Unreal is rolling out more tools for their Ureal Ecosystem, to now make humans for the Unreal Engine. The only other competing Character generators are Daz3d and a Reallusion Character Creator. Which I was contemplating of getting, maybe now I might wait. Though I am not sure if it will run on a Legion Laptop.
For a solo indie dev looking for AAA character this can be a good thing so you don’t have to waste time making a realistic looking human for your game. Assuming you are making a realistic game.
AskNK Takes MetaHuman for a Spin You need those Nvidia RTXs to run it this fast
I am reminded on Appleseed and Vexille making of that I saw years ago the creators there design their own human styles and not go with a realistic look this is while inefficient makes it better for a custom style wise.
I can see this used a lot in Arch Avid or commercials. Though I am unsure on the uptakes. For a person that wants to tell Stories and have a lack of time to focus on Technical skills, this can be a game changer.
No Anime Style
One thing I can see Metahuaman cannot do is making anime style characters that are custom designed (Neko Girl Meow!).
Limits of the Tool
One of the Reddit Threads are looking at what the tool cannot do. Example of things such a tool won’t cover :
- Any art style outside of realism
- Anything around creatures, monsters, aliens
- Anything outside the realm of “current day” realism : scifi, fantasy, etc.
- Anything that has specific AD for clothing
- Any studio who doesn’t want to use unreal might need to do their own tool and still need support from artist
Conclusion
Meta Human is great if realism is your Art Style is realistic. I do not know what is the extent of the library of clothes or character presets they have based on the preview Can be agame changer in making NPCs Type Characters. Thought I am not sure how the Art cohesion would be between the NPCs and Hero Characters.
I am assuming it will be free for Unreal Projects though I am not sure how good the export will be to other DCC apps.
other things not mentioned are the custom clothes it will ship with.
Links
- https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/377303/Epic_Games_new_MetaHuman_Creator_will_let_devs_build_hifi_humans.php
- https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/digital-humans
- https://gamefromscratch.com/metahuman-creator-by-unreal-engine-announced/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/lgvhnv/meet_the_metahumans_free_sample_now_available/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=tp_num_comments
- https://cgsociety.org/news/article/5051/epic-games-announces-metahuman-creator-for-realizing-fast-high-fidelity-digital-humans-powered-by-unreal-engine (CG Society)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/lgxqz0/epic_metahuman_character_creator/
