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thanks but I actually don't even use my cheap $40 Android phone for anything but phonecalls, I disabled the data with my provider after it decided to massively update on 4G (when my wifi was off) for something I never used, it will still use apps on wifi I believe but never tried and it's tiny.
this for cutscenes in games ok
but who else needs this in game development ?
and pls do not overestimate the need of more realism
but at least there is some life here in the normally dead side of the forums
Your view is exactly the opposite of what the creators in the industry are thinking. The news of this system spread like fire among indie artists. I have never seen such a buzz. I have never seen anything like. Now all of Epic's acquisitions are beginning to make sense. This is taking dead aim at Reallusion and it is a bullseye. Adobe Fuse is not even in this conversation and Daz is just Daz. DS will continue to have its cult following, but this new character creator is top of the line and checks all the boxes for professional creators. Epic knows their stuff. But like I said, Daz people need not feel threatened. It seems it will still be the only game in town for realistic still boudoir photos. But I think unless they take quick actions, Daz3d's dreams of spreading their market out to 3d pros and animators is seriously threatened. Epic has positioned itself as the go-to vendor for virtual cinematography and previz. That is where the money is and that is what this is all about.
It's silly to think UE4 / UE5 is not going to be made to be easily roundtripable to Blender, Maya, 3DS Max, and maybe a couple of others. They are not amateurs feeling their way around to figure out what to do next..
For those animating, it's even sillier to think the Epic is not going to integrate portions of nVidia's Omniverse SDK with Pose AI and other such boons to automating and improving folks animation work result. As well as their own take on an animation toolset beyond that but assisted by that.
It's kind of ancient hardware I know, but I did buy a use Kinnect Sensor for XBox 360 last week. Actually, I bought one last week and had to return it and now am waiting on the 2nd one I ordered this week to see if the 2nd time is the charm. I don't expect anything much but somewhat noisy captures but it will be good learning to clean them up to something usuable.
I'm really looking forward to see what Epic has in store next for animators.
@Drzap
Epic awarded Reallusion a 1.2 million Dollar megagrant last year
and became a corporate level sponsor of the Blender foundation before that.
They gave Daz $0
Draw your own conclusions about whom Epic Considers a useful partner going forward but they are cleary avoiding the hubris of believing that everyone else needs to fail in order for them to be successful, because then everyone expects you to be all things to all people which is,of course, impossible with one software package
In reality until UE4 has a proper set of NATIVE Character animation tools
people will still perform motion dev and live human mocap harvesting in MOBU ,Maya and even Iclone (who leased its human IK system from Autodesk a decade ago)
@WendyLuvzCatz ,to be fair one cannot use a frankly vestigial relic like Carrara as a measure of how well these Metahuman Avatars export to other environments and
Epic has only named Maya thus far as a fully supported export environment for them and I would imagine that the next major apps officially supported would be Blender, Houdini and perhaps Maxon C4D
As far as Daz's effort to Spread their market... you need look no further
than "Morph3D/MCS","MorphID", the "Oasis" and "Tafi3D" to make your own judgements on how well that effort has been going.
Carrara was the only thing I got anything in though
I wasn't using it as a measure
I certainly crashed a few other apps trying including 3DXchange
...and yeah I am just a dumb premade asset user, I do dolly dressups and silly videos and too stupid to use the metahumans without an iPhone
It's still too early to say but If the other assets sold via Quixel Bridge are any indication, there will be at least FBX support for MetaHuman assets and probably native Blender support since there are a ton of game developers using that platform. Maya was a natural selection since, as you say, UE4 does not have as many strong animation tools as Unity.
@WendyLuvsCatz,
Epic has chosen to support Autodesk Maya for importing the metahumans thus far
and Iclone 3DXchange is still a 32 bit app so no surprise that it failed
considering the many gigs of data you reported.
I do not have ,nor will I be purchasing, an Iphone or any of little timmy's luxury brand products.
The Metahumans are a set of premade UE4/5 native figure assets
that will need content just like Daz Genesis does.
There are many factors yet unknown such as what will this content cost.
and what retail marketplaces will support such assets etc..
Moot to producers like me ,but of interest to many consumers I am certain.
However if making conforming clothing for them involves any process more complicated
than the few mouse clicks it takes in CC3 pipeline, I wont even consider them
even if there is direct support for them in my pro 3DCC app Blender.
Besides there is a new high detail character creation system coming for Blender called "Human generator"(google it as Daz wont allow links to it).
