**** off

[spiral flume]

which skeleton? just the body skeleton, right?

[viral jacinth]

yes

[spiral flume]

Generate a skeletal mesh with 4 LODs as shown: #metahumans message

[viral jacinth]

Stuck at img1 on that

I don't know where to click

[spiral flume]

It's a bit tedious, but at least it's automatically remeshing it. Or import your LOD0 as LOD1/2/3 to the skeletal mesh, so your skeletal mesh has 4 LODs even if they are all the same

[viral jacinth]

that sounds better, how do I do that

I see I can import a lod, but the option to export is hidden away of course of course

this is madness

How do I get this magic LOD0 exported?

[spiral flume]

in the skeletal mesh editor under asset details -> LOD Settings:

You did you import your skeletal mesh originally? fbx? usd?

The skeletal mesh you imported is your LOD0 (base LOD)

[viral jacinth]

It's part of an asset pack, okay I have the 4 lods

trying again

[spiral flume]

I'm still a bit worried about that error about the Torso_Caste_Guard_RigSkeleton. That error has nothing to do with the LOD warning IMHO.

UE 5.7 could a bit annoying with the validation warnings, driving you to create the 4 LODs.

[viral jacinth]

i added the lods and it is still moaning about it

[spiral flume]

Have you cleared all the previous error messages? Do you wanna DM me that asset pack so I can take a proper look at it? Easier to help that way

[viral jacinth]

ok lod issue seems okay now but it now moaning about the skeleton

it is compatible

[spiral flume]

What is the output if you try to assign the metahuman body skeleton to the skeletal mesh? Any difference in the bones between Currently Selected and Target Skeleton Bone?

[viral jacinth]

good thinking, I was just trying to do that

for some reason my root bone is named root002

how do I change bone names because now this menu is hidden away

every other bone matches

[spiral flume]

does the assign skeleton select the Root as target bone for root002 or does it mismatch?

[viral jacinth]

didnt come up with anything like that

mismatch on root002 originally

not sure what I pressed to make it match now

[spiral flume]

you selected a different skeleton

[viral jacinth]

still the same errors and now the skeletons are broken

this is what I mean

everythign just ends up broken

[spiral flume]

funilly the skeleton can't be edited if you open the skeleton

[viral jacinth]

How do I rename it back to root

see, now where are fixing skeletons :/

just want a masked body

[spiral flume]

but if you open a skeleton mesh assigned to it:

[viral jacinth]

WHY DO I NOT HAVE THAT OPTION

[spiral flume]

Editing tools on the top toolbar -> skeleton on the left toolbar -> click on edit skeleton -> then the option to rename bone appears

[viral jacinth]

okay thank you

[spiral flume]

You need to have the "Modeling Tools Editor Mode" plugin activated to the the editing tools. That is by default active on newly created UE 5.7 projects

[viral jacinth]

man, this has completely ruined the skeleton

which means I need to copy over the whole project again

which means 8 hours today is wasted

the metahuman skeleton is now borked and has that outfit on the skeleton

[spiral flume]

that is just a preview mesh.

[spiral flume]

that doesn't matter

[viral jacinth]

also it didn't change the name

okay, name is changed back, now the base metahuman skeleton has the outfit on it

no idea what I am doing

[spiral flume]

Did you click on Apply to Asset

[viral jacinth]

yes

[spiral flume]

mine also has a random outfit as preview mesh on it. That is not relevant, as it is only a preview mesh for the skeleton

[viral jacinth]

okay cool!

[spiral flume]

just a preview for when you're opening the skeleton. You can always select another preview skeletal mesh for that

[viral jacinth]

HUZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

but now the mask isn't working

[spiral flume]

btw that would be a one star review from me, if an asset pack promises metahuman compatibility, but doesn't even provide a proper wardrobe item asset (either outfit or skeletal clothing pipeline)

[spiral flume]

can you expand on the editor pipeline here?

[viral jacinth]

to be fair to them, the outfit is for 5.6 (my fault forgot to mention) but the bones match

why is it not applying?

only the hands should be showing, but some of the arms are

[spiral flume]

did you use the correct wardrobe item now? as I've seen you had multiple of them from the testing process

[viral jacinth]

yes, this is the test2 one which has the newly assigned mh skele

which is the original

the default etc

this should be applying now, there is no other option

[spiral flume]

settings below the texture are defaults? Have you closed and reopenend the metahuman during testing? most changes require that you reopen the metahuman creator again to see changes.

which is annoying and always takes time, I know

[viral jacinth]

haven't changed those settings

closed and re-opened no change

correction

tried onemore time

[spiral flume]

Honestly, that is was made for 5.6 shouldn't matter. I created outfits for both versions and outfits for UE 5.6 opens without any problems in UE 5.7

[viral jacinth]

working

[spiral flume]

the skeleton didn't change between UE 5.6 and 5.7

[viral jacinth]

I will need to create a new BP_chat for it but I will do this tomorrow as I always run out of ram and crash

[spiral flume]

so that asset pack is borked

[viral jacinth]

I think I am there though

Thank you for being patient with me

[spiral flume]

you're welcome

[viral jacinth]

just need to find my head opacity masks again

gonna try it now while I am here

if I crash I crash

[spiral flume]

yeah, the RAM usage is quite high

[viral jacinth]

3x the normal amount for me

[spiral flume]

I even had crashes with 64GB RAM. It helped to completely restart the unreal editor to cleanup wasted memory

[viral jacinth]

well that is depressing to hear

seeing as 128gb costs more than a house

[spiral flume]

f* crypto and AI

[viral jacinth]

hell yeah!

head mask doesn't seem to be applying

is this a lod0 issue?

