Customise your MetaHuman | Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial

we just customized our metahuman from this to this we resculpted the face and the body completely Chang it textures and added horns and we are going to teach you exactly how to do it step by step in this video we're going to show you the fastest and most efficient workflow for customizing your metahumans mesh its textures and even the eyes and the teeth without the use of any additional paid plugins we are also going to teach you how to add any items to your meta humans like this horn or this or this or this this is Darth Maul from Star Wars created by using far Hud's metahuman that means I went from this to this to this but there's no way you can customize it to look like this in Unreal Engine alone you are going to need to customize them outside in blender and substance painter even if you're a beginner don't worry because we're going to walk you through every step of the way to make sure you don't hit any road blocks let's go first first we need to find references for the character we're trying to create in our case it's Darth Maul for the mood board we're using a free software called Pure ref open Onre engine and begin with a blank project first you'll want to add your metahuman to the scene you can either use one of the existing DN in quickel Bridge or choose one that you've already created we previously shown how to create your own metahuman in another video so feel free to watch that if you're interested in creating a custom meta human since we want to work on the exposed body you are going to need to download a metahuman that is not wearing any clothes and preferably has slippers on locate your metahuman in the content browser and drag its blueprint into the viewport next head over to the details panel and reset the location there he is stuck in the floor create a level sequence because that's how we are going to export the character oh look at his feet he's got sleepers on let's remove it go inside the character blueprint in the viewport go ahead and select feat in the details panel under this skeletal mesh asset you should see the slippers go ahead and reset it compile save and exit this window check the feed the sleeper should be gone by now drop your character into the sequencer by selecting it in the viewport then hit track actor to sequencer and you should see add bp- your met human name right click the character blueprint and select export you'll be exporting an fpx file simply choose your preferred save location remember to uncheck vertex color and level of detail while ensuring export morph Target is selected these morph targets are similar to shape keys in blender we are going to use them for our customization process and now it's time to export our face and body textures the process for the body material is straightforward go to the metahuman blueprint select body in the left panel in the details panel on the right locate the mbody synthesized material click on the magnifier icon to find it in the content browser open the material and find the base color and normal map start with the base color locate it using the same magnifier icon then right click choose asset actions and select export follow the same steps for the normal map for the face textures you can access all of them directly in the face folder within your metahuman blueprint folder but if you can't find them here's an alternative open your metahuman blueprint and select face on the left panel on the right you'll see a list of materials used for the head including eyes teeth and Etc we're only interested in the face itself so head synthesized baked is the material we need to locate in the condom browser you'll notice that the face materials have multiple versions for different lods that stands for level of detail the higher the LOD number the lower the quality we need the highest quality so choose the version without any LOD designation we'll explain more about lods later in this video Once you open the material you will notice hundreds of settings don't be overwhelmed they're there to ensure our metahuman face looks photorealistic scroll down till you see the color Maps yes I said Maps because there are multiple of them and now scroll down to see the normal Maps the reason why metahumans have multiple color maps and normal Maps is because while they're being animated the engine will actually blend in between these different maps to increase photo realism the various color Maps represents different states of blood flow Under the Skin exaggerating the redness in areas where the face is wrinkled on the other hand the alternating normal Maps represent the actual changes in wrinkles on the face as we move the muscles around and now let's locate all of the base color Maps the suffixes you're looking for are main 1 2 and three shift select all of them right click choose asset actions and then export follow the exact same process for the normal maps with all of our exports complete it's now time to close on real engine and move to blender to start our customization let's go inside blender if we import the fbx file of our metahuman we will notice that the morph targets also known as shape keys are not imported correctly to get blender to recognize these morph targets properly we need to convert our fbx file using a free software called Autodesk converter you can download it from the link in the description open the software drag the fbx file into the Autodesk converter and click convert this will automatically create a new folder containing a new fpx file in the same location as the original file and now with our newly converted fpx file let's import our metahuman once again there we have it our metahuman is now in blender to view the metahuman more clearly you can hide the armatures by pressing H check the face and you should see all the shape keys on the right side let me explain to you how this works we'll be using the power of shape keys to transform the mesh of our metahuman this means that we'll be adding en entirely new shape keys while preserving the ones that the metahuman currently has this way everything is reversible and non-destructive and we're not actually changing the original mesh if you aren't familiar with shape Keys think of it as snapshots of the location and arrangement of vertices that make up a mesh for our purpose we're going to be adding a new shape key to the head and a new shape key to the body and we'll add all of our adjustments on top of these two shape keys for the bud since there's no base shape key click on the plus icon twice this ensures that the original mesh shape key becomes our main layer rename the second one to a name of your choice which is going to be our altered mesh Slide the value to one and that means that all of our adjustments affect only the new shape key remember the name of the shape key is extremely important because we'll be using them later on