Again kudos the Epic for making them "free" for UE4/5 users but when you start factoring in the cost of iPhones & RTX Cards and the steep learning curve of UE
and the intractable power of peoples comfort bubbles
Well..you realize that the current, somewhat shrill hype about these new "Dollies" will not translate into some apocalyptic destruction of all other options in the 3D Character marketplace.
well that was my point too
but other's here believe the DAZ users will be falling over themselves to use it when D|S cannot even import a rigged FBX file from most apps
and I don't see the vast majority of DAZ users using anything but studio let alone Unreal Engine
most cannot even import an obj
not counting the active forum users and Premier Artists in that judgement we are the 1%
While i may agree that D|S importing options are somewhat a subject to be improved, i also would note that FBX is kinda weird format which failed to be "really" universal because there are/were many variations of FBX not compatible with this or that software,or only compatible with specific version etc. Some fbx you can't even open in almost anything, like at all.
I'm a DAZ user for 15+ years and I would love to be able to do with the MH figures what I can do with DAZ figures - and do even more, actually. I'd love to see high quality real-time rendering (rather than the poor show we have with Filament), better animation tools, better cloth sim and soft body physics. Somehow I don't see that happening with MetaHuman - at least for some considerable time. I don't think it is aimed at the same market.
Yes, I'm one of those who like to "dress up dollies" although I would describe it more like putting appropriately dressed (or undressed) characters in scenes which tell a story. I'm not a content creator or a movie producer. I don't play PC games so have no interest in run/crouch/jump/shoot animation blocks (which seem to be the basis of most game animations). Nor do I have much interest (yet) in characters that speak to camera. Nor in mocap. But a better designed animation timeline would be very welcome and a few aniblock type motions would certainly be helpful.
So what I'm trying to say is that there is distance between what I like to do in DAZ Studio and what seems to be the purpose of these new MetaHumans. I may well have misunderstood that purpose or the direction and possibilities, however.
I always get excited when the word "real-time" gets used. MetaHuman looks amazing but that's about all I can say for it. It's not innovative, all it does is offer a prettier package to already existing standards.
The face morphing/sculpting looks promising and I'm curious to see the versatility of their system. At first glance the underlying mechanism seems to use a large amount of bones instead of actual sculpting and morphing. If that's the case it's something that can be reproduced within Daz Studio
mmm this guy was struggling with his nice card
my 890ti is not going to go well if I retarget it
So here it is, the beginning of the end. You might think this is just being dramatic, but no.
I have been talking for YEARS about video game engines becoming the one true threat to Daz3D. Years. Then when Epic bought Quixel I told you guys back then it was only a matter of time before Epic made a platform for creating humans. It matters because it is Epic. Daz could have been that company. You guys say that Daz has built a successful slice of this business...Daz is practically pocket change compared to Epic. When Epic does something, people pay attention. That is why they are a threat. Even if Metahuman is not quite as robust as Genesis, it does not have to be, because it is backed by Epic and a part of their Unreal Engine. I cannot stress that point enough. Anybody who is new to 3D and looking to get started might be looking at Daz, well now they might be looking at Unreal and Metahuman. Many people know what Epic is, but most people do not know what Daz is.
I do find it it quite amusing that Tafi started selling 3d models again, after a long absence trying to chase VR. But IMO Metahuman has already won. The Tafi models are not material optimized for the game engine! Look it up, "Shader Set: Uses the Daz3D Shader Set". That means you need to figure it out yourself. Plus Tafi models only have 32,000 tris, which honestly is kind of pitiful by modern standards. You can see just how low res Tafi models are in the screen shots. Meanwhile Metahuman is already built around Unreal, and we can see the results. Oh, and we can see the results in real time I might add. Not after several minutes...or maybe an hour. Or several hours. Nope, in freakin' real time. These models can breath in front of you in your monitor in real time. (Whoa that sounds creepy).
Of course, this is only just the start. This has not even fully released yet, people. So obviously there will be some issues in the beginning. They will get worked out.
Lets address some comments.
-This is for video games!- -This is not marketed to the same people as Daz!-
Well it can be for games, but it doesn't have to be. These are 3D assets like Genesis assets. It can be for animation. It YES it can be for still renders. You guys need to understand that a video game engine is just another tool, like Daz Studio and Iray. Unreal can do whatever you want it to do provided you know how. Is that really a different market? Dude, Daz sells interactive licenses for a reason. They have Tafi for reason. Stop kidding yourselves.
Unreal also has its own content store, just like Daz. And I will bet that there will be plenty of Metahuman content available for your purchase...just like Daz Genesis. So there will be plenty of variety available to create the people you want to, just like Daz.