[spiral flume]

shouldn't

I would really try a fresh restart of the editor now, after you have added the head mask to the wardrobe item, to be sure

[viral jacinth]

ok lets try

not applied

then again I am using a different material to the original one that gets created when assembling

[spiral flume]

how do you mean that?

[viral jacinth]

actually that wouldn't matter in this instance

because the metahuman in the creator is not using that

[spiral flume]

true

[viral jacinth]

either way it is not being applied

so close 🙁

server errors now when trying to create rig

does anyone actually ever make anything on this?

exhausting

I can try and see if I can apply it via materials and duplicating

what is happening now?????????

hovering head??

[spiral flume]

holy

[viral jacinth]

I think it is ok but where is the opacity map in the head material?

[spiral flume]

I think that seems to be a bug on Epic's side. using a complete black texture to hide the head doesn't work for the skeletal clothing pipeline. Since the hide mask for the head was a new UE 5.7 feature it feels they completely forgot about testing that for skeletal clothing and only tested it for outfit assets...

[viral jacinth]

it does work but it is invisible if that makes sense

once you assemble it is applied

I tried the same mask

[spiral flume]

okay at least something

[viral jacinth]

now I just need to swap it out but can't find it

[spiral flume]

preview borked, assemble worked

[viral jacinth]

also, why is the outfit low quality now

[spiral flume]

Doesn't your opacity mask not work in the wardrobe item, after you assembled it?

[viral jacinth]

probably not, let's check

[spiral flume]

Aah, that's just sometimes the texture streaming in the previews falling back on low resolution. If you open the material it should update its cache and show the high resolution.

[viral jacinth]

i have 32 gb of ram and I am getting warnings all the time that I have 2gb or less left free

I am only using UE, a blank level and discord

no the preview doesn't apply in creator

[spiral flume]

You already have cleared that the preview is borked. Have you assembled the character?

[viral jacinth]

yes, it works but I need to now find where that mask is in a material so I can change it

[spiral flume]

I have that all the time with the low resolution. It is even worse in the preview renders, when I use a bent normal ^^

[spiral flume]

IIRC it isn't a material. It removes vertices/faces from the mesh. You can only apply that via wardrobe item and assembling the character

[viral jacinth]

mine is still low quality in the scene

[spiral flume]

still when you start play in editor?

[viral jacinth]

seems ok now, sorry

[spiral flume]

It's normal that it stays in low resolution in the scene for non PIE viewing. starting PIE always had the high resolution textures for me

[viral jacinth]

there is a way, I'll link the YT comment in a sec

Is it really normal that this single metahuman is taking up 3gb of system ram just by being in my scene?

In an empty level?

Why is my ue using so much

[spiral flume]

Because it's a fully flegded editor, not your final game? have you tried to build a shipping build and look at that RAM usage with your single scene and metahuman in comparison?

[viral jacinth]

I'm only making cinematics but my whole rig is dying just moving things around

And people are making much more intense projects with metahumans on less than half what my machine is

For example, my system absolutely needs more than 32gb just to loads the creator

No level loaded, just that, with zero other programs

I've nearly got the masking down at least, just a messy situation duplicating things

[spiral flume]

how much VRAM?

[viral jacinth]

24gb

No windows page file limit so should use whatever without choking

Set pool size to 24000 in render settings in config

I don't seem to go over 12gb if vram

Ever

Latest studio drivers

I think someone said that unreal hates 3090s or something I don't know, just more BS to deal with

I've even reformatted my computer twice and it's the same issue over 5.6 and 5.7 so that makes me think it is a hardware issue

But then others pipe up with systems having 16gb saying that they're working with multiple metahumans and opening epic levels like electric dream etc on laptops with 16gb

So I don't know anymore

[spiral flume]

And here I am still with my hella old GTX 1070 and 8 GB VRAM 🙈

[viral jacinth]

And let me guess

You can have 30 metahuman orgy with no crashes or slowdowns

Usually how it goes

[spiral flume]

never tried that honestly

max of 2 or 3 metahumans that I needed open at once

But Substance Painter is a whiny little bitch on startup, when UE editor chokes up all the VRAM

[viral jacinth]

Not really sure what the deal is at the moment, this is a project from 5.6 I'm trying to finish and I used to be able to have many MH in the scene, the same as you

Two or 3

I changed just the level alone from high to cinematic and it crashed due to low memory error

[spiral flume]

I usually work with medium in PIE 😅

[viral jacinth]

That is a vram resource though right?

And it's not running out

[spiral flume]

tbh I don't know

[viral jacinth]

So why throw that error

Higher texture res, gonna be vram

Unless I have a stupid system that is somehow magically using system ram as a GPU

Either way I want to smash it with a hammer

I'll see how I get on tomorrow, thanks again!

[untold condor]

can anyone tell me why this is happening? i have tried basically everything i can think of, triple checked the skinning, and tried multiple rigs, but still when i compile the metahuman this happens

the clothes get angry like that

heres the construction script

[viral jacinth]

If memory serves this happens because it is an old metahuman being used in 5.6 or 5.7?

or the outfit is not weighted correctly the skeleton

where did the outfit come from

was the metahuman created in the same version you are using now?

[viral jacinth]

I got this problem when attaching a metahuman head to a skeleton I made on accurig

Scale might be borked

[gloomy flame]

If the cloth mesh looks correct in the skeletal mesh preview (standalone without blueprint) then I think I would try to assemble again in an empty folder (maybe even migrate to a fresh UE project). There's a bug if you export a skeletal mesh over an existing one with the same name via the Metahuman-Creator. There was even a user here that had an imploding cloth when he tried to package (even in that case it was remnants). Looks like the cleanup process from the Metahuman-Creator is sloppy at various places.

