Unreal MetaHuman

oglu

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/a-sneak-peek-at-metahuman-creator-high-fidelity-digital-humans-made-easy

Hmmm... I stick to styliced Humans then. 

Ruflse

Fellow character artists it's time to rise up

thomasp

Hmmm, isn't that what you'd want to work with as a character artist? Developing a character like a composition instead of managing polygons, UVs and juggling a myriad of tools.

That being said if this is coming from Epic then you just know it's going to be heavy: looking good but killing the frame rate if used at those demo settings. I'm not up to date on the latest builds regarding the alembic hair stuff in their engine either but last time I had a look it was very expensive in an empty scene on the highest end GPU from a year ago, never mind having that in a full game running on a regular machine.

So for now I'd file it as another demo that comes out a generation too early to be practical. Obviously wouldn't mind to be proven wrong.

Neox

to be fair it's actually character artists filling such tools with content. that stuff doesnt just make itself.

• I'm not up to date on the latest builds regarding the alembic hair stuff in their engine either but last time I had a look it was very expensive in an empty scene on the highest end GPU from a year ago, never mind having that in a full game running on a regular machine.

its a fair bit more performant by now, but you have to use lods, less but thicker hair over distance, or even fallback with haircards. it definitely has gone a long way since the first installment but it certainly can be more performant. but in the end look at games like tomb raider, where the hair also took a fair bit of the performance.

neilberard

I think this is a good thing. The need to hand craft everything has placed a major limit to how we make games and film. By lowering costs, automation allows for new ideas that wouldn't have been feasible before. 

thomasp

Neox said:

but in the end look at games like tomb raider, where the hair also took a fair bit of the performance.

Yes that was my initial impression as well. Fifa 21 on the other hand looks pretty good in this department so perhaps it is workable by now at least for certain situations.

Udjani

*This little algorithm can pop 50 Scarlet Johanson per second*

birb

Am I the only one bothered by how they all have the same facial structure? Same nose, same chin, same temples-brow planes, same amount of volume on the lower eyelids, just stretched in different ways with nice random facial features slapped on. Even those features don't vary much, those lips don't even have different cupids bows!

Don't get me wrong, I see value in using it to create technically perfect generic characters and I'm happy to see the work done in the skin colors—character generators tend to get darker skin tones very wrong because they're likely developed with lighter tones first and fail to take saturation and reflectance changes into account when implementing customization. But I'm not sure of the positive impact of this tool in unique characters creation. You'll have to put so much work into modifying this and sculpting and retexturing that it can't be very different from starting from a base mesh. Maybe to get ideas across quickly and with more precision? Throwing a character together then doing a paintover to narrow the look down would certainly speed up things.


I also don't see the character artist position dying anytime soon because:

melviso

I do believe that this is the future especially with A.I being a thing. I think you can currently be able to create 3d character models from a single photo, the technique is still a long way off but it is a start. It still needs a lot of improvements and refinements. 
There is a possibility that there will be a new job skillset based on apps like this where characters are created based on likeness using these human creator app and these speeds up time compared to scanning the individual and doing cleanup. retopology, rigging  e.t.c. If there are people who are really good at using Meta Human creator to nail down likeness of any person living or dead, that would be considered a time saving skill and might be something that would be sought after in the cg industry going forward.

However, I still think custom characters will still require 3d character artists. The App has not been made public yet. Only time will tell if this is going to be revolutionary or not.

Popol

I wouldn't use that to make important characters as the result lacks a lot in personality, however it could be a time saver to create NPC faces. Usualy NPCs are outsourced and it's quite easy to find freelancers who can make nice clothings for an affordable price, but when it comes to faces it's usually not that great or you have to go for someone way more expensive which defeats the point of outsourcing.

So yeah, could be a good alternative to outsourcing NPC faces.

Alex_J

i guess i don't play games much these days but i cant remember the last time I really looked at an actors face in a game. Maybe a few huge AAA blockbusters like uncharted, but besides that you hardly register characters beyond a small silhouette you are shooting at or clicking on, right?

Work that should definitely be automated. No doubt countless hours and dollars have been wasted by artist overworking something that didn't really matter. the pushing and pulling of verts isn't artist work anyway, that is just manual labor. Good taste is the deciding factor and how you get to that doesn't matter. Whatever is quickest.

these models look convincing enough to me. I think if only an artist can tell the difference but laymen can't it's likely point of diminishing returns. OF course there is sometimes subtle work that can make a difference even if audience can't point to it but this tool is marketed as a time saver for bulk work so it seems perfect to fit that job.

oglu

I like the fact that those Assets are working outside of Unreal. 

https://youtu.be/obtcuTXqHPs

https://youtu.be/t9eiVMzRQ4s

Prime8

Might be a great tool for a use case outside of gaming as well. For example to populate an ArchViz scene. In this case you usually have to stick with a bunch of stock assets which not always fit into the scene.

oglu

Interesting workflows coming up. 
https://youtu.be/eDCwdriNuIY

sacboi

Commenting as someone without experience with chars, this tool definitely has a disruptive attribute, considering the backing behind it toward envisioning Epic's Metaverse.

oglu

Good behind the scenes. 

https://youtu.be/ys3JivS-iXU