Of course the hardware requirements are kind of high. Daz Iray isn't exactly easy on hardware, either, not to mention Iray is restricted to Nvidia GPUs, so no AMD 6900 with 16GB for you to play with! However Unreal will run on any GPU. Plus Iray will gobble up your VRAM and completely stop rendering if you don't have enough. However a game engine is capable of spreading the load between RAM and VRAM. There is of course a performance hit, but SSDs can reduce this and the software is getting better all the time. This is a major part of the PS5 design, building a SSD that is so fast that it can function as well as RAM. We also have DDR5 to look forward to in the future. You can count on Epic Unreal to keep pace with these, it is exactly why Epic showcased Unreal 5 on a PS5 and not a PC. They demonstrated just what being able to access data quickly through SSD can do. Can we depend on Iray to keep up? Guys, Nvidia is not even building Iray in house anymore, they outsourced to 3rd parties. That is a giant red flag IMO. But you can bet that Epic is putting everything behind Unreal, because Unreal is their bread and butter...yes, even more than Fortnite. Epic was moving in this direction long before Fortnite came along, all Fortnite did was accelerate that trend.
Now Daz is not going to just die right away. But don't go thinking that Metahuman will have no impact on Daz. I already said back when Quixel launched that the clock was ticking for Daz. That clock is ticking real loud right now. When might it stop? I don't know. But you cannot ignore it. I am sure there will be diehards who stick by, just like Victoria 4 has some diehards out there. But that isn't going to be enough. Like I said above, people new to this are going to look up Epic Metahuman before they see Daz Genesis.
Daz Studio 5 needs to happen ASAP, and it needs to be really damn amazing. Anything less than that will be slow decay of their customer base. Remember that Tafi models are only 32,000 tris. And yeah, Daz's insistence on keeping HD to PAs only and away from end users is really biting them in the ass right now. Hmm, I said that would happen one day, too. <.<
We also had comments about studios building their own assets. Well yeah, of course that will continue, this will not replace that. But obviously the asset stores are doing quite well, or Epic would not have bothered doing this. Also, these things save time. That is the whole idea here. Saving time. This is the concept behind Daz Studio and its asset store, correct? After all, it is totally possible for all of you guys to build this stuff completely on your own, right? You could all do it if you wanted to. It just takes years and years of learning and creating every single thing, but you can do it.
Time is money. Especially today. People want to create, not be bogged down by long periods of just building assets. That is what these stores are for. Even game studios will be looking at these Unreal models because they can save them time...and possibly money. Outsourcing is pretty common in the industry, buying premade assets is just another form of outsourcing. They might totally custom build the main cast, but perhaps the background people can be Metahumans. Metahumans opens new doors to people, it lowers the bar of entry in a way that Daz Studio did for the past 20 years. Now it is Metahuman's time.
That's pretty badass. Whenever I actually upgrade to a more serious level of hardware, I'd like to dabble in unreal engine, and metahuman looks very cool. This will certainly be competition in the animation arena, but I'm not sure what epic/unreal has to offer for still frame creation. Don't have the hardware to create with unreal yet, like the idea of creating with it, but no experience with it.
THIS!!!!!!!
same thing applies to dynamic hair. locking Dforce hair behind PAs only was a bad idea
And it's a pitty because just now that DAZ decided (AT LAST!) to make it easier to use their models in other apps by releasing the different bridges maybe that decision, even though was the wise one, maybe it was not as complete as it should have been and maybe it came a little too late... Hope not, but just time will tell.
The other urgent matter to fix in Daz Studio is to give the user a proper IK rig!!! Without HD morphs for everybody and without IK I don't see how can they compete.
just means I don't buy it
it is too limited in it's use
fur I will sometimes buy but actually don't use the Dforce on it so an editable strandbased one would be better in that case and I would buy more
Transmapped hair cards dforce fine and look just as good if not better, I use the Apex cloth on them in Unreal
The MetaHuman hair is a blend of dynamic hair strands and hair cards (aka transmapped polygon hair for DAZ Studio users). The Unreal Engine can then blend between the two, dropping to just hair cards for lower performance PCs which technologically seems way more sophisticated than DAZ Studios dynamic hair system. I somehow doubt Epic will limit the creation of dynamic hair to their "PAs" seeing as how they open sourced their aquisition of Shave and a Haircut back in 2019. You can tell by their aquistions (Shave and a Haircut, 3Lateral, and Cubic Motion) they are serious about building cinematic level human capabilities and technology.
If Epic builds a tool designed specifically for posing, animating, final frame rendering digital actors (or maybe adding this functionality to Twinmotion), they could have something that might be a disruptor to the DAZ Studio/Poser ecosystem. If someone develops a system to transfer existing DAZ/Poser assets (morphing and re-weightmapping) clothes and hair from Genesis characters to retarget MetaHuman, that disruption might even be accelerated. Epic probably doesn't care at all about the small 3D still pinup render market segment that DAZ/Poser operate in, going after serious TV and filmakers instead, however if there is software and content that is of professional quality at the free price point and at the current DAZ price points, there could be a stunting of the future growth of the DAZ/Poser ecosystems as new users would be unlikely to get started doing 3D with DAZ Studio or Poser.
