Metahuman Portraits: Lighting, Colors and Post Processing - UnrealEngine 5

hello and welcome today I want to take you through parts of the process that I use to create meta human Stills for Instagram posts [Music] we begin today inside metahuman Creator and here is my character it is a custom face mesh a scanned human that has been turned into a metahuman that bit is not important you can use a stock met a human if you want I just wanted a little bit of originality for this particular character then if we take a look at the body just dressed him normal um let's go back to the face what I do want to quickly say is that I have adjusted the skin um chosen a skin tone I've also done a texture I'll get more I'll speak more about that later on in the video the eyes won't be this color I will explain the reason for that too other than that that is absolutely it I'm just going to save my meta human and I'm going to import that vibridge and into Unreal Engine I assume at this point you know how to do that this is about lighting and color more than uh importing a meta human from start to finish inside Unreal Engine 5.1 don't worry there's nothing I'm using inside Unreal Engine 5.1 that you cannot use in Unreal Engine 5. I have Ray tracing turned on in the project because I use an Nvidia card and that is it right so what I've done is set up a camera let me just save this current level uh so I don't lose it okay let me open my camera again right so here here we are what I'm doing a bit because what I'm trying to teach today is not science it is Art so let me turn off all uh the lighting for now so let's get rid of that and the post process and this ambient light's not doing much the intensity is 0.25 you see that and it is gray and it I don't know whether you're going to be able to see this on YouTube but there is kinda if I bump that up it does actually do something um I can't tell you what that is it's just it gives a gentle outline to create a normal Point light that was a spotlight wasn't it gray lights white light let me just come out of cinematic mode a moment and bring that across over and let's just light up the character that's all I'm trying to do right as you can see these two cameras in front of the character I don't need to tell you what they do they're just normal cameras but what I will tell you is if you look at the the frame it is set up for Instagram because that is the the end goal of this particular shot a point light and let me just hide those cameras there we go Okay so if I zoom out with this let me just light the character normally I I as you can see it doesn't look that great um we could change the light color make it a little bit warmer but again it doesn't look that great so what I want to First do is start with the meta human itself so and we will just set that to White Light I wouldn't normally set something to perfectly white though so [Music] let me just slightly below perfect white there we go right so let's click on the meta human open it up and there's nothing special about this matte human ignore the arms they're not in the shot and I was going a different way with this now if we look at the skin compared to metahuman Creator I have lightened the skin and the reason for this is not only so I can blend colors but darker skin tones obviously absorb light and lighter skin tones reflect light so basically I need less light if I lighten the skin gently and that's the only reason for it and obviously when I I'm going to apply warm lights to this character because the character does have darker tone skin but I just want you to understand that that is why the skin is paler and the way I did that is I opened up the head material and I came down because when first thing I do is switch off animated um sorry animated Albedo and normals because this character is not going to be animated it's a still shot and then I come down to base color come to my main face texture I have MIP gender insector no MIP map so it's the the highest quality again this is a still image I'm not worried about resources and then I come down to adjustments and I've turned the saturation down to about halfway but I've turned Vibrance up slightly okay and then it gives us this kind of dull I would argue it's more gray than the rich tone of the the skin color it's just flat is what I'm getting at right so with that in mind the next thing I did again I don't think it's ideal for this but this character was going to be a cyborg so I instantly changed the eyes to reflect that um but afterwards I didn't make it into cyborg but I kind of kept the blue eyes anyway but again you will just come down to your eye texture sorry your eye materials and you would just adjust all these parameters until you get what you like right we could do brightness color but I'm going to leave his eyes this color for the blue color which I will get to shortly and so this is what we left it with it's kind of a gray flat apart from the eyes which are nice and blue the hair you'll notice I've adjusted the hair in meta human Creator to have like a salt and pepper sort of thing you know like these these white hairs in there so it started off black hair I deliberately chose a texture in met human Creator when setting up the skin I did this for the blemishes but if we look at the wrinkles because when we turn up the contrast it's going to make it look like the character has a lot of detail whereas if you choose a a smooth uh normal you're going to get flat results and and I don't like