MetaHuman figures- Usable in Unity?

Unreal Engine is releasing hyper-realistic animated human figures (which can be customized) for their engine. Does anyone know whether these are importable into Unity or if there's anything comparable for Unity? FUSE figures aren't nearly as realistic. Here's a video:

 

This is quite interesting.

I've located the sample project page, and...
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/learn/metahumans

It is "Unreal Engine Only"

Meaning you can't use it in unity. This is quite common for UNreal engine, as when they release high quality free assets they are usually restricted to Unreal only.

 

To be precise, this is common only for sample assets released by Epic. Not anything else on the marketplace.

Does it matter, anyway? You wouldn't be able to reach such visual quality with Unity renderer, especially hairs. Not sure about state of Unity's eye and skin shaders...

 

That is untrue.

Check Infinity Blade assets, for example.

Spoiler

That's not really a sample. But it is Unreal only.

 

Infinity Blade is made by Epic so no surprise here.

 

Yes, they treat free content from their games same as samples. Same with Paragon content

 

Their strategy seems to be locking free and high quality content to the engine. Which isn't surprising.

By the way, Unity does the same thing often. Blacksmith, for example, was definitely engine-locked.

 

It's just that unity owned/provided assets are valid only for a few versions of the engine

 

Nothing on the Unreal market place is OK to use outside of Unreal. Though many unreal assets are also sold on cgtrader/turbosquid and then there is no such restriction.

Those humans look insane, I wonder if you can get that fidelity even with HDRP

 

Those are crazy good! How is that even possible in a game?

 

The actual service (which will definitely not be free, since it's supposed to run on browsers via streaming) will allow you to download Maya files, so they could be used anywhere.

 

You hire top tier personnel and spend a lot of money on them.

 

They've confirmed it in the YouTube comments. It's free for UE.

 

It actually is: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/marketplace-faq

Under "Usage Rights":

Like others have correctly mentioned, you can't use assets made by Epic in other engines.

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( For reference: youtube(dot)com/watch?v=S3F1vZYpH8c&lc=UgwLH7sT9PyPqJNuxcd4AaABAg.9J_xh_zOrIV9JaEfFSYWQd )

 

I just want a working package manager at this point.

 

Uh interesting, wonder if they have changed those. I looked at a Unreal asset a few years ago and then I couldnt use it because of above reason (none epic asset offcourse).

 

I remember it like this too. Super confusing that these rules seem to be changing back and forth. I wonder what the legal implications are. Like when you start using an asset while it's allowed, but then they change the store's rules and the asset is updated, you probably can't use the update then, right? Iirc unity's assetstore eula changed their wording in regard to using assets outside of the engine too over time. I stick to asking the asset creators as they can always grant permission no matter what the store rules are at the time.

 

I posted a link earlier. Haven't tried it yet. And probably won't get to it any time soon....
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/learn/metahumans

 

And that's a perfectly ready-to-use sample, together with Live Link Face app...
https://twitter.com/andorade/status/1359531026482139144

 

so what is the closest thing unity users have to that ?

 

UMA?

THere used to be a Character Creator which was sold, I believe by either iClone or someone similar. I can't find it now on the asset store.

 

Are you talking about Morph3D? That's all deprecated now, but they released the source:
https://github.com/mcs-sdk/mcs

Not sure if it's good for anything. In this form, it's probably more work then I'd want to do to get it working.

 

I think that was the one. It was available for some time with fairly realistic characters, but then it simply quietly disappeared.

 

That's wrong thought. Everything from the Unreal marketplace is OK to use anywhere else apart from the content made by Epic.

 

If you are asking about an alternative to unreal's metahuman the best is realillusion's Character creater 3 paired with skingen addon, it can be expensive but the results with HDRP in my opinion is far superior than Metahuman.

 

One of the easiest ways is to use the “asset store” included in unity. There are several humanoid models and animations you can get for free, and some nicer packs that you can get if you can afford them.

 

I don't know if it is superior or not, but CC3 with the skin add-on is beautiful. Although it is not particularly cheap either, so there is that. I'm currently trying to put a CC3 mesh into UMA, although with very little success, but it's because I'm a coder, I have almost no idea what I'm doing in Blender and stuff. But once I'll get a grip on it.

 

The people/company that use to make Morph 3D started a new company (kind of) called "Tafi Avatars". Tafi recently began selling their new system on the Unity Asset store. I want to purchase them and try them, but I havn't gotten around to it yet.

I have and use Character Creator 3 (CC3) as well, and they're good, but they only let you expose the face/facial morphs in-game for some reason. And it's basically a whole ecosystem of software that you have to buy if you want to do everything. Their character poly counts are honestly a little low as well compared to models you can purchase off of the Unreal Engine marketplace, or even Turbosquid now.

Also, CC3 doesn't let you expose the body morphs in-game (in realtime) -- except the facial morphs. However, you can shape your character with every single morph available in their software package ahead of time, and then import it into the game. So..... it's decent. But you also have to keep the right version of "clothing" with the right version of CC3 or they don't fit that well (again all the software they sell is dependent on each other on purpose).