[tulip glen]

Hi,
I’m just jumping back into unreal and mocap after a year or so break. I’m trying to figure out the most efficient pipeline/workflow with all the new updates to software. I’m trying to work out the full 3D production pipeline for creating 2 handed prop cinematic animations on metahumans with marvel designer clothes. If anyone has any insight or advice please reach out 🙏🏾 trying to get spun back up on all the new features in the various pieces of software is a little overwhelming 😅

[untold condor]

i made the outfit, and the metahuman was created on the lastest version and the outfit was made specifically for this metahuman

[gloomy flame]

I noticed that you've put the relax before the transferweights. Epics techwear has it the same way. 🤔 Epics legacy outfits has it after the transferweights node. I'm not sure if it makes a difference tho. I'm pretty sure it's not just relaxing the static mesh (would not make much sense). Either way. The issue is normals related. I've found a RecalculateNormals node for the ClothAsset. If you use it in the ClothAsset then the Dataflow Editor preview is already messed up the same way as it appears finally in the MetahumanCreator. It seems like that (a simlilar) RecalculateNormals is done every time a parametric outfit is created and it does not give you any option to keep your normals or modifiy the threshold (what is soft, what is hard). There's a fracture node where you can recalculate and specify at which ° it considers it a sharp edge (like hardsurface) but recalculate normals is without any parameters at all. It just tried to make it soso... for everything that could be cloth (fabric, metal, ...) - so no wonder that it fails even with Epics cloth. But pretty much all nodes are "experimental" anyway - so maybe things get fixed in future. Under the shoulder is most likely always some sharp edge (or you have some transfer weights lottery between arm and spine) so it just makes this a hard edge (even if it's soft fabric in A-Pose). Both screenshots are from Epics cloth. The blue is shaded like it's a hard edge but that's just wrong and relax only shrinkens the affected area. Either way. I ended up using a Simple Outfit instead. It does not touch my normals and that specific cloth is only for one Metahuman anyway...

[jagged fulcrum]

I think this area is one of the hardest areas on a humanoid model. I usually smooth it manually in DCC to fix the stretching since there are a lot of bone influences there, some even need extra corrective or static bones to make it believable

[jagged fulcrum]

This reminds me of Deformer Graph. Some of my friends are experts in it and can fix several deformation problems using it. It's still an area I haven't reached yet, but it looks like a promising solution for solving this kind of problem procedurally

[gloomy flame]

Most anims are ok (arms down, enough shadow so you don't notice a few not optimal normals). Metahuman Creator "BodyROM" Body Anim Template close to 546 (hands up and bending back) is pretty unforgiving. If some normals got recalculated weird then you see those pure black zones in contrast to bright zones. I'm not sure if the deformer could fix this postpone (recalculate again?). I think I would still go with the simple outfit in this case. I don't use any "hands up" anims but I've some OnDeath -> Ragdoll ... which could lead to such poses if I don't lock rotation to some T-Pose for the arms.

[jagged fulcrum]

yeah, it pretty much runs after the skinning process, I guess. can recompute the normal even the skin deformation it self, i think there is a quick YT video for this on how this works using simple node. It has its own deep rabbit hole to dig into, though

[viral jacinth]

Why is this moronic program making my body and head textures grey when I have specifically used overide textures

what is the POINT if it is just going to override them again with these grey broken textures of their own

can someone please explain?

[spiral flume]

If you create an outfit asset resizing graph you can actually see what MetaHuman Creator does with the outfit. And yep, it includes the recalculate normals and sadly the RecalculateRenderNormals variable isn't exposed anywhere.

[gloomy flame]

Usually it shows your overrides again if you click once on topology textures and back to skin. But reading 5.8 preview notes I guess a lot would change about this anyway. There are a many changes to Metahumans incoming and one of them is about the textures.

[viral jacinth]

Great 🙁

[gloomy flame]

That's good to know. Thanks for sharing that info. I would really prefer resizing without forced recalculation (or if recalculation must happen then with a bit more control).

[jagged fulcrum]

I just realized this 5.8, how is the improvement so far? I think i should clean up some dick spaces to tried it

[gloomy flame]

I did not test it yet. Just took a look into the 5.8 roadmap: https://portal.productboard.com/epicgames/1-unreal-engine-public-roadmap/tabs/129-unreal-engine-5-8

For MH:
Control over unbaked texture overrides.
Mesh to Metahuman (Character conversion)
MH Crowd (thousands of MHs)
Chaos Hair (Groom editing, Guide swapping, cards to skeletal mesh, ...)
RigMapper ARkit <-> MH Animator
Live Link Face (realtime)
Chaos Cloth (some updates and production ready)

...and some other improvements that should get handy later (foot definition in retargetting, ...)

[jagged fulcrum]

makes me want to try that full body mesh wrapper

[viral jacinth]

how do you export the head and body meshes now?

siiigh

it was outfit mesh in 5.7

now they have just moved it or deleted it because their adhd has kicked in

Does anyone know?

What is the point in removing it

[viral jacinth]

Seems to be in the export tab but what was exported does not seem to work with metatailor

[spiral flume]

I hope they added that skinning maps can be painted on the 2D view too, like the normal weight maps. Painting on just the 3D view is sometimes quite annoying

[fathom galleon]

i'm only using the metahuman hand.. i'd like to use a post process abp (or other method) to better use the additional hand bones like bulge to make it more realistic. i can't find an example of this

if the bones are there, there should be a way to use them, right?