in Unreal Engine for the face as there's already a base shape key and a whole lot more you only need to click the plus icon once rename it and set the value Val to one before we start sculpting our character we're going to quickly create our horns this can be any additional attachment in your case goggles belts hats glasses earrings whatever you name it let's begin our low poly sculpt this is the stage where you add all of your highlevel adjustments like pulling the ears thinning the nose enlarging the head or perhaps giving your character a more muscular and buff appearance however since metahumans are optimized for real-time performance their mesh isn't exactly dense meaning you're limited in terms of detail here and for this stage we don't want to go ahead and change the topology and add subdivisions to our model but don't worry that's solvable for all of your fine details will Leverage The Power of normal maps that means we'll bake in all of our highly detailed editions later during the texturing process problem solved let's start sculpting our team tip here is to mask out the seam between the neck and the body this way we avoid destroying the connecting edges and save oursel the trouble of trying to piece them back together later on the reason you are not joining them is that during import to Unreal the body and the head need to be separate meshes and combining them can complicate the process don't worry about the areas that lack detail and restrict your sculpting we can always address these areas later during a normal map baking process for farad's metahuman to look more like Darth Maul we need to make him much more muscular what are you talking about I'm muscular get out of here we'll pull some references to accurately shape the muscles we've given him a more defined chest and abs enlarge his shoulders and widen his lats then moving on to the face since parat has a rather naive look get out of here get out of here no you what bro bro come on Darth Maul you let's work on the glabella yeah bet you didn't know this part is called gabella you learn something new every time you watch bad decisions we're going to make it look more pronounced and generally thicker which is going to make him look more Angry like Darth ma automatically without the face even moving by the way if eyelashes are preventing you from sculpting on the face you can actually hide them select ahe and then in edit mode go to select followed by select all by trait and choose non- manifold this will select all the disconnected pieces if you switch to x-ray mode mode you will see them more clearly then select only the eyelashes and the teeth and hide them by pressing H we ended our sculpt with some minor changes to the lips and horns believe it or not we are done with the mesh customization let's take everything back to Unreal and switch the bodies if you don't want to customize the texture your job is pretty much done we are going to export the head and body separately just like how we initially exported them separately from Unreal Engine but there is something that we need to keep in mind the naming convention for each export ensure that both of these are named root as blender automatically adds suffix at the end first for the body shift select the bone and the mesh in the viewport then head over to fpx export choose selected object only and select both mesh and Armature remember to uncheck add Leaf bones for the head rename them to root before exporting select only the Armature rotated by 90° on the xais so that it lies flat on the ground this ensures that it will be imported correctly in Unreal Engine shift select both Armature and the mesh go to export and use the same setting as the body before you leave we can go ahead and reset the location of our head Armature with control Z let us now bring the new metahuman into unreal first duplicate the metahuman blueprint for safety in case we make any mistakes along the way now locate the body and face meeses and duplicate each of those as well if you can locate the head head and body mesh just click on your metahuman in the main scene and in the right panel select the desired part you should not be able to view the mesh click on the magnifier icon to locate it in the content browser let's begin with the body don't use this video in the cut open the new body mesh search for import morph targets and check that box to bring in the new shape Keys then under file path click the three dots to direct UE to where our new meshes are located this step is crucial to complete before importing the mesh or else you're going to end up with an error at the top look for repport base mesh click on the three dots beside it then choose repport Bas mesh with new file now select the newly edited body a conflict resolution menu might pop up but don't worry you didn't do anything wrong unreal is basically attempting to match the materials honestly this step could be automated as all you need to do is right click the materials in the right column and then match your names to those in the left column coln keep doing this until they're all green and then click done under the morph Target tab your new morph Target should appear if it doesn't simply close the window and reopen it you should now be able to see the morph Target that you created inside blender you can test it by dragging the slider let's do the exact same thing for the head mesh duplicate the head mesh open it repeat the same steps import more targets choose the file path and reimport base mesh with the new file since the head has a lot of Bones this is going to take a while longer so be patient Padawan this time you will definitely see the material conflict menu so match all of the names if voila you should now see your morph Target at the very bottom of the menu test it out with the slider now let's return to the duplicated metahuman blueprint and head over to the viewport tab so that we can see the metahuman on the left side select the body then on the right side under a skeletal mesh asset you can select a new body mesh let's do the same for the face click face on the left side and then select the new head mesh from the skeletal mesh asset on the right side at this point you should see all your facial hair messed up if not redo the final step what the hell yeah that's actually normal it's a good thing that your hair is all messed up that means it's working this technically happens every single time you switch out the head mesh because unreal doesn't know where to put the hair in our case since Darth Maul has no hair we can just remove all of the groom assets by selecting the desired asset and hitting the reset key however your casys might be different and you might need all of your hair fixed so before we start let's go ahead and talk about the groom asset so that you fully understand the concept under the face tab every metahuman comes with six groom slots eyelashes pitas eyebrows hair mustache and