MetaHuman Creator - an Insane Level of Competition...

Cenobite

Faux2D said:

Unreal Engine is a game engine and game engines can do a lot of things... if you know how to code. If you're using a game engine for movie-making it's because of resources not functionality. Something like Clarisse or Houdini far exceeds what Unreal has to offer in this regard. For me the time resource involved in getting Unreal to do what a professional movie software does is better spent in actually learning the professional software instead.

People who are not influencers seem to be underwhelmed about MetaHuman particularly its lack of customization. The faces are indeed highly realistic but there's not much room for customization. Most characters end up looking very similar to one another. This is part due to their decission to add limits in their customization so as not to break the rig underneath, and part to their premade faces which all have almost identical facial skeletal proportions. You can look at all the faces created with MH then compare that with the level of customization a game like Black Desert Online offers. Or you can look at 3dscanstore to see what I'm talking about: MH doesn't create a realistic life-like face, it creates a plausible realistic face.

I want to point out that I'm not against MetaHuman. I'm again just repeating what the developers themselves said MetaHuman is for: getting a baseline for a realistic character to later be customized accordingly. Each project has a mock-up phase which is where MH will prove to be an invaluable resource. Plus the level of realism of MH is the highest I've ever seen which means they've essentially set a new standard in the industry. A mediocre 3D artist today was a top-tier professional 3D artist 10 years ago. Because MH is free they've essentially turned every realistic character artists from a pro-level to a medium-level in less than a year. These people are all concerned across the board.

You also have to becareful with this type of license if you make over 100k you have to pay licensing which could end up being considerably more costly then what you have made on the project, It's ok if you sell a million copies at top dollar but if you don't make enough money from your development after you have put it on the market and it just scrapes 100k your up for a cost of the license fee because regardless you grossed over 100k and your now liable to make payment for use of the software.

At this stage i have enough DAZ3D morphs and chararcters plus i can just use Face Transfer unlimited if i need original features for morphs, as for body features again daz3d has many morphs covering all generations which all export via the unreal plugin. You may have to port some stuff in indiviually to get the best resualts.

 Mod edit  :-  To sort out the quote

Leo Lee

The quality is amazing, but the customization and versatility are far away from Daz's characters.

And you can't load more than 6 characters without slowing down my pc. Whereas with Daz I can load more than 10.

Even though, the last version of UE4 crashes a lot on my computer. Which made me give up for a while with Metahuman.

Ellessarr

Cenobite said:

Faux2D said:

Unreal Engine is a game engine and game engines can do a lot of things... if you know how to code. If you're using a game engine for movie-making it's because of resources not functionality. Something like Clarisse or Houdini far exceeds what Unreal has to offer in this regard. For me the time resource involved in getting Unreal to do what a professional movie software does is better spent in actually learning the professional software instead.

People who are not influencers seem to be underwhelmed about MetaHuman particularly its lack of customization. The faces are indeed highly realistic but there's not much room for customization. Most characters end up looking very similar to one another. This is part due to their decission to add limits in their customization so as not to break the rig underneath, and part to their premade faces which all have almost identical facial skeletal proportions. You can look at all the faces created with MH then compare that with the level of customization a game like Black Desert Online offers. Or you can look at 3dscanstore to see what I'm talking about: MH doesn't create a realistic life-like face, it creates a plausible realistic face.

I want to point out that I'm not against MetaHuman. I'm again just repeating what the developers themselves said MetaHuman is for: getting a baseline for a realistic character to later be customized accordingly. Each project has a mock-up phase which is where MH will prove to be an invaluable resource. Plus the level of realism of MH is the highest I've ever seen which means they've essentially set a new standard in the industry. A mediocre 3D artist today was a top-tier professional 3D artist 10 years ago. Because MH is free they've essentially turned every realistic character artists from a pro-level to a medium-level in less than a year. These people are all concerned across the board.

You also have to becareful with this type of license if you make over 100k you have to pay licensing which could end up being considerably more costly then what you have made on the project, It's ok if you sell a million copies at top dollar but if you don't make enough money from your development after you have put it on the market and it just scrapes 100k your up for a cost of the license fee because regardless you grossed over 100k and your now liable to make payment for use of the software.

At this stage i have enough DAZ3D morphs and chararcters plus i can just use Face Transfer unlimited if i need original features for morphs, as for body features again daz3d has many morphs covering all generations which all export via the unreal plugin. You may have to port some stuff in indiviually to get the best resualts.

