MetaHuman Body Swap | Change Body Tutorial | Hybrid Metahuman

hey guys what's going on jet here from the secret hideout and today we're going to take a plain simple looking metahuman like this then take a really cool looking marketplace character like this and combine both of them and bing bang boom we're going to create an awesome new hybrid character like this cool huh okay let's get her done welcome to the secret hideout okay i know why you're here and you know why you're here hybrid many humans right cool let's get to work okay let me break it down to you this is where i go over the steps of this recipe just so you know which way to go first we're going to create a metahuman and export it into unreal second in unreal we're going to delete the body of said metahuman third we're going to head over to the marketplace and find the correct character and body type this is super important fourth we're going to take that character into your dcc of choice edit the mesh in short off with his head fifth after you've taken that character to the guillotine we're going to import that headless wonder back into unreal sixth in unreal we're going to play dr frankenstein and stitch the head of the metahuman onto that new headless body and lastly we're going to add a simple animation just so you can see how our man-made monstrosity moves sounds easy right right okay let's get her done ready ready okay let's start from the start let's open up unreal let's make a simple level nothing too complicated you've been here before you've done this before okay i'm gonna select game third person i'm gonna go ahead and name it create project okay unreal project nothing new nothing fancy vanilla straight out of the box the only thing i don't like about it is is that it moves like a video game when i middle mouse button it goes the opposite direction in which i'm trying to drag no bueno okay i want it to move like a dcc so come up to edit editor preference in search bar type middle under level editor invert middle mouse pan check close the box click drag all good sweet moving on i'm gonna head over to qixel bridge open qixel bridge cool pick a metahuman better yet maybe create one like this this is gavin and these are his three invisible henchmen but more on that later now if you haven't done so click the green download arrow if you have in the upper right click the blue export button over on the right hand side you should see some messages coming up about the export being successful cool quick quick so bridge we're done here back in unreal you should see some messages coming up about enabling missing plugins that's okay just click enable missing plugins then when you're all done go ahead and click restart okay back in we'll go unreal content do you see the metahumans folder yes i do great let's open up gavin let's take this gavin metahuman blueprint let's select it and then go ctrl w and what that does is it'll duplicate it pow okay great let's change this to gavin without head alrighty let's double click on this great now what we're going to do here is we're going to get rid of this body okay cool we're going to go to the viewport just so we could see him notice how the hair keeps disappearing it gets to a certain level and disappears comes back you know why i'm sure you do but just in case you don't i'll tell you it's the level of detail the farther something is from the camera the level of detail gets lower the closer it is the higher it gets so let's do this to avoid it from disappearing let's just go ahead and make sure that it always stays we only have one metahuman here no big deal it's not taxing our computer what we're going to do on this left hand side is we're going to go to lod sync we're going to click on that over here on the right hand side under lod under number of lods we'll make it one cool so that way no matter what you do it always stays terrifying okay anyway moving on so let's go ahead and delete the body let's get rid of these knockoff deck shoes let's get rid of these legs let's go ahead and get rid of the torso and last but not least let's get rid of the body that's what we need okay cool compile save right on okay we need to put a body on this head and it's not just anybody will do we have to pick one from the marketplace not only that looks cool but is textured nice and most importantly it's rigged in the correct way what that means is this not all marketplace characters are built equally and not all character meshes are rigged and the ones that are rigged need to be rigged specifically using the ue4 skeleton or the ue4 mannequin if you see any combination of those words you're golden you can use that body that said let's pick a body okay off to the marketplace okay in the marketplace in the search bar we're gonna type in cyberpunk because that genre has not been played out or overused at all i went with cyberpunk samurai by fajrol falach nf i'm sorry if i butchered your name i tried not only is it badass looking and textured nicely it's rigged properly okay add it to your project backing in real sweet now let's take a look at that cyberpunk samurai where are you samurai oh there you are samurai mesh wake the up samurai we've got a city to burn um no you're breathtaking thank you keonu okay so what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at cyberpunk samurai looks good very cyberpunky now what we're going to do is we want to export this guy into blender so we can lop off his head and then use the body to put our metahuman on so let's go ahead and export this guy this is the way you do it okay let's right click on the mesh you want to export and that's this guy right click we want to go to asset actions and then we want to go ahead and export this guy that way we can take him into blender and cut his hat off okay export desktop and then here let's go ahead and create a folder to put the fbx in and let's put og body keep the original body there we'll hit save leave all the defaults and export okay so far so good off into blender all right blender click on splash page get out of here click shift click shift click right click delete by file import fbx desktop og body hello get over here all right get over here great let's select him by unfolding all these folders and we'll select the mesh great he selected we'll go from object mode over into edit mode then we go vertex edges polys edges vertex great look at all these vertexes now i'm going to select the wireframe that way we can see everything that's in there and that we select everything properly let's go ahead and box select some of these vertexes okay good we got a lot of stuff in there let's see if we can get more now what i want to do is hit ctrl l because what that does is it selects all the connected vertices great see click this button go back to the regular shaded mode and then smash delete what comes up this other window click on vertex head gone off with his head cool you can see the inside everything's clean nice so so what do we do next we're going to go ahead and go back to object mode hit file export export fbx we're going to go ahead and select the desktop we're going to go ahead and make a new folder we're going to call this one new body great open and we're going to save right into there okay let's name this cyborg underscore without head awesome we're gonna leave all these in default hit export great we're done with blender by blender okay back in real right-clicking content we're gonna right click on new folder create a new folder and we're going to call this one with out head that way we know that indeed this folder contains the mesh without the head second first aims at first we're going to import we're going to go to desktop this guy