beard each of these slots can hold two variables the groom asset and the The Binding asset think of the groom asset as the actual hair model and The Binding asset as a tape that tells andreal where to place the hair if your hair looks weird now it's because when you imported the new head mesh onrea retained the groom assets but lost its binding assets the tape you just need to repeat the same process for all six groom slot select any of the groom assets to begin with then on the right panel click the magnifying glass icon to locate the groom asset in your content browser right click on the asset and select create binding for the Target skeleton mesh assign the new head mesh so it can be properly taped click create once The Binding asset is created it will be highlighted in your content browser select it and then click the arrow button to replace the old one with the new binding asset just like that you're good to go now repeat the process for all the other slots remember to compile and save it's beneficial to learn about this groom concept so you can create any hair styling blender and then add it to your metahuman if you guys want to have a tutorial on that let us know in the comments okay let's bring our new metahuman into the scene in your main level drag the new metahuman blueprint and bring it into the scene you won't see the morph targets initially why well we've got to activate them to activate them we need to return to the metahuman blueprint make sure you're in the event graph tab from the top and look for the very last note on the right side it should read set update animation in editor then pull it and look for set morph Target face and then let's pull another note and look for set morph Target body this process is essentially telling unreal to use the very shape Keys we created in blender like the sliders that we were playing with we need to insert the exact names so if you don't remember them follow us go ahead to the Head mesh and the body mesh find the morph targets right click and copy the exact exact names here then go ahead and set the values to one we also need to create two custom events following the same name as the morph targets then go ahead and connect them to the set morph Target noes your nodes should look exactly like ours once you're done press compile then let's head to the construction scripts Tab and look for the last node in the graph which is called set anim instance class pull it and look for the custom event we created in the previous tab the custom events have the same name as your morph targets we're done save and let's go back into the main level just look at the difference between farad's original metahuman that we created using the metahuman Creator versus the one we change the shape of within blender and guess what we're not even done yet we have so much more we can do with the metahuman so let's continue fire you look good not in real life as a metahuman now if you try to move closer and further away from your metahuman that was the opposite but you get the point you will realize that your metahuman goes back to the original version and then you lose some detail and that is because of lods ha now we're going to teach you lods pay me some money I'm just kidding let's go so lods stand for level of detail LS help reduce the amount of detail in a model by simplifying polygons and textures as we move further away from them they're primarily used for real-time rendering for video games metahumans come with multiple levels of detail and managing all of them can get confusing assuming that like us you want to use your meta humans for cinematic purposes you're probably only going to use the highest quality which is LOD zero and that's what we're going to use and since we customized the mesh only with the highest level of detail using anything lower than that will'll revert our mesh back to the original metahuman and to fix this open your new metahuman blueprint and on the left panel under all of the meshes and the groom assets you should see lods go ahead and click it and look it around right you see those two values you want to go and set both of them to zero all right we're done with our mesh customization congratulations now it's time to go back into blender and prepare our mesh for that high poity sculpt so we can go ahead and fine-tune the details taking into substance for texturing and get it done let's move on back in blender our current collection represents the original low poly mesh that we will use as a base for our texturing in substance painter but let's go ahead and duplicate one time so we keep this original as a safety additionally we can create a super high poly version to sculpt in fine details so let's duplicate the original collection one more time this High poly collection will be used later in substance painter to bake our normal map this technique involves taking all the detail from a high poly model and then through a process called baking mesh Maps create a normal map which provides all those subdivided details at no addition cost using just a single texture name the first collection LP which stands for low poly and the second collection HP which stands for high poly we don't really need the low poly collection here anymore other than just exporting it as a base for our texturing so we'll hide this right now let's only keep the high poly collection and hide the Armature so that we can see the body before we start sculpting we need to do two things first we're going to hide the eyes and the lashes because they're going to be a disturbance second we'll join the face and the body so that it will be much easier to sculpt on top of one mesh to hide the Eyes First select the head mesh and go into edit mode then go to the materials tab highlight the first material and click select at the bottom this should highlight our face mesh now simply press p and choose separate by selection to detach the head from the eyes and the teeth after that you can select the eyes and lashes and hide them next what we want to do is join the head and the body to do this select the body then in the shape Keys tab on the right click on the arrow and select apply all shape Keys repeat the same process for the head don't worry about losing anything this is just a high poly model used for baking we're not actually going to take this into Unreal Engine and use it for animation now go ahead and select ahead and then shift click the body and then hit contrl J to join although the face and the body are now the same mesh they actually still have the seams and they are disconnected so let's go ahead and join them go to the edit mode and then on the top left hit select then select all by trade and then non manifold then go to x-ray mode and deselect the facial features by control and drag we don't need them joined now we're going to hit M and merge by distance to connect them to ensure we've connected everything select non- manifold