that I like to a contrasty image the next thing we have is the lights from the metahuman lighting project that's available on the Epic Marketplace I use it all in almost every project like this because it's just easy the lights are already there for me I can move them around and it's just essentially this act blueprint with a background light fill light key light and rim light sometimes I won't use one or more of these and we'll get to that then there is an air glow which I don't think is doing much in this we can do that I suppose let me just move the air glow that's behind him perhaps there I don't think I really used it in this and let's just switch on the lights first okay that's all we have let me just make sure the air glow is not affecting that and as you can see he still looks a little strange but that's because I've I added this point light if we remember so let's get rid of that now and this is what we have now it kind of looks pink but that's because I adjusted this lighting with a post process volume on which we will get to so let me switch it on and there we go we're closer to the finished product now the first thing I'm going to do I'm going to create a new post process so let's turn this off I will leave the lights for a moment let's go to visual effects post process volume F2 dot find Unbound because I want it to affect the whole scene and exposure I go to metering mode now we'll set to manual I am I will turn on exposure compensation but I rarely use it here apply physical camera exposure and then I check that and that what that means is that I control that Within the camera here because I have the camera set to manual and then I use exposure compensation if I need it in this case I needed it quite a lot okay so let's go back to the post process then the next thing I would do is I would type in contrast and find those in fact sorry forgive me saturation first saturation and I will come to Global saturation and I will set it to zero so we're in black and white then from this I would type contrast and I would start altering these contrast settings but there is a but to this the way I S the way I work with contrast at the moment is I would adjust the lighting first so so I would start working on the Shadows if we take a look here there is a shadow uh where his nose is ETC and shadows here and and how I achieve that is is in this black and white mode and then I simply adjust the position of my lighting see this would be a natural instinct to to light the face up so you could see everything obviously this looks moodier than this I understand for some people that it's what you want you want you want to see everything in your creation but I think it's more important to add like a um a mood a feeling is the best way I can describe it so in this instance I move the rotation and then I did alter the position on X Y and Z so like for if we move Z up and down or Z let me remember where that was minus 88 okay so you can if it's below the character look I really like that oh wow I like that okay okay well let me not get excited for that I did like that though so let me just double check that again let me go now I think I found my next iteration of this image oh I do like that see it kind of adds a um a mood and if I put my original post processor let me just turn off that oh I do like that look at that oh [Music] amazing right anyways let me get back to it okay so what I'm doing is creating like gentle Shadows I've got another meta human still that I want to do and I've been really struggling with it and I think I just found the lighting that I want for that matter human next I would adjust the contrast so I'm just going to contrast I would start maybe with global contrast and if we turn up the global contrast we could just I don't want to do anything too extreme but enough and you see adds like a moody quality to it and then I would come down to like shadows and adjust the contrast of Shadows Etc and in this instance I'm going to leave it mid-tones is always really important and if you look we can actually like like there's like a bleaching effect when you turn down the contrast or the other way it kind of does the same but darker so it's something to be aware of it depends what you what it is you're going for highlights obviously they're the brighter areas and my eyes cannot see that um hopefully you can and it's coming through YouTube I'm now happy with the contrast and I would move on to my saturation and for saturation again this is not a science it's an art so let's turn it up to one and then I would adjust my various saturation levels let me quickly do that here we have red green blue and white voluminous and I would if we turn down luminance for example it goes black and white again turn up too much it looks over saturated so I would play around with that but for example I can see by looking at this image in the light in my room that is very important that you perhaps step away and go into a different lighting scenario usually outside because the lighting in your room the color of your walls everything affects how your eyes adapt I won't claim to understand color science I just know it from observing it that if I go outside what I think is white light inside Thunder becomes very warm or opposite blue um it's something to be aware of take regular breaks and sometimes it's better to leave it for a day come back and you may notice you've got too much red or something in there and with that ramble over let's add a little bit of