If you don't need modifiable body morphs in your game during runtime, then CC3 can do a good job. I've constantly been looking for high-poly game character models because there seems to be ZERO high-poly models available on the Unity Asset store for some reason. It's like 3D modelers don't understand that computers can handle main characters with 100,000 polys easily now.

The lack of high poly character models on the asset store is expected with Unity, but sad.

The next character model I purchase, honestly, might be off of Turbosquid. They have some decent character models available now.

 

Artstation is a good source for characters too. Might cost you a bit more than the usual asset stores though

 

FYI: MetaHuman is now available in Early Access:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman-creator

As per FAQ, "Characters generated in MetaHuman Creator, including those in the sample project, are licensed for use in Unreal Engine projects. This means that you must render MetaHumans with Unreal Engine; you cannot render them outside of Unreal Engine". It's Unreal Engine only.

Guess that answers the OPs question.

 

The early access trailer is unbelievable. Still uncanny but close

 

Indeed - while watching you soon start to question wether they sneaked in a metahuman in one of the live interview sections

 

Its hard to distinct developers from real humans

 

Guy used MetaHuman Creator for few weeks. Combined with Unreal, iPhone-based face mocap and Xsens suit.

 

I get this message as soon as I want to download a Metahuman charachter in the Quixel Bridge, it looks to me clearly like the use is prohibited outside of the Unreal Engine. Then I prefer to use the Charachter Creator3 from Reallusion, which achieves pretty good results.

 

That's quite reasonable, though, isn't it?

Otherwise why would they give all the cool toys away for free if not to promote and advertise their engine?

 

Makes perfect sense. Plus even if the license didn't prevent it I'm guessing it would be a challange to convert shaders, etc, etc to unity

 

I can recommend trying UMA2.

Its a pretty great, open source and free character system that works with Unity. Its not as realistic as this, but it sure gives a lot of options.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/uma-2-unity-multipurpose-avatar-35611#releases

 

I like UMA, but spamming it in like this isn't the best idea. And on the top of that saying that "UMA isn't as realistic as this" just shows you have no idea (or refuse to recognize) what UMA is. UMA has nothing to do with the base mesh you're using with it. UMA is a system to handle pieces to put together things and change pieces edit and runtime. If you use a cartoon-style car with it or a super-realistic human setup is beside the point.

 

UMA is not a character generator, though. It is a general purpose system for making configurable meshes. Basically it is a controller for a 3d paperdoll, and while some sample pieces are included, you can provide your own pieces.

It is worth mentioning that default uma meshes are not that great. Empyrion used unmodified UMA for character customizations, results are quite awful visually.

 

You can probably achieve something similar with CC3 + SkinGen + HDRP.
Here's some character work I've done with those (it's not finished yet, so it may be improved):

Not sure, how the whole animation thing can be added, though. But in terms of rendering quality it's possible to get there with Unity, sure. I've also tried the HairStudio asset for hair simulation which gave me the impression of something that can create more realistic hair movement in comparison to UE grooms. Hair marschner lighting model is also on the way and you can find it in the HDRP roadmap.

 

Thanks for clarifing!

And it broke after a few versions - took them until the HDRP Character Demo to try again

Yes porting to Unity is possible, even without HDRP

 

@Marcurion Just to clarify it again: Generally, you're allowed to use anything from the Unreal Marketplace - except for content that has been made by Epic Games (list). For example, you could buy this asset and use it in Unity just fine.

As for MetaHuman, Epic made it clear that it's licensed for use with Unreal Engine-based products only. Sure, you can import characters made with the Creator into Unity just fine as you demonstrated it, but that's against their EULA.

 

Here I matched the angle, background and tone to the one from trailer

 

Looks good, but the trailer looks better

Like the specular highlights on the skin

 

Haha you are right, should have taken more time to study the light setup and watching the video in full resolution was also helpfull

 

Latest version with focus on eyes and micro normals

 

yes you can export them as FBX. but if photoreal 8k humans is what your game needs i'd wonder why you are using unity in the first place. that's not really unity's MO.

 

This! If you want to use metahumans and/or the quixel suite of tools then unreal engine makes far more business sense and the setup, pipeline integration and best practices for using those types of assets has been set up for unreal 4/5.

When developing for any engine look at the pros/cons of all of them. Unreal Engine, Lumberjack,Godot, Unity, etc all have their respective strengths.

 

Then it stops being a free asset though if you have to add third party highly realistic characters though or make them yourself. Which makes it less comparable to and relevant to this thread.

That it can edit character at runtime is what I find most interesting about it though. Should be possible to make it possible to generate characters and add aging to them which I find quite useful. Its not a built in feature though and would require some customization of the scripts, but still very possible.

And yes, throwing money at it, or time if you can do the graphics yourself, you can make it more realistic. Its also open source, so you could also go much further than that like adding the aging feature. Using it for a car would not make much sense.

You might want to look up what "spamming" means btw.