new body open all this stays at default in portal we know all this this is just a message log saying that there are no smoothing groups etc there's an upper arm twist that didn't import but that is totally okay don't need it alrighty so we're almost done now back in unreal we're going to combine the character and the metahuman this is almost as easy as deleting the meta human body okay so now what we're going to do is bring the body in oh hello right next to each other so you'll notice that he's missing a material which is good which is why this guy's here we'll click on him goodbye we'll use a magnifying glass to find cyberboy's material found it click on this click on this guy we'll add him to element zero and there you go cool getting closer come back over here we'll go over to metahumans we're gonna bring that gavin head back in hello gavin turn your ass around let's call this 90 word get in there all right we're going to eyeball gavin into the cavity oh hello that's too much let's turn off snapping there you go a little too far back let's move them forward just a itty bitty down lower okay so there you go we are almost there now what we're going to do is we're going to take this head and we're going to make it a child of this body so we take this head we select the head here go over to the world outliner pick the head and then we're going to stick it right on top the word cyber underscore without head what that does is it creates a pop-up menu in that pop-up menu we're going to tell unreal we want to make this metahead a child of this body and we want to parent it to the neck all right well that's it you've officially made yourself a hybrid meta human cool we have the before when he was a wee young lad and after after he's been a gnarled grizzled old cyborg veteran in the cyborg wars if you will okay i mean we could call it a day right i mean we set out everything that we set out to do but i did say that if i had time we'd go ahead and add simple animations just to see how this works so let's do that now okay cool okay let's retarget some animation onto this hybrid metahuman first let's go ahead and open up the without head folder and then we're going to find the without head skeleton double click on that skeleton this will open up the retarget manager window okay in the retarget manager window let's go ahead and select the retarget manager tab real quick click on the skeleton tree tab this way you can see all the bones but you don't get to see the bones in the character so let's go to the character and then we'll go over to bones and we'll click all hierarchy poof there's the entire skeleton okay in the retarget manager window let's go ahead and select the retarget manager tab now this is where it gets tricky what i'm going to need to do is pay close attention i want you to go down to select rig and then select humanoid rig click on it good now go ahead and click save let's close this window you're halfway there now we're going to need some animation to retarget to so let's go back to marketplace and let's type in mco and we'll choose mco mocap basics let's go ahead select that and add that to our project awesome oh before we move on i gotta create a folder so that way we can put all the retargeted animation in there okay right click select new folder name this one that's where all the retargeted animation is gonna go okay let's go ahead and click on mco mocap let's click on animation conversation root motion and let's right click on the looping listen we'll then go ahead and right click on retarget animation once we do that another window is going to pop up in this select skeleton window what i want you to do is select on cyber without head skeleton okay now in the prefix i want you to go ahead and type retarge that way we know it's a retargeted animation in the suffix i like to put the character name like cyborg i'll hit change and i'll go over to that folder that we had earlier cool now almost there just hit retarget we're in the home stretch we're literally inches away from the finish line all you have to do is click on the cyborg without head mesh come over to animation right here go into animation mode on the pull down where it says use animation blueprint we're going to click on that and we're going to drag down to use animation asset now one of two ways you can either drag this in here or you can click on here and see that there's a retargeted animation there already let's click on that okay we're ready all we have to do now is click play and watch this thing go hey there you are you did it there's your hybrid metahuman animated all right let's try that one more time this time i'm going to go ahead and hit alt s for simulate boom if you're wondering why the other cyborg samurai fell down it's because we use the mannequin physics asset instead of using the static mesh so that's the physics on that mannequin kind of cool huh one more time okay well whoa okay this is pretty much it you're you've created your metahuman asset we went ahead and we put an animation on there let's do one more just for shits and giggles okay let's stop this let's go to another animation we'll go over to the mco mocap basics we'll go to animation this time we'll go to mobility pro root motion and let's right click on this relax delivered okay now what we're going to do here is we're going to go ahead and duplicate animation asset retargeted we're going to do it like we did last time we're going to select that skeleton we're gonna put and then we're gonna put cyborg so that way we know which one it is we're gonna change it so it falls into the retarg folder we're gonna click ok and then hit retarget boom all said and done again we can right click on this we can come down to the pull down and we see that there's the stand and relax let's hit alt s and see what we get two birds one stone one more time there you go two birds one stone congratulations you made yourself a hybrid metahuman and you animated it thank you so much for stopping by at the secret hideout if you like this oh i almost forgot shout outs i want to give a big shout out to some of the people in the community let's face it we've all got information from other places and remixed it with our own nests on top so with that said i've learned a lot of tips and tricks along the way from these people so big fat shout outs go over to jay at jsfilms cam mcd over at fractured fantasy and last but not least the it girl of virtual production gabriella over at feeding wolves if you want to check out their tutorials and their channels i'll go ahead and throw the links to the channel in the descriptions below i have to take a moment to acknowledge a very special person a mentor of sorts it would be remiss of me not to thank a person who is so giving and selfless when it comes to sharing knowledge and information a very special thank you goes out to gabriel paiva harwa thank you for staying up late and sharing all your knowledge with me okay back to the show do me a favor if you like the tutorial please hit the like button if you didn't like the tutorial then go ahead and hit the like button and then unlike it smash the subscribe button so that way you see when i drop more tutorials or interviews i think the animated hybrid meta humans are pretty cool but at the end of the day what do i know this is jet from the secret hideout saying thank you so much and peace

Channel: The Secret Hideout

Views: 4,715

Keywords: Epic Games, unreal engine, Metahuman, Metahumans, Animation, Retarget Animation, UE4, UE5, Virtual Production, Metahuman Body, Swap Body, Character Animation, Realtime Animation, CGI, Unreal Fellowhip

Id: R6Y03ft6RJs

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021