 Mod edit  :-  To sort out the quote

if you are talking about unreal license, this is not anymore on that way, in order to "pay" you have to make more than 1 million and only if on each quarter you make more than 9.999,99 or 10k, then you have to pay 5% of it on each quarter, for exemple you make your first million until x quarters you pay nothing then the next quarter you make 100k then you have to pay 5% of this 100k which would means 5k, then in the next quarter you made only 9.000,00 you have to pay nothing because the minimum to have to pay is 10k, then if the next quarter you made 10k+ then you have to pay this is they new price model.

 

if it's a game and you publish it in unreal store, you don't have to pay the 5% royalties, you only have to pay the 12% fee to publish in they store, now if you publish in another places like steam then you have to pay the 5% plus the store fee, well if you sell into your own store/site then you pay only the 5%.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq?sessionInvalidated=true

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/publishing

 

for still renders artists which make "exclusive contracts it's gonne be probably free forever, you only gonna pay if you work with stuffs like comics or contracts with royalts where the artisti keep receiving forever for the work and probably it will take a really huge ammount of time before he have to pay unless his product is really a amazing sucessfull sales or he is working a really big business which can afford to throw money like crazy which you have to start to worry about the 5% payment.

WendyLuvsCatz

I stumbled on this video, I think it could be mistaken for live footage 

Senor_Monkey

My first attempt using MetaHumans:

freezingmooooon

I think its nice to know. But if you want to built real face animations you will need motion capture equipemt.

nonesuch00

Faux2D said:

drzap said:

Faux2D said:

Ellessarr said:

indeed those characters are really for high ending. 

I disagree because even high-end computers can't deal with what MetaHuman has to offer at full detail. The same is true for what Daz has to offer but Daz is primarily used for still renders, whereas MetaHumans need to be integrated in a framework that must run at 30+ fps otherwise their value is void. What MetaHumans are for is to create a rough and quick mock-up of a realistic character which will later be optimized to fit whatever project is being developed. This is what the MetaHuman devs have said in interviews: MetaHuman is to be used as a starting point and not as a final product. Quite frankly it is a godsend for indy game studios but for Daz's customer base it doesn't offer nearly the same value.

 

I'm not sure where this statement is coming from.  Maybe you should define "high-end" computer.  There are examples all over the internet of people doing interesting things with their MetaHumans.  Also, remember this is just a preview and not the final product.  It will get more optimized as the technology matures.  Rest assured, there is a LOT more coming.

10 characters in a scene at <30fps is unacceptable for a game. Hence MH is meant as a starting point, not a final product.

Just to be clear, Unreal Engine is a game-engine meaning its purpose is for game development. Expecting to just drag and drop MH in a project and have it run smoothly in real-time is unrealistic.

Unrealistic, but exactly where the hardware and software has been pushing towards nevertheless. It's never quick enough for those that want it now but it's where the possibilities will be in the not so distant future.

WendyLuvsCatz

I made a nightie in Zbrush and weightmapped it in Blender

WendyLuvsCatz

some people are doing awesome stuff

Ghosty12

I was watching a Linus Tech Tips video about all of this and was totally blown away, by how far we have come with this technology..  Has me wondering with seeing this video what Genesis 9 may be like, because the digital human figures in the LTT video were beyond life like..

Leonides02

And, amazingly, they can be rendered in real time.

lilweep

isnt there already a thread on metahumans.

Anyway, daz vendors arent suddenly going to wake up and start making realistic-looking people just because gen 8.2 or 9 launches.

the facial animations of meta humans seem a lot better than daz facial animations - whats up with that.

 

Ghosty12

lilweep said:

isnt there already a thread on metahumans.

Anyway, daz vendors arent suddenly going to wake up and start making realistic-looking people just because gen 8.2 or 9 launches.

the facial animations of meta humans seem a lot better than daz facial animations - whats up with that.

 

I did find those other posts but had to google to find them.. lol The other thing why so angry in your post? I was just imagining with how the Metahumans look like they do.. It will certainly raise the bar for Daz and Gen 9 when ever it comes..

j cade

lilweep said:

isnt there already a thread on metahumans.

Anyway, daz vendors arent suddenly going to wake up and start making realistic-looking people just because gen 8.2 or 9 launches.

the facial animations of meta humans seem a lot better than daz facial animations - whats up with that.

 

A) it's a really good rig from a company worth billions. They could spend millions on just the rig and not even bat an eye.