red into the global saturation and I'm going to turn down green because I want it to be a little bit more yellow you see if I turn down Green turn up red turn down Green we get this effect and I'm sorry I do want to turn down Green like so and then I went to bump up the Blues for the background and more importantly our eyes I want you to keep an eye keep an eye on the eyes and they just gently start to pop we can perhaps in the mid-tones Maybe a little bit more blue [Music] highlights maybe no no not touch highlights uh what about in the shadows there we go you get general idea you would mess with the color grading settings and it will give you what you desire what I didn't cover and and what I will do is I I will set this up the best I can but then I will go back to my lights and I will adjust these colors here so for example um here we could perhaps go over to a more purple but you see the effect it has on it at the moment I've got kind of a pink and if I go to the yellow again depending on what it is that I'm looking at I was looking for something a little bit soft and Moody but normally for a skin tone like this character has I would be down here more in the yellows uh like like a pinky yeah you see that and I that would make me feel more comfortable but for this I wanted a pinkertone coming from behind because this light is coming from behind look see that that's important as well for Shadows perhaps I should do something a little bit more in depth on how I approach lighting but again it's not science it's art I just do it and if it looks okay that's what I'll do but yeah so it's like a kind of a pink pink light I never use white lights or or black colors I mean like like a perfect white or perfect black because they just it messes up rendering I don't understand the science behind it I just know what I see and and it each just doesn't work very well right so key light if I turn off the key light if we look there I think it's this Rim light here yeah look the rim light is kind of shining a blue if we turn it up see that oh I like that as well I do like that again for the other meta human that would look fantastic so yeah so it just adds a little bit of blue just just a little bit and you see that's a rim light that is not supposed to be doing that but I've altered the position of the rim light so it's location is all zero it's rotation zero and it only just that the rim light is supposed to be above the character somewhere but I just moved it down reset it and just it's just shining on the face turn it off again look there is nothing there you can see nothing of the face just an outline but just that gentle amount of light I hope this is coming through on YouTube it just helps you to see the eye the shape of the nose the mustache the lips okay and the key light obviously is the bright light and again that is kind of a it's almost white but it's it's cooler it's in in the blue just slightly Into the Blue whereas this side's pink and and warm and kind of Rich tone to it this one is is cold and blue and it kind of creates a you know what it's a strange thing but when I'm doing it I'm always got like a picture of the yin and yang symbol inside my minor I don't know whether that's helpful or not but it's like there's kind of a separation but then I will blur between the between the yin and the Yang that's just how I see inside my mind and that is basically it so if you think I've missed something then just tell me in the comments section and I will try my best to answer the questions I just want to look what's different in this post process so okay and this one is more vibrant and Rich look my original and it's there's nothing that I haven't shown you it's just that I spent about two hours on this post process um compared to the one I've just showed you that's helping minutes and I don't think there's anything that different in it um see this is the post process that comes oh yeah yeah that's it so this is the post process that comes with the metahuman uh lighting project and so it's got extra things in there like bloom and nope that's all the same maybe it's got some of these settings here that don't really pay I can't really see much the lens flares are there there no um it does have some temperature so on temperature is a good one if we want to quickly change for example I I love what this is this is what I'm saying about the skin tone of this character I now love this warm color over here um slightly yellower rather than a blue but it really does if just look at this side of the face changing that to a warm light see I've made it kind of pink but that really does bring out the skin tone when you you make it warm um I love finding these things out saturation yeah there is a gamma correction for whatever reason and I don't remember doing that so I'm wondering if that was with the meta-human lighting preset but you can adjust gamma look it I always think of it as kind of a strange way to think of it but like a a bite it's going to be really difficult for you to see on YouTube again I don't understand the signs of this but I I cannot explain it to you I know there's people in the comment section going to scream at me or understand these things better than I do right yep saturation mid-tones Yep they're all the same um there's nothing in miscellaneous film um Global illumination is set to screen space um let's try retrace again I would play around with these settings and um until I get something that I like maybe final Gala there is no