MetaReForge: Full Body Metahuman Customization Now Possible in Blender

hello in today's tutorial I want to show you how to customize meta humans using meta re Forge we have designed the addent interface to be as clear and structured as possible all features are organized into blocks within the nend panel under mrf category the majority of these features are accessible in object mode while additional utilities for Armature editing become available in Armature edit mode first we need to prepare the files for editing you will need the head fbx file go to metahumans your metahuman name pH but before we export fbx file we need to fix materials here we have the same material instance used in in the second slot and in the seventh slot we need to replace place at least one of them so I go to the location duplicate it and assign to the slot so now all material instances in all material slots are unique it is important for proper expert now we can go to arment human again go to face and right click as actions export select the folder and hit save default settings are okay hit export do the same with the body go to your metahuman folder uh male or female metahuman height metahuman weight body folder and we need to export this file ass said actions export so defaults are good click export let's get DNA file quickel Bridge make sure you're logged in metahumans my meta humans this one here we can go to files tier asset metah human ments name Source asset this file we need so copy I want to keep all files together so I will copy to the same location here also we need to fix at least the hat fbx with Autodesk fbx converter fbx converter archives Windows fbx 2013. 3 converter for Windows 64 bit I have it install so I just run it drag and drop files here and hit convert the converted files will appear in folder fbx 2013 now let's go to blender clear the scene open n panel Mr RF click here to set scene units compatible with Unreal Engine set path to head fbx to body fbx if you want to edit one mesh only you can disable head or disabled body but I will show you both we can switch between lods here but it is not e easy to edit at the moment because we have two meshes so in our addon we generate one mesh and one Armature for editing and at the end we transfer the changes from the edit objects to the initial objects so go to edit shape and hit initialize you can configure well distance but usually default is okay now we have one mesh to edit and one Armature we still can switch between lods but now there is also an edit shape option at the top it's time for the creative work modif the mash as much as your imagination allows but remember you cannot change the topology and vertex indexing you can even export this and edit in another application but keep topology I'll give you another valuable advice regarding the eyeballs they are quite spherical obviously and they should be spherical at the end so try not to deform them keep initial shape you can change size you can change location but keep initial shape I select eyeballs and click H to hide them this way we lock their vertices now let's switch to sculpt mode and have some [Music] fun so now let's check our eyeballs go to edit mode unhide everything alt H and our eyeballs do not much with the with the face so we need to we need to move them and maybe scale them also I select it with L try to place it somewhere in the [Applause] center [Music] now we need to fix a bit the outer shell because we have intersection here we need to fix this shell and I use proportional editing but but it is important to take connected only to avoid eyeball deformation so select vertices and we can move them a [Music] bit [Music] as soon as mesh is ready we need to fit bones to the mesh so we need to choose the final Armature edit mode and on the panel we see a bunch of buttons I know you would like there to be only one magic button that gives excellent result 100% of the time however in case of unforeseen circumstances or if you want to apply this functionality to nonmetal humans I've left the possibility to gain more control let's go through functionality from top to bottom here here we transfer bones using surface deform modifier it works well for bones that initially close to the surface but is not accurate enough for bones deep inside the mesh first we need to initialize proxy it initialized immediately for all bones then select required bones and click fit selected the next option is mesh deform on the contrary it works well for bones that are deep inside the mesh but if a bone even slightly beyond the mesh or there are gaps or holes in the geometry it may not work at all the same here first we need to initialize proxy as blender does not allow such modifiers to be applied directly to Armature and we can fit selected bones Precision should be chosen before initialization and it's recommended to have four or five at higher values initialization may take too much perhaps in future updates I will speed up the process a bit the next algorithm is my algorithm specifically made for lips since there's some Collision of polygons on the lips simple surface deform sometimes does not understand which liap to attach to the upper or lower so I try to take into account bone weights this method is not recommended for other bones except some of the lid bones this operator is designed specifically for eyes here we select the material assigned to the eye vertices and the algorithm will find the geometric Center and place the bones there only the position of the bones changes their orientation in space doesn't change and the cherry on top the automatic method I've assigned a preferred method for each bone of the the metum so you can just press it and wait a bit if proxy initialization has not yet been done this can take quite a long time as proxies will be initialized in the process next if we look at our lods we will see that they have not yet changed it in object mode go to update original section and hit synchronize check the result next if you see a SE at the connection of the head to the body or on the UV seams you need to recompute split normals the seams are best seen if you turn off the outline here in this case I have not changed the m here too much so there is no seam but I will add more deformation in this area I will go back to the added shape and hit synchronize again and now here we see Sharp transition click recompute split normals wait a bit and it is fixed for all lods as you see all lods has no Sharp transitions so final steps fbx export here everything is extremely simple we need to set output folder only and heat export fbx now we have a folder with all lods separately here's all lods let's try to load them into Unreal Engine let's start with body I'm going to duplicate it to be able to reimport we need to set path here import settings file path and set path to the lowest LOD here's and hit reimport Bas mesh done do the same with the higher lods go to load picker and here we have reimport option now let's do the same for the phase but it will be a bit more difficult go to content phas also duplicate the MH we also need to set path so here at the end Source path and select the lowest LOD fbx and also we need to set transforms all zeros except the scale and click reimport now we need to assign materials just select the same here because we haven't changed the order so select the same as in the left column taam it is why we actually need DNA because this animation blueprint pH post process and MBP use neutral joint positions and rotations from DNA file not the rest pose of the skeleton if I disable this blueprint everything seems to be fine but with this blueprint no comments so so go back to blender and we need to update DNA in this section we need to set path to the original DNA file here DNA file and hit Armature to DNA output folder here and here is the same folder so we don't need to specify twice as you see it's writing a file in the output folder so here we have the updated DNA file now we need to now we need to open content and just drag and drop it somewhere and select the mesh the skelet mesh for the DNA file this is my duplicated mesh and hit import to see changes you need to disable and enable the blueprint and now everything seems to be all right I can even start preview animation and it looks good but one moment when it closes the eye I see here problems with normals we need to go to [Music] the LOD the lowest LOD sections and we need to assign recompute tangents to Green it is default settings for metum and also by default the same thing should be here now we need to update the highest lods let's select the first one and change mesh also reimport with new file select the next file we need to check material slots before in this section should be material number nine 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 you can also see here the problem with normals but if we will take a look at the initial metahuman and preview animation you will see here the same issue with the first LOD so it is not a problem of the workflow now let's do the remaining [Music] lods [Music] he [Music] now we save our skeleton mhes now we need to replace the mhes in the blueprint go to body replace skeletal Mash with the new one replace the face now we need to fix hair so go to for example here and we need to fix binding open groom asset folder create a new binding find our skeletal mesh we can also can select Source SK mesh as our initial mesh and hit create save and assign this binding here that's all for today thank you for watching subscribe the channel join our Discord bye I am a metahuman the next generation of digital human powered by Unreal Engine

Channel: Squeezy Pixels

Views: 19,156

Keywords: Metahuman, Customization, Blender, Unreal Engine, DNA-Calibration, MetaReforge

Id: 32PLLmDs9wE

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023