Epic Games has unveiled MetaHuman Creator, a cloud-streamed browser app capable of quickly creating complex digital human faces. More about the app, which utilizes Unreal Engine Pixel Streaming technology, is detailed in an article on the Unreal Engine website, where the company says the tool will be ready for early access use “within the next few months.”
You can watch MetaHuman Creator in action in the video below, which offers a glimpse into what it looks like to create your own digital human.
Epic explains that the project’s aim is to make creating digital humans easy and far less time-consuming. Specifically, the company says that creating one of these digital humans with MetaHuman Creator can take “less than an hour, without compromising on quality.” You can manually adjust features as you please, with various preset faces, more than 30 hairstyles, 18 different body types, and example clothing to get you started.
After creating your human, you can animate the asset using performance capture tools. You can keyframe it manually or use Unreal Engine’s Live Link Face iOS app, and the company is currently working with vendors to provide support for ARKit, DI4D, Digital Domain, Dynamixyz, Faceware, JALI, Speech Graphics, and Cubic Motion.
Intuitive design and the ability to drastically cut development time seem to be Epic’s focus with MetaHuman Creator. Though, speaking to IGN, Epic Vice President of Digital Humans Technology Vladimir Mastilovic explained that anyone with an iPhone and a basic understanding of Unreal Engine should be able to utilize MetaHuman Creator, opening the door for average content creators across the internet.
Additionally, Mastilovic says that Epic “aimed for photo-real, but not strictly photo-real. With these assets, we’re not claiming to have crossed the uncanny valley. We are kind of targeting that sweet spot of being stylized just enough. So for example The Last of Us 2, they’re not fully photoreal but they’re appealing digital characters.”
A second video uploaded today shows what a finished MetaHuman Creator product can look like in motion.
You can sign up to be notified about future news and updates on the tool on the Unreal Engine website, but a sample of the project is available to download today, too, allowing you to go hands-on with two finished humans.