[gloomy flame]

There's a post process abp for metahumans (even for the body) but the correctives are in a blackbox node called "RigLogic".

Typical workflow over the years:
UE4: Retarget and include the twistbones for counter-rotation if there where any (e.g. holding rifle anim)
UE5: Retarget but exclude the twistbones and let the APB_Postprocess automatically untwist the twist-bones (not the base-anim).
MH: Retarget but exclude the twistbones and let RigLogic deal with plenty of more untwist and corrective-bones.

Screenshot shows a typical "hold rifle idle" anim pose. Correctives are on (and the magic happens in the RigLogic node). If you disable the PostProcess AnimBP (yellow text in the preview) it's basically the same as removing the RigLogic in the APB_PostProcess.

If you have good reason to tinker around with further correctives ...then I would start with adding someting after the RigLogic node (e.g. take a look at the UE5-Manequin PostProcess). RigLogic is more than just a bit of untwisting (and even takes care of LOD) ... so I would not just disable or replace it.

[somber sluice]

I'm using MetaHuman for Houdini and does anyone know how to replace the default mathuman head in the Parametric Hairstyle Generator with my metahuman head?

[fathom galleon]

thanks.. so i can just fetch one of those "looks empty" pp abp.. it sucks that i can't tweak it because my hand has been modified and i wonder if that will break things

oh i can always apply more modifications on top.. but that means knowing what you're doing

is this it? it's not even in use in the default mh character i imported

should i just add this node to an empty abp or should i use the pp abp that was set on the MH body mesh i imported?

[gloomy flame]

Usually it should be in use in the PostProcess ABP (set for the skeletal mesh).

...at least that seems to be default in 5.7 (but I think RigLogic is already default for MH for a while).

[gloomy flame]

I would just use the one you get if you assemble a new Metahuman. If your MH really is missing it then just set same that are used for recent ones for body/face skeleton mesh asset. You can even take a look how the untwisting is done for UE5-Manequin... but I think you're leaving the MH pipeline a bit.

[fathom galleon]

ahhh yes ok. so 5.5 MH had other stuff in the PPABP.. 5.7 MH has the rig logic node.

my mesh is an edited hand that came from a 5.5 MH.. it does have the bulge bones and stuff but idk if it's missing something else

thanks

there's so much to learn with all of this haha

[spiral flume]

There is also a process to unpack the rig logic black box: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/metahuman/metahuman-body-riglogic-unpacking-in-unreal-engine

[fathom galleon]

thanks

[tame agate]

?

I don't know what happen

someone can help

[fathom galleon]

hmm so rigLogic had no effect and using the 5.5 MH stuff has the wrong effect on my mesh. 🙁

pretty sure i could explore and find something that works by messing with scale and stuff..

but when checking out the poses.. it's pretty hard to pick up what it's supposed to do lol!

[gloomy flame]

Assembling the MH as optimized usually expects that you're using strands for LOD0-1, cards LOD2-5, mesh > 5. You can set it to whatever you like in the groom asset.

[gloomy flame]

Did you try to upgrade your MH? https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/metahuman/metahuman-5-7-upgrade-scenarios?lang=en-US

[fathom galleon]

ah. i'm actually thinking of redoing it based on a new MH. i'm only using the hands but I deleted most of the body, recentered and rescaled it and make the lowerarm a limb, parented to the hand_r bone.

so i think to upgrade it i'd have to redo all of that anyway..

[dapper oar]

hello there , I wonder is there a documentation on the bone that drive a meta human face ? I have a monster and I just want the jaw to move using the metahuman livelink

[civic latch]

Is there any pluging for creating clothes for metahumans?>

[weak hatch]

Nope. You'll need marvelous designer or similar if you want custom clothes. But once you've made them everything is inside unreal to do the next step. Just gotta follow the right workflow.

[novel dust]

I made a meta human, imported texture too, it was fine and all and i overrided the face texture but as soon as i exported the rigged model from meta human into content the face texture turned white, i went in face folder and face texture was white i replaced the image texture with what i had but it doesnt uodate in meta human and in meta human it is still white while it has the texture still overridden, Please help!

Im down to join a vc if anybody wanna have a look at my files etc

Please ping me

[gloomy flame]

Usually you should see your override texture again if you click once to the topology-texture and switch back to skin again. In my opinion this is bugged. Probably this would get better with 5.8 (and the override changes).

[novel dust]

🤠 what do i do till it gets fixed?

also do you have any idea how can i change the body colour too?

[gloomy flame]

As mentioned usually if you open the MH-Creator, click once to topology texture (the one where you see the zones of body/face masked with different colors) and then back to normal skin it should work.

[gloomy flame]

Yes, there's an override exactly like it's for the face. But I'm not using it for any of my MHs. I usually only use the black texture to get rid of that super-big underwear.

[novel dust]

so like i wanna make the whole body blue plus i wanna make the body to a body of a kid, it doesnt let me do that as well, will have to look it up, ill try the topo texture thing you told

so in the bottom left corner you can see i have the blue face texture, but it turned white after i exported my textures from meta human to content

[gloomy flame]

Yes, it's set but it's not used. I know that issue. This is how my metahuman usually starts. Then I click topology, then back to skin.

If you can't create a child with the silders you most likely wanna do some comform. Like wrap the metahuman topology on a shape of you kid ... and then use coform in Metahuman-Creator to use it instead the sliders. You can use Wrap3D (or Zwrap) for that purpose. I think 5.8 even makes this step a bit easier (like you should be able to convert any human mesh into a MH) but I did not test it yet.

