Tutorial — MetaHumans in Unreal

Augmented Traveler local tutorial. Back to Unreal — Tutorials · MetaHuman process: MetaHuman — Process

How a MetaHuman is built, assembled and run inside Unreal 5.8, and where clothing, hair, animation and our conversation system plug in. Read this before touching a figure in the engine.

Draft. Written from Epic's MetaHuman 5.8 documentation. Confirm component names against the first assembled figure.

1. The life of a MetaHuman in Unreal

MetaHuman Character asset (in-editor MetaHuman Creator)
 ├─ Head & body: presets, Mesh to MetaHuman / From Custom Mesh, calibrated DNA from Maya
 ├─ Skin & eyes: textures (Texture Override, unbaked materials in 5.8)
 ├─ Hair & Clothing: grooms + Outfit Assets / Wardrobe Items  ◀── Marvelous Designer
 └─ Assemble ──▶ pipeline: UE Cine | UE Optimized (High/Medium/Low) | UEFN | DCC Export
                  └─▶ assembled Blueprint actor (BP_<Figure>) placed in levels

2. What the assembled Blueprint contains

Part What it does
Body skeletal mesh The body, on the MetaHuman body skeleton
Face skeletal mesh The head, driven by RigLogic from the DNA (joints plus corrective shapes)
Groom components Hair, brows, lashes, beard (strands or cards)
Outfit / clothing Chaos Cloth outfit or skinned clothing (Tutorial — Marvelous Designer Garment to MetaHuman Outfit)
LODSync Keeps body, face, hair and clothes on matching LODs
Animation Blueprints / Control Rig Body and face animation; the face rig can be keyed in Sequencer
Live Link Takes live face or body data (Live Link Face, webcam, audio source)

Rule: wrap it, don't edit it. Make a child Blueprint BP_AT_<Figure> that adds our components (conversation client, gaze target, caption anchor) and keeps the generated parts untouched. A re-assembly then won't wipe our work. Confirm the exact component names on the first figure and record them here.

3. How clothing gets onto a MetaHuman

Marvelous Designer doesn't talk to MetaHuman directly. The chain is:

  1. MD makes the garment and exports USD.
  2. Unreal turns the USD into a Cloth Asset (Chaos Cloth, built in the Dataflow editor), skin-weighted to the MetaHuman body.
  3. The Cloth Asset becomes an Outfit Asset (resizable), then a Wardrobe Item.
  4. MetaHuman Creator puts it on the character (Hair and Clothing → Outfit Clothing) and resizes it to the body. Resizing happens in the editor and is cooked into the build.
  5. Assembly carries it into the character Blueprint. Chaos Cloth simulates it at runtime, or it is skinned-only on light surfaces.

In short: Marvelous Designer makes the clothes, Unreal (Chaos Cloth plus the Outfit Asset) makes them wearable, and MetaHuman Creator dresses the figure. Full steps: Tutorial — Marvelous Designer Garment to MetaHuman Outfit.

4. How the figure moves and speaks

Need Unreal / MetaHuman feature Our use
Recorded body performance Mocap → cleaned in Maya (Tutorial — HumanIK Mocap Cleanup for MetaHuman) → Animation Sequences; MetaHuman 5.8 also does single-camera body capture Monologues
Recorded face performance MetaHuman Animator (iPhone/stereo capture → Performance asset → animation) Monologues
Face from recorded audio (offline) Audio-driven animation: a MetaHuman Performance asset turns a SoundWave into face animation, with mood overrides; UE 5.6+ Quick lip sync for pickups and short lines
Face from live audio (real time) MetaHuman Audio Live Link Source (MetaHuman Live Link plug-in); 5.8 adds a new real-time model; GPU-heavy Q&A answers: the TTS voice drives the face. Must be tested in a packaged kiosk build (Tutorial — Authoring a Q&A Experience with Ambient Idle)
Idle life, gaze, gestures Animation Blueprint (idle blend, Look At), hand Pose Assets (Tutorial — Hand Pose Library for Gestures), State Tree Waiting between questions
Timeline control Sequencer (Level Sequences, face Control Rig keys, audio, subtitles) Tutorial — Sequencer for Monologues

5. MetaHuman 5.8 features worth knowing

6. Practice exercise

  1. Create a MetaHuman Character from a preset. Add a sample outfit and hair.
  2. Assemble it Cine, then Optimized Medium. Compare the file sizes and the look in the same level.
  3. Make a child Blueprint BP_AT_Test with a text-render component above the head.
  4. Drop a SoundWave into a MetaHuman Performance asset (audio-driven) and play the result on the character.
  5. Write down every component name you see and update section 2.

Sources