B) it's continuously in motion. Which means any expression awkwardness comes and goes before you can notice it

C) it has limited lighting options designed to make the figures look their best. Honestly lighting matters more to make skin look real than SSS

But mostly it's the money thing. Asking why unreal can create something that looks this great is like asking why Hollywood can - the multimillion dollar budget helps just a bit.

Richard Haseltine

Merged threads

wolf359

WendyLuvsCatz said:

some people are doing awesome stuff

Truly Awesome!! 

Faux2D

The reason why they look so realistic is a stylistic choice, not something related to any Unreal specific technology. The Metahuman faces they showed in their presentation video are based on real faces captured through 3d scanning technology.

I once had an idea of buying all the human faces from 3dscanstore and making them compatible with the Genesis figures. Unfortunately they expressly mention in their EULA that their scans cannot be used in any shape or form with Daz Studio.

If a PA ever acquires a professional grade 3D scanner and convinces a bunch of people to sign off on their likeness then we're all set. That's not going to happen anytime soon which is why faces have to be manually sculpted, which is why they'll always have this manufactured feel to them.

nonesuch00

Faux2D said:

The reason why they look so realistic is a stylistic choice, not something related to any Unreal specific technology. The Metahuman faces they showed in their presentation video are based on real faces captured through 3d scanning technology.

I once had an idea of buying all the human faces from 3dscanstore and making them compatible with the Genesis figures. Unfortunately they expressly mention in their EULA that their scans cannot be used in any shape or form with Daz Studio.

If a PA ever acquires a professional grade 3D scanner and convinces a bunch of people to sign off on their likeness then we're all set. That's not going to happen anytime soon which is why faces have to be manually sculpted, which is why they'll always have this manufactured feel to them.

I think it's a matter of just a few years until consumer facing integrated smart products using lidar directly integrate customer likenesses into games and social media as avatars. No more lawyers claiming "They are not a cat." when we all know darn well they are the cutest little kittens! 

notiusweb

My eyes are now spoiled.  If I look at Daz genesis 8.1 they look like mannequins, no matter how amazing of an Iray or Blender render.  Something with the shape of the MH heads is phenomenal.  

But the bodies....now that is a different story.  I dare say the MH bodies are pathetic.  Especially shoulder bone layout, it's all pointed and narrow. 

Now, could I myself make, by hand, a better body?  Nope.  ...But I can sure buy one with Daz!!!  This indeed opens up a lane for Daz to outflank MH down the road, if MH's sit idle as-is.

Macislav

There are some tricks for enhancing the look of daz characters in UE4 without the need for MetaHuman heads :-). For example you can blend multiple normal maps together, one for finer details and another one for muscles and even a third one for goose bumps etc. Some normal maps need higher parametric values like 1.5 for better definition...

The same is possible with diffuse textures. For achieving a good "sweating" effect you take some good specular maps and voila!

Another trick is to use post process volumes (with static lighting it looks almost perfect), esp. the Exposure Compensation, Indirect Lighting Intensity and sometimes Ambient Occlusion.

In UE5 the dynamic lighting will at least be as good as the static lighting now.

Bryan Steagall

Having been working with the metahuman facial rig (which is a joy), I'd love to see something similar in UE for Daz characters, it would make a great add-on to the current bridge.

https://vimeo.com/569473464

Tugpsx

Video looks great. Your other projects look awesome also. Thanks for sharing. 

Bryan Steagall

Thank you Tugpsx!  it helps to use one of the best software packages for facial mocap, which sadly now is no longer available (Dynamixyz having been purchased by Take Two interactive.. all the good stuff gets bought, *sigh*)

Here's another test  https://vimeo.com/577757513

Asari

GutoCrafts said:

I recently started using Unreal and in my opinion metahumans existence does not affect Daz Studio users or the average Daz3d consumers.

There are almost no clothing available at the moment, and most users cannot create their own 3d meshes to use with the character. There is not enough content for you to create a complex or simple render scene.

 

Also, Unreal is easy to use but not as easy as Daz Studio. You need to spend some time learning the basics of the engine to setup a scene, while in daz studio you can do everything with few clicks as soon as you launch the program. Of course, with time you improve your renders, but getting started with Daz Studio is super easy. On the other hand, to use Unreal, you will need to watch a training course or at least spend some hours watching youtube tutorials to get started. 