[novel dust]

i switched it to topology and then back to skin but its still white for some reason, also if i delete the overrid now and then add the texture again the skin will stay the same as the body and it will not affect anthing on the face, sounds like a bug to me honestly

[novel dust]

oh yeah i think i can transform it using warp4D, ill try it out

[gloomy flame]

Do you have a star next to the "Download Texture Sources" button?

[novel dust]

yeah i did that

ill do it again?

[gloomy flame]

Even with the albedo override the detail maps are from the original material I think it struggles if there's something missing.

But even if the textures are downloaded... it usually always startsup with a white face.

[novel dust]

okay i did that, nothing happened

do you wanna take a look at contents maybe?

'so now i deleted the override and added the texture again and it stays like that

it works when i make new meta human tho

[gloomy flame]

I remember I had such an issue in the past ... but I'm not sure how I fixed it. Probably restart the MH creator (or UE).

[novel dust]

like i can work with the new meta human but what is the issue i dont get it

[novel dust]

i did multiple times tbh

[gloomy flame]

It's mixing your albedo with the details map of the metahuman so I'm not sure probably if it's missing something locally it does not work like expected.

[novel dust]

buti have everything there, so originally when i exported the textures right, my face material was white with the white image as base with i think amb occlusion on it and i replaced it with the texture that i used but it still didnt work

so idont know why my texture didnt get exported with those textures

[gloomy flame]

Yeah in my opinion it's bugged.

[gloomy flame]

I'm not sure what to expect from 5.8 tho. Tested 4 of my MHs... MH-creator is crashing 100% if I try to open any of them.

[gloomy flame]

...ok I've fixed the 5.8 preview crashes. Just in case anybody else is running into it. You need to set the Editor Pipeline in Wardrobe items. Seems like 5.7 had a "default" fallback and 5.8's fallback is to crash.

Log shows cast is going to nowhere:
2026.05.20-19.40.44:775][710]LogWindows: Error: === Critical error: ===
[2026.05.20-19.40.44:775][710]LogWindows: Error:
[2026.05.20-19.40.44:775][710]LogWindows: Error: Fatal error: [File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\CoreUObject\Private\Templates\Casts.cpp] [Line: 10]
[2026.05.20-19.40.44:775][710]LogWindows: Error: Cast of Package /Script/MetaHumanDefaultEditorPipeline to MetaHumanItemPipeline failed

[fading tangle]

New game character designed by me...

[civic latch]

How did you create the uniform?

[plucky grail]

Hi, I heard there was a demo/sample project showcasing how to make a character creator using metahumans, anyone know the link to it?

[serene grail]

Some wip

[civic latch]

Incredible

[scenic mason]

Some progress on my Five Deadly Venoms project...

[civic latch]

Great job.

[frosty gyro]

in the documentation there is Fixed (Compatibility), but mine there is no Fixed (Compatiiblity) menu

[native spire]

(❤️ Thank you)

[hard dagger]

2nd!

[spring shuttle]

Exciting

[native spire]

Not to go too deep into specifics right away, but does anyone else find it strange that these 'common/shared' bodies have heads, but they don't have a material slot applied?

You end up with these monstrosities 😄

Also, need to dig into documentation, but as soon as you force higher than LOD1, it seems to break a lot 😄

[native spire]

Ahh yes

[plucky kelp]

t i m

his name should be t i m

[opaque wave]

has anyone gotten access to it already?

I applied like 1-2h ago still nothing

hopefully I can get something

[patent pollen]

I have gottten access

I requested it 5 mins after their youtube video got published

It took a few hours before I got access

[native spire]

Says access can take up to a few days 🙂

[patent pollen]

Yeah I'd expect you're in a waiting list, probably expect days not hours at this point. But maybe you're lucky

[native spire]

I think I caught it about 30 minutes after 'launch' on twitter, and I'm still waiting

[patent pollen]

Are there other people who have got access? I seem to be having an issue downloading the output

[native spire]

Still, you can mess with the Quixel Bridge characters

[opaque wave]

I wouldn't assume I'll be lucky but for someone who applied while it was already literally overloaded I might have to wait a whule

[opaque wave]

those 50 are more than enough to blow up my pc with for the mean time

lol

[native spire]

Haha yes, my PC is running like molasses right now

[opaque wave]

what's your rig?

[native spire]

GTX 1080, 32gb ram, i7 3770k, I think - it's been a while

[opaque wave]

it's still really good though ik people who develop with megascans on 1050ti's

is it pain? it is. but they're still damn good at what they do

it's the artist not the tools

(although it's better when the tool isn't a heater)

[patent pollen]

yeah you can work in higher LOD

[opaque wave]

I have a 3080 and a 9900KS

it's very good

doesn't hold me back at all

[native spire]

Oh for sure, you can do a lot with not a lot of rig

[patent pollen]

soul did you expect something else? :p

[plucky kelp]

oh lol I use megascans at 4k on a 580 xfx

[native spire]

Mostly it's the strand hair doing it, but I can't work out how to get card hair to show

[opaque wave]

no lmao

[native spire]

Above LOD2, he's just bald

[patent pollen]

r.hairstrands.strands = 0

[opaque wave]

I mean if you really want to go through the pain then maybe isolating the hair and using LOD?

[patent pollen]

@native spire r.hairstrands.strands = 0

Oh that is actually missing for some characters

[native spire]

Yeah, first thing I did was disable strands (sadly) 😄

[patent pollen]

It says so in the Bridge UI when you download the character. Some just don't have that built yet

[native spire]

Ahh okay, guess I will need to wait a bit for the editor 🙂

Thanks though!

