Live class · Intro · 2 hours · Past session
Intro to MetaHumans in Unreal 5.8
with Alex Coulombe
Wed, Aug 26 · 11am–1pm ET
Taught live on Zoom and recorded.
About this session
MetaHumans the new way, from inside the editor: sculpting and customizing, assembling cinematic versus optimized versions, live facial animation from a webcam, and turning your own scans into MetaHumans.
What we covered
This session walked through creating, customizing, and animating MetaHumans natively within Unreal Engine 5.8. Alex Coulombe demonstrated the in-engine MetaHuman Creator workflow, comparing cinematic and performance-optimized assembly configurations alongside hair card and groom setups. The class also covered real-time facial puppeteering using Live Link Hub with a standard webcam and generating MetaHuman Identities from footage and custom scans.
- 01Reviewing the evolution of MetaHumans from cloud-based tools to native in-engine creation in Unreal Engine 5.8.
- 02Sculpting facial geometry, breaking symmetry, and adjusting body proportions directly in the native MetaHuman editor.
- 03Customizing skin textures, teeth shaders, makeup, and hair color using hair cards and groom systems.
- 04Importing wardrobe assets from Fab, configuring full rigs, and assembling cinematic versus optimized character LODs.
- 05Evaluating assembled MetaHumans side by side in-engine using LOD coloration, wireframe views, and lighting adjustments.
- 06Driving real-time facial animation on multiple MetaHumans simultaneously through Live Link Hub using a webcam.
- 07Generating a MetaHuman Identity from multi-angle video frames and fitting facial and dental tracking markers.
- 08Testing custom mesh-to-MetaHuman conversion using RealityScan head geometry aligned with Unreal Engine modeling tools.
AI summary of the session recording's transcript — the recording itself is the source of truth.