again and if you notice any vertices left go ahead and click them and hit M to merge by distance you can also drag the slider at the bottom to adjust the setting if your vertices are not merging the only things left as non- manifold should be the eye and mouth area to begin sculpting let's go ahead to the modifiers tab let's first apply the Armature since we don't need to retain any Rick information for sculpting then instead add a subd modifier to increase detail I'm going to do two levels but you can go higher if you like apply to modifier and now we have a beautiful high poly mesh ready for sculpting we started by smoothing out the connecting points between the head and body mesh then we started giving definition to the areas of the body where we lack details in the low poly model like the oblix ribs and the ABS area finally we added detail to the Connecting Point between the horns and the head skin a word of caution although you can add crazy details to your high poly model remember that it still needs to overlap with the low poly model for the B baking process if it doesn't your baking substance painter might not turn out well it could end up looking like this and you will end up pulling your hair now that we have our sculpted High polyes ready let's hide that collection and prepare our low polyes collection for exporting into substance painter in the low poly collection hide the Armature we are going to repeat the same process as we did earlier for the high poly mesh in order to separate and hide the eyes and teeth we don't need them for texturing select the head go to the materials in the edit mode and select the very first material hit p on your keyboard and separate the mesh then hide everything but the head we are also going to apply the shape keys to the body and face before joining them let's also head to the modifier tab for both and apply the Armature since we don't need the rigging formation for sculpting let's join the head and body together with contrl J just like before go to the edit mode select select all by trait non- manifold deselect the eyes and te teeth area hit M merge by distance to merge vertices substance painter doesn't look at your meshes for categorizing but rather your materials and we have too many of them that we don't need we are going to first delete all the unused materials just head over to the little arrow icon in the material Tab and hit remove unused slots we are left with two materials one for the body and one for the head now in edit mode select the materials and only keep the one for the body delete the remaining you should end up with only one material and now we're going to export the low poly and high poly mesh for the low poly select the body export as an fpx check selected objects only and mesh add a suffix of LP so that it will be recognizable later as the low poly hide this collection and unhide the high poly hide the Armature hide the eyes the teeth and then export using the same settings but with a suffix of HP which stands for high poly and now our metahuman is ready to be textured but you're probably wondering what about the horns or any additional item in your case well to keep things simple we're going to texture them later on separately so let's keep going yes we made it to substance painter let's load our base low poly model go to file new project and as for your template select Unreal Engine 4 starter assets document resolution will be at 4K and then Loc your low poly file in the browser make sure you are using UV tile workflow which are udims and that auto unwrap is unchecked auto unwrap is unchecked because we don't want to gohe and change the original UV maps that the metahuman comes with and as for udims let's talk about it and explain to you exactly what those are udims are a texturing method that divide the UV space of a 3D model into multiple tiles and the naming goes from one1 to one2 and so on on and so forth this method allows for high quality complex texturing without compromising on performance and guess what metahumans use it if you look at your scene you'll see your metahuman untextured and if you've enabled a 2d view you actually see the two UV tiles for your metahuman your face and your body now do you remember we exported multiple base color maps and multiple normal maps from unreal well as for now we're only going to need the main level exports we won't be touching the level 1 2 3 for now so let's see what main level exports we had we had one color and one normal map for the face and one color and one normal map for the body total of four textures now to import these textures we need to rename them to follow the udim tile workflow if you look at the UV tiles in substance you will see that the face lies in the one1 tile and the body in one2 tile and we need to Define that for substance painter all you want to do is add a101 suffix to the face textures and a102 suffix to the body textures here is ours now let's go ahead and drop our main textures onto the metahuman the naming Convention of udims permit you to only have to import the one1 suffix and the rest will automatically be loaded in this case our one1 suffix belongs to the face Maps so let's select those which is the color and a normal map and drag and drop it into the library name them anything you like and Define them as textures as for a resource allocation the three options allow you to either save these textures for one current session for this project even if you come back to it later or forever in substance painter we want to keep it only in this project so let's select the middle option on the left side you should now see two texture maps with a number two written on them the number two represents the number of tiles we have textures for and so so in other words we have two normal maps and two color Maps which is exactly what we need let's go ahead and add them to the metahuman on the right side within our layers tab we have a default paint layer let's remove that and add a fill layer instead which will Encompass the entire body the layer system here Works similarly to photoshop you can stack them on top of each other and blend in between them to create your desired look let's go ahead and drag our color map from the assets panel all the way to the properties and drop it on the color Tab and see we've got the color in there easy right let's do the same for the normal map drag the normal map from the left and drop it on the right and now my favorite step baking the high poly details to the normal map for our low poly model this is Blackmagic and you'll see why in a second head over to the texture set settings tab on the right and look for mesh Maps under mesh Maps we have all sorts of maps like the normal map an ambient occlusion map and all of them are empty so let's go ahead and bake them click on bake mesh maps on the top left side we can see the mesh map settings and this window right here is representing the