[opaque wave]

I thought they came with editable hair?

or not yet

[patent pollen]

Yes but some hair styles are strand + LOD 1 & 2 only

[native spire]

First thing for me is 'how viable is an in-engine customiser', so I'm going to be deep into these test characters for a while I think

[opaque wave]

right yeah

[patent pollen]

@worldly dove nope, I am probably running into the same issue as you, where you can't export due to not having source files? yes?

[patent pollen]

The Epic MegaScans editor app is actually a browser-served Unreal based customizer

[native spire]

Oh, yeah I know 🙂

More talking about using the output to create a UE4-based one 🙂

[patent pollen]

Well, it already is, is my point.

[native spire]

(although more limited, based on my project needs of course)

[plucky kelp]

My god... there are premade MetaHumans in Quixel library 😮 .. this is going to hurt a lot of character sellers on marketplace 😆

[patent pollen]

That didn't seem to work for me. Did it work for you?

[native spire]

Oh I see, yeah it's just not something you can serve to players right? That data would need to be included in the build for them to use the characters it spits out

[plucky kelp]

when that thing fully releases they all are gonna be hurting

[patent pollen]

Seeing as the entire thing probably has a several TB storage backend it has to be served via web. But the components are interchangeable from each to every other character

There's youtube videos about it too, if you're interested

[native spire]

Yeah, that's basically what I'm looking into now, because obviously when you export a character, the body/head is fixed. Creating a way for players to morph between body types/heads in-game without using the web-based editor is my goal 🙂

[plucky kelp]

quick question guys

[patent pollen]

Well, it will definitely be easier if you take discrete steps, not the full linear morphing ability. But I don't know your usecase.

[plucky kelp]

since metahuman is cloud based, i don't really need to free up 100gb of space just to store the assets in my library right

unless i export

[native spire]

Unless you export, no

But they look to be just over 2GB a character

[patent pollen]

you only download a character, they are (let me check)

[plucky kelp]

ah shit

[native spire]

Exported (8k Quixel Bridge)

[plucky kelp]

2gb for a character lol

[patent pollen]

there

[plucky kelp]

that's pretty ridiculous

[native spire]

Thats with all the bits you might not need though

[plucky kelp]

I have no idea why but I hATE cloud based stuff lol, but I cant complain

[patent pollen]

not really, it's not game quality, it's virtual production quality

[native spire]

You can strip out unused assets after

[patent pollen]

You can strip a lot out of those 2gb if you want to

[native spire]

Reduce texture usage, reduce LOD count, cut down on texture resolution, etc.

You can get that under 1GB per character easy, but I've not tried more than that yet

[plucky kelp]

why not export 4k?

[native spire]

Can do, I just like having source/highest available 🙂

[plucky kelp]

i always downsize my textures to 2048x and under for game use so i guess it's gonna be 1gb for me

[native spire]

And throttle the max size in editor

[patent pollen]

For some you can do a lower export. But expect to be stripping the asset if you want to use it in a game. They can't do everything for you beforehand

[plucky kelp]

same, but when your downloading 4,000+ assets at a time the file size becomes scary

[native spire]

Yep, it's a jumping off point not a final destination

Unless you're doing VP

[plucky kelp]

basically for games

[patent pollen]

Yep. Besides how much costs a few terabytes of hard disk space?

[plucky kelp]

if you're tryna optimize your game for 4k

[native spire]

I bought a 2TB SSD when Quixel Bridge was bought by Epic

Still filling that up 😄

[plucky kelp]

2048 will look good enough for 'high quality models'

[plucky kelp]

to buy a hard drive?

[patent pollen]

Yeah it's cheap as dirt nowadays

[plucky kelp]

above that are for when you're making a game to be ran on 5k / 6k / 8k res

[native spire]

I mean, 4096 is a quarter the size of 8k remember.

[plucky kelp]

If there was any thin chance for me to change engines, it is all gone. Pretty much tied to Unreal Engine for life now, there are just too many way too many free benefits.. All as planned by Epic, I suppose. I just got C# running in my game, so I really now got everything I could miss from anywhere else. I wonder how characters sellers are going to adapt to this new reality tho

[patent pollen]

Well textures are part of the whole, but there's more to consider

[native spire]

Huge savings even dropping to 4k textures

[plucky kelp]

yeah

[native spire]

And reduce your albedo more, keep a higher normal

[plucky kelp]

8k textures are for vp lol

[native spire]

And burning your PC through the floor 😄

[plucky kelp]

same, I used to be a diehard unity user, but with quixel, I just cant use it anymore, Unreal for LIFE wheeeee

[native spire]

Nice and warm in my room

[plucky kelp]

my room jumps at least 30f when I run my pc for a bit lol

[plucky kelp]

i mean if you have the balls to go 8k tex you prolly have a mac pro with wheels option

lmao

[patent pollen]

Yep it's their masterplan. Funnel fortnite money into conquering the digital world

[native spire]

Nahh, just my GTX1080 😄

[plucky kelp]

._.

[native spire]

I enjoy the flipbook framerate

[plucky kelp]

1080 is a pretty good still

many ppl still use 1060s and 1050tis

[native spire]

Without strand, no texture downscaling

[plucky kelp]

im so confused, people say 1080 is bad, but my amd 580 runs well, I dont get it why I am so dumb lol (a 1080 is almost 62% performance jump aaaaaaaaaaa)

[plucky kelp]

no eyebrows?

or is that lod model

[timber pagoda]

Hi there, didn't get my submission accepted yet, I can't wait! How is the hair creation system?