I noticed in the daz to unreal discord channel that most users are not willing to make any effort to learn Unreal. They want to use Unreal the same way they use Daz Studio and this is not possible. In other words, I don't think metahumans are enough to make the average hobbyist move to Unreal Engine.

 

At the moment, you can only create metahumans that look like real contemporary people. If you want to create fantasy character or toons you will have no options, while with daz studio you can create any type of figure with the right assets.

 

I also noted that daz assets looks as good as meta-humans with proper shading while giving much more freedom to customize. What you don't get is auto lod, auto lod material, rig to epics skeleton, hair grooming and other optimization features for gaming. Those extra features of meta-human mean nothing for the average Daz user.

 

Another thing is that unless epic really commits to pleasing the average person, you can't expect the marketplace to fill the gap. The quality of the assets available at daz store is much better and cheaper than the ones you find in the unreal marketplace. I get a lot more for my bucks here.

 

I'm only worried about the daz user who want to start using unreal like me with daz assets. I'm already committed to genesis 8 because I build a library over the years, and I do want them to keep expanding their support for unreal engine.

 

I just hope they keep doing what they were doing and the release of the meta-human does not change their focus. 

 

Skin tone is a little bit of personal preference, but in my opinion, both figures look really good. 

I'm certainly not the typical DAZ user, and it doesn't bother me that there are no clothes - I don't maybe one or two outfits in the store per year. I left Studio to create characters elsewhere and Genesis 8 provides an OKish platform for artists who don't want to live within the rigid corset of Studio but create their own characters and need a base, and since I started out in Studio Genesis 8 was a good start. For me, the options for custom characters in Studio if you are a PA are not that great because even with displacement maps you only can so much with a base mesh, if you are going for details in the face. That's just how Studio is designed.

So yeah, if Unreal offers a quick solution where I can get a good and versatile base for custom characters and which I can take to other apps too (with several restrictions, right) that would be interesting enough for me. Also, an interesting aspect is the real time renderer, because currently I render in Arnold which is Iray-level slow.

What does that mean for DAZ ... I don't think this would affect core DAZ users, the long-term DAZ users and the customers who only want to load assets, tweak the scene and render, or who renders stills with only pre-made assets. I don't know how large that crowd is. It's fairly big enough to sustain DAZ current business, not sure whether there is enough room to grow. I also feel the fact that DAZ is quite hardware-hungry and heavily relies on a good GPU to reach its potential might also be a hindrance to broadening the market ... for new users it can be quite the hurdle.

For every other user outside of that crowd, DAZ's platform can be fairly limiting. Sure the bridges branched out but they export a lot of Studio-imposed restrictions to other apps. While these can be fixed and there are workarounds for these its time-consuming and sometimes tedious. As it has been discussed many times in the forums, these restrictions don't help DAZ winning over mass of customers who are not already DAZ core users and who don't work in Studio alone. And for everyone who renders in other apps and creates their own characters I think Genesis will have a hard time competing against Unreal's platform.

It's hard to say whether DAZ will be sustainable as a business without winning over new customer segments. They know it best.

WendyLuvsCatz

a pretty cool video that popped up in my news app

Plizze

I have seen this video. my jaw dropped like a fool.  Amazing Metahuman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNFYoj6-5H0



 

wolf359

Plizze said:

I have seen this video. my jaw dropped like a fool.  Amazing Metahuman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNFYoj6-5H0



 

Honestly the animation is floaty and lacks weight.

SasquatchIsCool

Metahuman kind of sucks - it looks great but the characters are hard to customize as far as body shape, getting different clothes and such is a nightmare.  It really is just a nonfunctional toy at this moment.

I wish there was a way to mix DAZ and Metahuman into one program.   

WendyLuvsCatz

and impossible to do facial animation on without an iPhone

Bryan Steagall

@SasquatchisCool

Actually, there is a good tutorial out there for just that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxJfZNOUmbE, works really well to combine daz bodies with Metahuman and I'm using it for my little short https://www.facebook.com/bryan.steagall/videos/375422407362591

@Wendy.  Yes, I know, but Rokoko is supposedly coming out with a solution that doesn't require one (as they do now), that will be less expensive than using something like Faceware or Dynamixyz (which I still use)

If any of you want to try out facial mocap, I'm willing to do a retarget on a metahuman if you provide me with a good webcam or static camera recording of you (something like this: https://vimeo.com/229093522, I'll retarget this and provide you with a UE sequencer or animation file.