common settings if you look under mesh map Bakers we can change the mesh map settings for almost each of those individual elements such as curvature and position but we don't need to for our case in the common settings we can set the output size to the highest resolution possible which is 8k however since this will increase the baking time you can always test your bakes with a lower resolution to check for issues before a final highres bake under high poly parameters loading the high poly export that we exported from blender you should be able to see the two meshes on top of each other with an extra translucent mesh that defines the max frontal distance this setting is essentially telling substance where to shoot the race from for the baking information this is the value you'd have to experiment with in order to print a high poly sculpt onto the lower poly mesh the tip here is to go for the lowest value possible you'd have to reduce the value until you see exposed red marks those red marks represent parts of the higher poly mesh that are sticking out of the bake and therefore will cause artifacts so that is your stop sign you're probably asking why don't I just keep the value high so that I can bake without the red marks and bring bigger changes from the high poly sculpt that's a good question but then look closely as to what the big does to tight areas on the body like the nose and the eyelids when you leave the max frontal distance too high it ruins the intersecting areas of the translucent mesh there are ways to fix that like clone painting the affected areas but trust us it ain't worth the pain now let's go ahead and set the anti-aliasing to the highest and move on there are cases where for each individual setting you will change a parameters but we don't need to for our metahuman for instance when working on models that have 50 different parts you're going to need to bake ID maps to be able to easily distinguish between them for texturing let's hit bake textures at the bottom of the screen and watch the magic happen as your high poly sculpts print on the texture Maps when you're done you can exit this window and go back to the viewport look at a texture set settings tab and find all of your newly generated Maps if you try removing the normal map and undoing the function you can see how without adding any vertices to our low poly mesh we were able to pull out so much more detail just look at how sexy this looks now let's say you messed up and your high poly sculpt is too different from your low poly sculp and no matter what you do your big won't turn out right we need to hop back into blender and fix this issue together in blender unhide your low poly and high poly model and have them overlap each other in order to better differentiate between them let's go to the properties Tab and change the viewport display color of the meshes if you can't see them colored yet in your render setting at the top right ensure your color is set to object now select your high poly model and head to sculp mode then use the grab tool to push and pull different parts of the high poly mesh until they are almost overlapping perfectly when you're finished just reexport the high poly mesh as an fbx and use the new version as your bake model the problem is solved it's time to paint Darth ma although depending on the character design the method of painting might be different but we're going to show you our workflow as it might help some of you out there in our previous metahuman tutorial we skipped over the painting section because we thought it deviates from the main topic of the tutorial but some of you get angry so this time we kept everything so the beginners could also learn from it in our layers we are going to create a new field layer on top of our BAS skin layer which holds the original metahuman color and normal map this will automatically turn everything to the color of of the field layer which is white in this case much like Photoshop we are going to employ the power of mask to hide the field layer so let's right click and add black mask in substance painter this mask will appear on the right side of the thumbnail of the layers by selecting The Mask we can now paint on the top of the model to reveal the FEI layer underneath and for anybody who's not familiar with Photoshop masks by painting with a white brush we reveal the field layer and black color paint will hide the field layer you can switch between the two colors by selecting your mask and then right clicking anywhere on your viewport to pull up the brush settings at the very bottom you will see the color gradients between black and white what's really neat about this field layer plus mask workflow is that you can change the properties of your painting after having drawn it on the model on the left panel our asset Library we can also select various brushes by double clicking on them to match our style there is even now a pen tool which we are definitely going to utilize as it allows for perfect lines and curves to be drawn on a mesh looking at our Dart mild model we can assume that the body has a black based paint layer and then a red paint layer on top so firstly let's select the thumbnail of the field layer itself and in the properties panel change the color to Black the current mask is black which means hidden and white means revealed so let's change the mask to White by right clicking and selecting add white mask to be more precise with our colors we you can even use an eye dropper to select a color from a reference image now for the red patterns let's add another field layer let's add a black mask to hide it then let's select the thumbnail of our field layer and change its color to Red we are going to Simply use a white color brush or pen tool on the mask to draw the patterns to draw on the mask we must first select the neighboring thumbnail of our feet layer and paint starting with a pen tool by living points on the mesh substance will automatically draw a line in between them we can then control the size of these Strokes move the points and even remove them we can even create linear or curved lines to have more flexibility this is perfect for drawing patterns or even stitches on clothing luckily the patterns on Dart Maul are symmetrical so let's turn on the Symmetry function from the top bar and voila just like that we save half of our time with the pen tool we can begin drawing our initial patterns then whenever we need to create new Strokes we can look for the paths panel at the top left we can rightclick any of our paths duplicate it then remove the points we don't need and continue putting new points down some of these lines had to be curved so we just used the varying options at the top to adjust the points properties the second approach we took was using the paintbrush to paint on a straight line you just hold shift and drag your mouse to a desired location another tool we can use is the smudge tool