[plucky kelp]

would like to ask this as well

[native spire]

-1 LOD with strand hair turned off

[plucky kelp]

i 'just submitted' the form

-1?

you mean forced 0 right

[native spire]

-1 (auto)

[plucky kelp]

ah

yeah that's just like cvars

[native spire]

0 would be forced LOD0 🙂

[plucky kelp]

-1 to auto

[native spire]

I haven't worked out how to set a new lowest LOD yet. Seems it's either force higher LOD all the time or auto from 0-8

[plucky kelp]

guess imma have to stick with forced lod0 / lod1 for recording demo footage and rendering screenshots

[native spire]

From what I've seen I don't think the focus right now is on hair creation btw, I would imagine at most to expect premade hairstyles with a length slider.

[plucky kelp]

and color custo maybe

[native spire]

But there seem to be a decent selection even in the Bridge examples

Oh, yeah colour, but you can modify that in UE4 easy enough

[plucky kelp]

my focus would be mostly on facial features and animations, as that has been the biggest pain for me

[plucky kelp]

not as easy when it comes to gradations

[native spire]

The facial rig worked right out of the box for me with these Bridge assets

[plucky kelp]

oooooo

cant wait to try it when I get back home

[native spire]

Just connected the iPhone and it worked 🙂

[plucky kelp]

also using tint can harm the texture quality unless you're using dxt5 or bc7

[native spire]

Depends on the use case I guess. For my use case, tinting the hair is going to be the cheapest solution 😄

[plucky kelp]

yeah

just don't forget to set the texture compression to bc7 lul

when it comes to hair albedo

I wonder in the future if you could create a metahuman by clicking on a country on a globe, russian, white, black, asian, etc...

[native spire]

Well I'm super confused, because apparently LOD0's current texture is 1k

[plucky kelp]

mid res lol

which type?

albedo?

color mask?

orm?

[native spire]

full body normal map

[plucky kelp]

jesus wtf

[native spire]

Don't know how that's possible

I guess it's probably blending skin detail normals separately

[plucky kelp]

you can upsample the texture to 2k with reconstruction, reimport it and then mix it with tiled micronormal

if that's needed

@native spire mind if i ask you a question?

[native spire]

Sure!

If that's 1k I don't need more resolution 😄

[plucky kelp]

how long did it take for you to get accepted for the beta?

[native spire]

I haven't been yet 🙂

[plucky kelp]

ah

[native spire]

Just playing with the Bridge assets

[plucky kelp]

sample assets

that makes sense

[native spire]

Wow

For reference, I applied for access 30 minutes after it went live

[native spire]

Came across this video from someone with closed beta Metahuman access https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnIgUXSEypg

Wow, so I was under the impression you only had the ability to blend the real head scans, but the fine-tune editing in that video proves otherwise. Awesome!

[lime lotus]

the best thing is you can take upto 6 other heads and blend them in, and manipulate specific parts of the face to blend too. It's insane.

[native spire]

Can't wait to try that

[opaque wave]

Damn if you did it 30min after and still haven't gotten access, then yeah, I'm pretty sure I'll have to wait a bit

I mean I just got access to the Caustics from nvidia so playing around with that in the mean time will be fun

[sly minnow]

judging by the email, I think we'll all have access in relatively short order. That said, I too am very very excited 😄

[opaque wave]

like

even without a rig

maybe with some pointers and some help from video footage we can pull off some decent looking characters

that's literally limitless potential for animation, NPCs, everything

it's fucking insane what Unreal is doing

[sly minnow]

I've been playing with control rig the last few days and am very excited to see about working with CR and MH together

[opaque wave]

wait what's MH?

[sly minnow]

metahumans

[opaque wave]

oh yeah

like just imagine what you can do with some basic animating skills

[sly minnow]

I have a bad habit of shortening things and just expecting people to get it 😄

[opaque wave]

does anyone know of any ways to do motion capture without fancy equipment?

and by fancy I mean Iphone lol I can't get an AR capable device rn

[native spire]

VR kit is about as close as you can get without spending thousands

But even that is 1000+ dollars

[tulip crest]

Is there a way to render metahumans on a UI? I hope it's possible. I know a way with render texture but it seems to make me lose like 20fps minimum

[opaque wave]

the whole body? because you could get a neck-up view and it'd still look good without crushing your frames

[tulip crest]

yeah

[opaque wave]

if it's an inventory ui you could make it so that it only renders each part of your body you're manipulating

but

[native spire]

Try a lower LOD in your MH render target

[tulip crest]

generally speaking the only way I know is through render targets

[opaque wave]

whole body is going to chip away your fps unless you do LOD

[opaque wave]

like he said

[native spire]

Or only update when changes are made

Which you should be doing anyway tbh

[opaque wave]

unless it's some dramatic menu with animations

but that's insane to do

so prob not

[native spire]

Basically, use a LOD without strand hair, check for UI input (camera rotation around character for example) or equipment changes, render one frame, and then freeze it

[opaque wave]

that'll have 0 performance impact

[native spire]

Could also use a lower Res render target while moving, then switch back to a higher res frozen one

[tulip crest]

what if i want the model to move while displayed on the UI?

Ah okay

[native spire]

It will reduce performance loss when not interacting with the character directly, which is probably quite a lot between clicks, etc. It adds up

But yeah, reducing render target resolution, MH LOD, etc is your friend here

All uncharted territory though of course

[opaque wave]

you'll be the first of many

ngl I'd love to have a MH model in my UI

but

uncharted lol

[native spire]

I'll have to set this up next week so maybe I'll write up a guide if I work it out

Got a mannequin in my inventory already, so it'll just be optimizing the MH implementation of it

[tulip crest]

did you notice a performance loss tyler?

