MetaHuman Creator Lighting Exploration

A few months ago, I tried out Unreal Engine 5.6’s MetaHuman Creator, and was excited to explore the implications of these real time characters for character design and concepts. I aimed to create a Metahuman that resembled me following the Polycam to Blender to Unreal Engine pipeline. Taking a 3D scan of my face using Polycam, cleaning up the mesh and craeting a texture in Blender, then importing into Unreal Engine to create a MetaHuman identity, converting it into a MetaHuman is a workflow that I believe I can adapt in the future, especially when concepting characters under a time crunch.

Lighting and expressions are the two most vital things that define a character. Through MetaHuman Creator I could play around with dramatic and soft lighting, seeing the implications of each on the metahuman character in real time. I explored various lighting scenarios and composition types, backlit and harsh, centered and 3/4th, contrasting the MetaHuman. The expressions are also heavily customizable, giving the artist freedom to explore. Yet, real-time characters demand considerable creative refinement from artists. I look forward to exploring more in depth into real-time characters and integrating them into my pipeline.