point me doing um path tracing because I don't think the eyes or the hair work in path tracing oh the hair does work now does it groom hair does show up oh I didn't know that but as we can see the eyes are still uh not that great so yeah there's no point me going the path tracing route I'll just have it in normal lip mode and then to export this because there is a final stage and I would argue is a very very important stage I will come to eye resolution screenshot it will ask me the screenshot size multiplier usually I will set this to two sometimes I will say higher but for the purposes of this um we'll just do two and then if we open up this let me just drag it across for you we just have a finished image now I can already tell that I may need to adjust my camera slightly so let me go to my camera let's find Focus I'm going to draw a deeper plane that's why if you look I'm just getting this eye here if I go any further this eye becomes blurred with my current set camera settings and I don't want that I want you to be looking Dead on here and that is all in Focus so like this probably there and then turn off the playing again then I'm going to high resolution screenshot to capture let's open it up and I don't know where this is going to come through on YouTube but this image is sharper I I don't think that's gonna happen on YouTube but this image is definitely sharper okay again it has come out a little bit flatter than it is in my viewport and that is something that I'm going to deal with right now this stage depends upon what it is that you use I use luminar or um I'm just more comfortable working this way I sometimes would start for example with a preset and let's try an AI image enhancer yep that's fine right so let me just reset all these values AI in hands I like luminar 4 because it has the AI enhancer sometimes it is a little on so I have to take it easier right so first thing I will do is because I know that my monitor is is dark when I print when I render out things they're always darker so I will turn off the exposure probably two around there it seems really bright probably in this YouTube video but once I render out and and I upload to Instagram I will need it brighter um next I will adjust smart contrast and it kind of it's some of these things are going to be very difficult I mean if we go extreme you can see okay so I just want it gentle there we go smart contrast and then bring the Shadows up slightly I'm not going to touch highlights then I'll come to AI ascent and again extremes but we just want a gentle amount AI structure again extremes and this really brings out some detailed look but again I'm going to be very light touch with this probably there and then boost look what boost does that is way too much but we will have one not two two okay color always bring down the saturation and then I bump up the Vibrance like so details I like to increase my small details mid details up a bit and sharpen the image uh I do want to add a bit of luminosity denoise and a little bit color denies there we go next sometimes I would choose a lot and as you can see it does make a huge difference um it just depends how how I'm approaching things I sometimes I don't want to get that far away from what I saw in the viewport in this case I'm going to I'm going to choose this Athena and I'm but I'm just going to roll it back slightly and we don't need any more contrast or saturation and then glow I kind of like glow if we turn it up look that's what we get so I'm going to scale this right down film grain adds grain to the image and let me just do that [Music] I want to be really careful with this one there we go uh fog he can use this when I'm on I tend to do this on Instagram depending on how it looks in the browser they have a fade uh dial and I would dial that in in this instance I'm going to add two I would then go to Pro there's no there is a portrait in hanseria for AI skin Etc and you can beautify the skin for example uh we can slim the face and all that but I'm I'm not really a fan of that sort of thing so I don't do that um on Pro if I do need to adjust the contrast I would do it here but in this case I don't need to do it next is Brilliance which is adding the color so what I will do is start at the bottom and just work up until it pops [Music] you think in this instance I'm just going to choose one we can adjust the corners or the warmth here again I I'm reasonably happy with how that is already color contrast uh use this very very sparingly and we can add a hue here split warmth color I I don't usually uh use this but see yep maybe if I scale that to five uh we can call that but I'm not going to and that's it and then we can just export this image and uh I will then upload to Instagram and that is how it is created if you would like to support the channel you can go to the link in the description and buy me a coffee from buy me a coffee.com alternatively you can click the thanks button underneath this video and help that way more tutorials are on the way but for now could you please hit the like And subscribe button and comment below with any questions I will see you in the next one [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Jobutsu

Views: 7,994

Keywords: UnrealEngine, Character Creator, Actorcore, Iclone, Daz Studio, Metahuman, Mixamo, Quixel, retargeting, Blender, Unreal Engine, UE, tutorial, howto, how to

Id: Da2bQM0oWrI

Length: 32min 34sec (1954 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 06 2022