[opaque wave]

If the character is far enough in the UI then it's easy to hide the LOD and lack of mesh hair

[tulip crest]

My initial thought was something like CK3

but didnt seem EU4 was well optimized for 3D models in a UI, but i'll give it another try with target resolution changes

[sly minnow]

Depending on what you're doing with models in the UI you could also prerender those textures rather than having an actual model at runtime

[tulip crest]

actually that's a great idea!

[clever patio]

How much ram will I need to run the metahuman creator?

[weary zodiac]

📘 MetaHuman Resources
MetaHuman Creator FAQ: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq?active=metahuman-creator
Request early access to MetaHuman Creator: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman-creator-apply
Launch the app (once you have access): https://metahuman.unrealengine.com/

Docs
MetaHuman Creator User Guide: https://docs.metahuman.unrealengine.com/en-US/UserGuide/
MetaHuman Creator How-Tos: https://docs.metahuman.unrealengine.com/en-US/HowTos/
Using MetaHumans in Unreal Engine: https://docs.metahuman.unrealengine.com/en-US/MetahumansUnrealEngine/

Videos
MetaHuman Performance and Scalability Settings: https://youtu.be/bPMEASc1rbo
Using the MetaHuman Facial Rig in UE: https://youtu.be/GEpH3o44_58
Animating MetaHumans with Control Rig in UE: https://youtu.be/2k2gNc_7CT0

[weary zodiac]

Here's some resources, folks. Hope it helps you get started. Have fun creating!

[clever patio]

Will metahumans have some kind of AI that will try to build a model from a picture, or are we going to have to do that on our own

[junior hound]

"Can I use characters generated in MetaHuman Creator for deep learning?
No. MetaHuman Creator and the MetaHuman assets may not be used for the purpose of building or enhancing any database; training or testing any artificial intelligence; machine learning; deep learning; neural networks; or similar technologies. "

[terse depot]

I keep consistently misreading it as meathumans

[west wasp]

@junior hound that part is controversal...it cant be used with AI at all? i mean to be controlled by one

"MetaHuman assets may not be used for ... testing any artificial intelligence"

[native spire]

context implies AI / machine learning, not gameplay AI

That would be ridiculous

[west wasp]

some games use machine trained AI for the gameplay

[native spire]

Apologies, haven't started on that yet

I would think that is fine because you're not using the data to inform machine learning, it's just being used to display the data on a character

[west wasp]

So it's fine as soon as it used for visualisation?

[native spire]

It seems so, as long as the MH data isn't used to train AI. If it's used to visualise gameplay AI that's different

But IANAL so no idea, but the idea we couldn't add gameplay ai to these characters is so silly it can't be that

It would be like giving you photogrammetry scans but telling you that you can't use them to make environments 😂

But quite a poorly worded bit of text, because it doesn't specify the obvious. A little too broadly worded

[terse depot]

With gameplay AI, the AI module is only connected to the character movement. Through there, the character movement code updates the visuals, so the AI does not directly interface with the metahumans/the visualization

The way text is worded, it seems like the direct use of the metahumans in anything related to AI/ML would be restricted

Can't use their data as inputs and outputs, can't render them and use their image as input to a ML

But it for sure needs clarification

[west wasp]

sorry but i can write the abp to use blendshapes and control them by a bp...

[terse depot]

I think that's fine

You're not training or enhancing anything that way, just displaying an output of an otherwise self-contained model

You're not rendering the scene to use ML to identify humans and aim a gun turret at them

[west wasp]

Indeed. I'm interested in the output.

[terse depot]

I think that should be fine then, but also I insist on getting clarification from Epic directly

[terse depot]

I think this might actually violate the UE4 license even if you weren't using metahumans

[tulip crest]

A general question: If I want a low poly character say for the purpose of ai (can have dozens of them), can I use a high poly character and use LODs, or should I create a new 3D model not scaled to Epic, with fewer bones? Do all bones tick even when low LODs are enabled? This is general question, not specific to metahumans

[terse depot]

I would use a custom skeleton for them myself

Just to prepare them and make them for this custom skeleton right away

Then retarget the animations

[tulip crest]

but to retarget animations, don't I need to have the same bones?

[terse depot]

But this isn't a real answer to your question, I am not sure if there is any efficient bone culling happening, but iirc it should happen

If the bone has no vertices influenced, it is omitted

But the entire bone chain persists even if only the end bone affects vertices

[terse depot]

Not really, just similar bone layout

[tulip crest]

so let's say walking animation that doesnt affect facial bones, facial bones would not be ticking right?

[terse depot]

So they must be in the same rest pose (or you adjust the rest pose to make it same), must be comparable in shape, there must be a mapping of bones set up right (so all bones of UE4 skeleton know which bones they correspond to)

[terse depot]

If the facial bones are not weighted to anything, then they will not calculate iirc, but don't believe me literally, I haven't dug in-depth into skeletal mesh rendering

[tulip crest]

ok thanks

[terse depot]

But ultimately, I just don't wanna worry about this in principle, so my choice is always custom skeletons for all the things

[elfin whale]

oh no...

this... is terrible as it cuts lots if possibilities for sim2real enhanced datasets... 😥 they must have their reasons to not allow it

as one of the co-creators of the robotrix dataset, this is bad =/ hopefully they clarify their reasons

[plucky kelp]

wow, just wow. Got early access and its absolutely amazing! Well done to the developers

[vale sky]

i want innnnn

[plucky kelp]

its unbelievable!

[weary zodiac]

Still waiting on my access, too.

Looks neat though.