MH probably will be subscription based, that seems to be how Qixel rolls. "Free for use" in Unreal does not mean the creation service is free. They would have made a big deal about it.
Indeed the Sample Human project is free, but the MH Creator part probably will cost $, either subscription or per-character. With that, Daz has a lot of fertile ground for business.
If Epic were to have this be a complete full fledged free-for-all creator, then all bets are off. But they are not going to do that, as that is not the Fortnite way - free to play, but not free to creatively design.
My intention is to use Unreal for vast landscapes using assets from both the DAZ and Unreal stores (as much as I'm tempted by Kitbash3D, I can't quite justify their prices to myself)...
,,,I'm not interested in animations, so it doesn't matter if I get crappy frames-per-second or not so long as the final shot gives me the look I want.
With DAZ textures optimised for Iray, they will convert no problem when exporting to Unreal - the only downside is that you end up creating a duplicate library of all the stuff you export via DAZ bridge - but it's way faster than trying to manually set up the textures, so it's swings-n-roundabouts... choose whether saving space or saving time is more important to you.
LOL, yeah, it's not like customers that want to make SBH are going to not make SBH because we can't turn it into dForce hair. And customers that don't want to make hair but buy it (the overwhelming majority of customers) are really going to be influenced too much by that. Seems like an policy that only unnessarily reduced interest in SBH and dForce hair both.
No, MetaHuman and it's editing capability are free to use in the Epic UE engines. Epic also bought Quixel and the Quixel assets are also free to use in the Epic UE engines. It's only outside the Epic UE engines that any payment applies. So you can make and publish you own UE games or make your animations & still renders in Epic UE and pay nothing (until and if your income from said games exceeds a certain amount of money as stated by Epic).
We have to parse this carefully - you start off by saying "No", but then everything else you wrote would technically be in agreement with everything I said. You yourself only detail that it would be"free for use" in Unreal, which is what I had said, because the CGChannel article had that quote it its article.
If you tweak the texture in the MH Sample project, technically you are editing a Meta Human in UE. But this has nothing to do with MH CReator. Editing in UE is sequentially after it has been exported from MH Creator. And so I am not talking about a Meta Human once in UE, I am talking about use of the actual Meta Human Creator web-based application itself. Now, with this web-based application, there has been no statement as to the price of this, likewise it has been never been stated that it wil be free either. The only things that have involved a definitive "free" are (1) the free Sample Project, and (2) statement by CGChannel that Meta Humans, once created, are "free for use" in UnrealEngine.
So at best you can hope it will be free. But based on th erelease information and quote in the CGChannel article this is not at all definitive. I mean, I hope it will be free too....but I am not counting on it.
Doing this video stuff for a while, not making me smart just old, my first impression was "humm nice paint job" which goes to what I think Daz is working on and that is materials and how it is applied has always been a sore spot as everyone does it different. If thinking about it the sample file already runs on 4.26 so if you rip the materials what would a Genesis model look like with a MetaHuman material?
The "Next" best thing is a selling point so I look on such improvements in the same manner as someone selling me a use car and except for hair, which is always useful, I stick with Genesis thank you very much. :D
Final opinion except for the fact it is officially supported buy Epic what makes MetaHuman better?
Oh, let me count the ways:
1. FIRST class VFX quality facial rig. A rig like that is worth multi-thousands of dollars out in the wild
2. A real body rig with FK/IK and corrective shapes
3. Support from industry heavyweights using industry-standard workflows
4. industry standard strand-based hair options. If you're a creator, you can create and simulate your own grooms using a choice of multiple softwares
5. More photorealistic than any other figure on the market.
If you are a traditional Daz Studio user, these things may mean nothing to you. For you, MetaHumans may not be better. But for those who have been struggling to bring Daz figures out of Studio and into the wide world of animation, these features are a bucket list from heaven.
The obvious difference is that Quixel is not a good example for the subscription-based service you seem to expect, since it is completely free for use in UE and Twinmotion. Based on the Quixel example, the plausible assumption would be that the creation of Metahumans will be free for use in UE. And exporting to another application is not really relevant for Daz users imho since Daz isn't very capable of importing rigged models in any case, so it's more or less a mute point for Daz-only users. I don't expect any Daz users to import Metahumans into Daz Studio without Daz completely changing politics with regard to rigged imoprts. So imho people here will either stick with Daz and Genesis or mostly switch to UE completely, maybe apart from using DazToUnreal for additional assets.
their latest video manually posing