that will help us push our paintings towards a direction once the main patterns of the face were painted we spend a lot of time fine-tuning the corners of the curves according to the reference for the body we can continue painting on the same red fi layer but for organization's sake let's create a new fi layer add a black mask and change the color to Red although this process takes time it can be quite meditative so listen to some of your favorite podcasts while you're doing podcast it comes out every week damn right we actually had one episode with blender Guru last week you should check it out we're done with painting and we could begin exporting our textures but if you're just like us you probably have additional items you want to add to the metah human like goggles earrings or horns so if you like to do that we're going to go ahead and teach you exactly that right now but if you don't have any additional items you can skip this part by looking at the time code of our YouTube video our additional item is our horns our horns are extremely high poly about 7 million triangles and we want to optimize them to have a low poly version too that way we can use a low poly version as our main mesh and then much like the metahuman earlier we will use this current High poly form to bake the information to a normal map in substance painter however this is the reverse of our metahuman process as with the metahuman we had the low poly version and we just had to subdivide to reach a higher poly in this case we have the high poly and we are going to use the Remish tool to decrease the poly count we've been using the quad REM meure add-on for ages which is a paid plugin this plugin optimizes your mesh while keeping a decent topology with quads which is great for UV on wrapping and texturing but if you don't have it you can still use a free decimate modifier or Remish tool in blender to cut down the number of polygons you've got in order to save time we going to bulk select all the horns join them together with contrl j and then within the quad REM measure add-on we are going to specify a pretty low quad count like 3,500 and then hit remesh we kept the silhouette of the horns yet lost the intricate detail which we can recapture during our bake and guess what we are going to get the high poly look with only 19,000 triangles yes let's export the low poly and high poly versions the same way we did our metahuman fbx selected objects only and mesh you might be thinking hey we didn't UV unrap our additional item how are we going to texture it the UV unwrap feature in substance is fantastic and if you're looking for ways to avoid manual unwrapping I highly recommend it inside substance let's import our low poly horn fpx file with a document resolution of 4K however this time we are going to uncheck used UV tile workflow since we are not using UD tiles we are also going to check Auto unwrap for the UVS but we must also change some of the settings in the options tab make sure recompute all is selected and then click okay now you should be able to see your mesh UV unwrapped to Perfection let's go to texture set settings bake mesh maps and follow the same settings as before choose your desired output size loading the high poly porns what did you say loading the high poly porns High polyn load in the high poly horns then set your anti-alias in and bake go back to the main screen and look at that it's beautiful at this point I want you to understand that we're not baking all of these Maps just for the sake of printing the higher poly details on the lower poly mesh for that to be frank with you we only need the normal map and ambient occlusion map the other maps come in handy when we're using assets such as smart materials smart materials are presets created by Adobe that use the baked mesh maps to understand the geometry of the mesh you're working on so that you can create super realistic looks quickly for instance the curvature map allows substance to automatically place dirt in the wedges or metal rust in the corners of our model neat right because of our setup texturing is going to be super easy I'm just going to drop this creature teeth material on top of our model and that already looks good you see how it almost magically knows where to place all that dirt buildup I just think that this look is a little too severe so let's mix it with another smart material let's use the bone stylized perfect let's use the blending mode on the right corner of our top layer to change it to multiply and that looks better Darth Mouse horn are slightly darker at the bottom so let's manually paint that in nice our horns are ready we're going to export them by going to file and Export textures remember how our original horns in blender don't have the correct UVS somehow we need to export the mesh with the correct UVS from substance plus the textures well the easiest option is to change our output template to gltf and glb which not only exports the mesh and the textures but holds all of them together in one file which allows us to just drag and drop in any 3D software don't believe me let's test it go to blender import gltf and select the glb version of the file and there you go quick question I know not talking about clothes from metahuman in this video but do you guys want to see that kind of tutorial let us know in the comments and now it's time to export our metahuman textures from substance painter and import them to Unreal Engine this part especially confusing for first timers and beginners so we're going to break it down to the simplest form possible in your file explorer go ahead and create four folders one for each level and call the main 1 2 and three and then within each folder let's create two other folders for the resolutions we want to export in 4k and 8K remember how for the metahuman head we had one main color and three extra levels for blood flow and for the normal the same thing one main normal map and also three extra levels for wrinkles then for the body there's just one color map and one normal map you got it until now right let's continue if you've paid close attention to our first step in substance painter we imported our main skin color and normal map for the head and the body then we performed all of our painting operations on top of the main color and normal Maps what does that mean that means that when we export the textures we're only producing the mean color and normal map in order to maintain the extra BL blood flow and wrinkle Maps we need to switch the base layer underneath everything with level one and do an export then level two and do an export and then level three and do an export makes sense right for every level we're going to export at 4K resolution and another at 8K the 4K resolution is going to be used for our color map and the 8K export for our normal Maps now we need the three levels of color maps and the three levels of normal Maps put them all all in the