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Epic Games is doubling down on next-generation digital 3D modeling graphics. Meet MetaHuman Creator – their uncanny valley human character creator.
METAHUMAN CREATOR – “HIGH-FIDELITY DIGITAL HUMANS IN UNREAL ENGINE”
Epic Games announced MetaHumans, their new uncanny valley human character creator using the Unreal Engine. If you think that games don't feature realistic-looking human characters yet, then this should be good news for you.
MetaHumans is a browser-based app that allows artists to “build digital humans,” as Epic claims it, “to less than an hour, while maintaining the highest level of quality.” MetaHumans runs on the cloud, using the Unreal Engine Pixel Streaming. This means that it shouldn't use too much of your computer's resources either. Consequently, anyone should be able to use this tool.
Think The Sims character creator, but with more realistic and uncanny looking models.
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MetaHumans is comprehensive – it's not stuck with just the body details of the model. The MetaHuman Creator also provides some clothing and accessories to go with your digital human. Hair, facial hair, and other physical features are all editable in the character creator tool.
To showcase what MetaHumans can make, Epic Games is releasing two fully finished sample characters that modelers can use in Unreal Engine. For further information, interested developers can visit the Unreal Engine blog. Alternatively, you can also sign-up for the MetaHuman Creator newsletter.
You can then import your MetaHuman models into Unreal Engine. From there, developers can animate the model as they see fit, just as they would with other models in the engine.
To see more about MetaHumans, visit the MetaHumans blog post here. There, you can see a demo of Andy Serkis performing Shakespeare lines. Done watching that? Yes, MetaHumans Creator can make models that life-like. Is it realistic enough? Or just weird and creepy? Definitely down there at the uncanny valley for me.
