Metahuman Customization

In this tutorial I take you through using MetaHuman Creator (MHC), customising your head appearance there, then exporting to Maya for the initial setup. I then show you that you can make modifications to the base shape using Zbrush, or anything really, then blend the head shape to that new form. This gives rise to the ability to make even more unique character faces. The benefits of this is that you have a fully rigged face ready to use with Facial Capture or Sequencer animation, complete with realistic textures already provided via Unreal Engine!

• Please See common issues at the bottom of this page.

Part 1 - The Meta Human Creator

Part 2 - Setting up In Unreal Engine and re-binding the hairs

Part 3 - Using Xgen in Maya to create new hairs, exporting and rebind to updated head mesh in UE4

Part 4 - (Extra Content) - Using level sequencer to animate the face, refining the hairs some more.

Required: Maya 2020, Unreal Engine 4.27, Zbrush or similar.

Supplemental Video 1:

FAQ / Things that may happen:

FIX for UE5 users experiencing grooms from existing Metahuman meshes going missing: In UE5, Project settings, search for skin, look for Skin Cache, change default skin cache behaviour to inclusive.

If the control rig no longer works in Maya, follow these steps: https://help.quixel.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003342738-Removing-the-Maya-Plugin
If the control rig does not work in UE4, make sure the order is DNA Asset, Asset Guideline when doing that part, sometimes it can change itself after you re-import and updated base-mesh. You also need to open the blueprint, compile and save. Sometimes the dna asset needs re-assigned.

If you are manipulating a characters eyes or mouth, be mindful that the eyes and teeth should not be moved as this could cause unwanted cut-through. You can potentially scale them (via mesh editing).

After reimporting a base mesh, the groom bindings need to be rebuilt followed by CTRL+S to save and update.

Important things to note: Changing the shape of the mesh will not change the position of the joints that deform that face, so the more you change it from the original metahuman mesh, the more the distortions may fall out of position when animated, it has to be quite extreme though, and for the most part, as long as you keep the eye positions the same (you can rotate or scale). The trick is to export the eyes also into Zbrush while you work on the changes so that you do not deviate from the original eye positions, also try to keep the mouth at the same location too. This method can be used for most cases, but if you want perfect results, the DNA file would need to be regenerated using other methods not yet available.

Also, I recently created a tutorial on scanning your own face and using Agisoft Metashape to prepare a scan and then use it as your character, this has also been seen in recent Metahuman workflow videos where you can turn a scan into a metahuman, I will also include this process in a future video.

Common issues: 

• When importing the Groom to Unreal the scale should be -1,1,1 and rotation as 0,0,180 based on my own workflow, this may differ and need testing (Based on Z-up in MAYA)
• In UE5 the Hair may not show up, to fix this, go to project settings and search for Skin, find the dropdown that says exclusive and change it to inclusive (in 5.03 make sure the checkbox for Support Compute Skin Cache is also checked), then save and recompile your blueprints that have the groom attached. Save and restart unreal, then choose "Remove guideline" from the pop up dialogue. Save and all should be well.
• Please avoid using 'Blend Shapes' in Maya as it won't work the way you want it to, please use the Shape Editor and Lock attributes for this to work correctly.
• If you see shading issues around the eye lids when closing the eyes like the normals are wrong. Choose the head mesh and choose unlock normals and then set the smoothing to soft. Save and Restart Maya and check it's fixed, sometimes it wont work but once it stays it will be good for exporting. If it shows in UE then try it again. This may not be the right or best solution for this one as it is a new issue I've only seen a few times and recently been raised.