same folder pull them up drag them and drop them inside the asset Library name your Imports and Define them as textures let's select our base field layer where the color and normal map sit and just test by replacing them with level one uh-oh what happened why did the body age to 97 years old well you just replace the textures for the entire UV of our metahuman The Head and the body remember how for the original textures we added a one1 suffix for the head tile and one2 for the body since we don't have that now let's first undo our actions and then let's separate the base fi layer into two parts by duplicating it once for the body and once for the head then we can isolate and Define the applied textures to a specific udm tile by clicking this dotted square box beside the layer for the face I'm going to uncheck one2 since that is a tile for the body and vice versa for the body I'm going to uncheck 10001 since that is a tile for the face again we're doing all of this because the body only has a main layer we want to apply all of these new textures only to the face now let's test by dropping one of the normal maps onto the face layer and voila now this might be the perfect setup for you but we've got a problem because we have a black and red paint layer covering the entire face and body of our meta human and let's take a look at what happens when we change the base color map if we test out any of the color variations we see no difference but see what happens when we have no black paint on top we need to fix this a work around in this scenario is to pull up the body and face fill layers above everything else and then change their blending mode to multiply and now if you change a base color you'll see the difference now to start exporting let's undo and go back to the original color and normal map let's head to file export textures select Unreal Engine four packed PNG at 4K resolution and export in the main 4K folder when you're done switch the resolution to 8K and then the export destination to main 8K and now we need to switch to the first level variation of our Maps drop the color and normal map and then head to export switch the resolution to 4K and destination to folder one and Export when you're done switch the resolution to 8K and the destination to folder one and Export you should get the Flow by now let's replace the field layer with the level two variation maps go for export and switch the destination to two at 8K switch to 4K resolution and Export to two in the 4K folder we're down to our final level switch to color and normal maps and let's hit export let's do 4K first for level three and lastly 8K we're done yay let's replace the field layers with the original then save and quit if you check any of your folders you will notice that there are many textures that we won't be needing so we need to delete the Redundant files and organize them for ease of importing into unreal for the main level in the 4K folder we will keep the head and body color maps and in the 8K folder we will keep the head and body normal maps for level 1 2 and three in the 4K folders We will only keep the head color map and in the 8K folders We will only keep the head normal map you're basically getting rid of all of the OM files which stands for your occlusion roughness and metallic and some of the normal and color Maps depending on which folder you're in we're also going to rename all the textures one by one based on their folder structure and levels this way we won't be confused when we have them imported into Unreal Engine guys we are almost there let's take everything into Unreal Engine within unreal drag and drop all your folders containing the exported textures let's go ahead and pull up the face blueprint by selecting our meta human in the viewport then on the details panel select face under mesh you should locate the head mesh blueprint open the blueprint on the asset details panel you can already see the main material listed at the top locate it and open it up scroll down till you find all the color Maps when you do open up your content browser and start by replacing the color Maps according to their levels main then level one 2 and three now let's scroll down until we find the normal maps and let's do the exact same thing main then level one 2 and three save your progress and let's go look for the body blueprint and material locate the body blueprint in the details panel open it up and locate the material open that up locate the color input and from the content browser in our main folder replace the body color map do the same for the normal map if your underwear is still showing and you don't want that remember to replace is texture with your body color map since we painted over it it will be fixed oh my God this looks amazing just a quick note we want to give a shout out to realtime graphx this tutorial was inspired by his workflow if you guys want to check out his entire course on metahumans we'll put a link down in the description so you guys can check him out it's time for us to take our additional item which is our horns to Unreal Engine and connect it to our metahuman in order to attach the horns to our metahuman we need to alter the metahuman blueprint and the head mesh locate the head mesh and open it up in unreal we can attach meshes to the bones of our characters using sockets since the horns are attached to the Head we are going to find the headbone and create a socket for it we will do that by right clicking on the headbone add socket and rename it to Horn socket to see how the horns will attach to our metahuman we can create a preview asset here and choose our horns uhoh looks like our horns are misplaced let's look for the socket we just created and then manually position our horns in the desired location once everything looks great save and exit you will notice that in the viewport no horn has been added yet we must Define the horn asset in the main metahuman actor blueprint so locate it and open it up as you can see in the components panel we have all the body parts that the metahuman currently holds and now we want to bring the horns in here let's go ahead and add a static mesh component and rename it to Horns PN the horns to the face component since this component holds the head mesh and all its properties while horns are selected in the details panel look for the setting mesh and find the horns great the horns are on but we haven't yet connected the socket let's see what happens without the socket in the main scene open the level sequence we created in the beginning of the tutorial when exporting our meta human make sure your meta human is already dropped in so we can animate it using a rig select the face control rig layer so that the the rig will appear and then try moving the head and yep the horn ain't moving with the head yet back in the metahuman blueprint while selecting horns go to the details panel and look for parent sockets then you can see all the bones you can attach the horns to but since we have created our own custom socket let's choose that compile and go back to the scene to test there you go now you can attach any item to any character think about it can you now work out in your head how we can attach a lightsaber to the hand of this Darth M time to change the color of the eyes in the metahuman actor blueprint let's choose the face component and on the details panel we should be seeing the entire list of materials used just for the head the eye material we are looking at is eye refractive located and duplicate for safety for the eyes we experimented with almost every slider in the details panel to see how we can get closer to the Darth M eyes to be able to view the changes quickly we replace is one of the eyee materials the sliders we mostly played with were Iris saturation Iris UV radius pupil scale and pretty much all the sliders under the iris generator when we achieved our desired result we replaced both materials and compile and save that looks good now let's move on to the teeth our final part of customization Dorth Maul has this dirty teeth look looks like he just chucked a bottle of oil sludge much like the eyes the teeth also have some adjustable parameters in the engine but they're not going to be enough for a super specific look we're going to use substance painter to alter the teeth texture and for that we're going to need to work on the base color in the metahuman blueprint select face on the details panel find the teeth material and open it up this is not where I can see the color texture since it's a material instance we need to find the parent material it's at the very bottom locate it and open it up guess what there's another parent material we need to find let's find that at the bottom again and open it up too there you go you see all these nodes this is your parent material let's Trace back from the base color all the way until we can see the texture that is the color map there it is click it and you should see the map in the details panel on the left open it up the texture we're looking for should not be visible in the conton browser now let's right click on the color texture asset action and Export by the way you could have just searched teeth as a keyboard in the content browser but we wanted to show you the manual way which is longer and more tedious but it is the most Surefire way to find anything you're looking for in case you can't find it by searching we'll also need the teeth mesh for substance painter so go back to blender open the file containing our metahuman unhide any of the versions of your metahuman then hide the body and the head mesh you should only see the eyes and the teeth we we just need the teeth we should also get rid of the eyes so let's go to edit mode and to ensure we correctly select everything we need let's use the materials on the right to select the teeth there's two of them once you've got everything duplicate using shift d then you want to go ahead and separate the duplicated new teeth by hitting p and separate selection hide the main eye and teeth so that you're only left with this teeth whilst the teeth is selected let's go ahead and explore it as an fbx selected objects and mesh only now open substance painter file new project 4K resolution check UD dims and uncheck Auto unwrap since we want to use the metahuman original UV locate your teeth fpx file and hit okay drag and drop your exported color map from unreal to the assets Library name it and Define it as a texture let's remove the default paint layer and add a fi layer drag the color map from the asset library to the base color we have the teeth in all its Glory if we add another fill layer with a black mask we can go ahead and paint anything we'd like but this is not satisfying to me we're going to go look for more materials online in just a second first I'm going to go ahead and bake the mesh maps of my teeth to create an ambient occlusion and curvature map for my smart materials mind you that this time we don't have a high poly mesh so we don't need to bake that as a substance painter subscriber we can access to adobe's wide list of materials on the website so let's go look for something greasy just like adding a texture we can add a new material hit import let's now drag the material on top of our teeth and that looks great for a start the only problem is that the oil streaks look a little stretched we can fix this by changing the UV projection in the properties panel to try planer yes anytime you have a weird stretching this could save you now of course I don't want the entire grease either it's it's too much so let's add a black mask over our entire material and rather paint the desired areas with a white brush on the mask overlaid another material on top and painted using a different Brush by right clicking your materials you can also further customize your look by adjusting levels or even adding filters like blur after realizing that our oil grease looks too unnatural we remember that substance has this awesome interactive brush that has physic involved and just look at the difference it makes After reaching the final look I realized I didn't quite like the color yet so I decided to replace the top layer material with just a plain black color that's perfect let's now export our color texture file export textures and choose the 4K resolution inside Unreal Engine drag the new texture to the Contour browser locate the same window that contain the parent material for our teeth select the texture sample that holds the original texture and with within the detail panel on the left find the texture slot replace it with a newly imported texture save and exit and there you go you must have a whole new metahuman customized to Perfection guys this is by far the hardest the longest the most complicated video that we have ever done it took us 3 weeks to just come up with this scrip to record to edit so I lost my sanity making this video it's over please if you like it don't forget to like it comment and subscribe to our Channel if you haven't I'm not joking guys we've been working for about 3 weeks day and night to finish this for you guys longest tutorial we've ever made hardest tutorial we've ever made but we knew it had to be done since our last metahuman video it's been about how long now 3 months 3 months and you guys have been asking for this and this is not over we've got more coming your way so if you want to see them like far said subscribe and we'll see you guys and let us know in the comment which winter human tutorial you want us to do next so we know exactly sorry that's our yeah he's also mad is taking too he's hungry we got to go now cow

Channel: Bad Decisions Studio

Views: 145,437

Keywords: bad decisions studio, metahumnan, customize metahuman, metahuman mesh

Id: b_ZjsUg2XCc

Length: 56min 0sec (3360 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2023