MetaHuman and Unreal Engine

Published on: Thursday, February 22, 2024 at 6:00 PM PST

Written by Josh Bright

Getting a character created in Meta-Human into Unreal Engine has a few steps that I need remembering

Setting up MetaHuman

Click the create button, and select a pre-defined character to start with.
Go through the menu on the left to update the character to what you want
Name the character by clicking the edit icon in the upper right part of the page
Close the window

Click the “Quickly add to the project” button in Unreal Engine, and choose Quixel Bridge
Ensure you are logged in on this new window
Click on MetaHumans on the left navigation menu, and then click on My MetaHumans
You should now see a list of the characters you have created
Choose a quality setting in the bottom right, and then click download
After the download is finished, click the blue add button next to the download button
Once downloaded, you sould now have a MetaHumans folder in your Content folder, drag out your character to the scene

First, duplicate the character in the Content folder and add Player at the end of the name.
Double click on the new duplicated character and it should open in the blueprint editor.
You will notice some compiler errors at the bottom.
Double click the first error, and it will highlight the problem node.
Delete the problem node, and drag out a connector from the node it was connected to, and add in a new Get Skeletal Mesh Asset node, and reconnect it to the nodes the deleted node was connected to.
Hit compile and that error should be gone now.
Double click the next error, and perform the same action. Delete the highlighted node, re-drag out from the node it was connected to, and add in a new Get Skeletal Mesh Asset node. Reconnect it to where the old one was connected to.
Hit compile again and that error should now be gone as well.
There should no longer be any errors.

We next need to update the character to act as a player instead of just a MetaHuman.
Click class settings at the top of the window.
Change the parent class to BP_ThirdPersonCharacter in the side menu under Class Options.
You’ll notice the default mannequin object will now be in the scene along with your character.
On the left tree menu for the character, we. need to find the Body node (under Root), and drag it so it is a child of Mesh (Character Mesh)
Next, reset the location values on the right side so that they are all 0. This should bring down the character to be more aligned with the default mannequin.
Reset the rotation also.
In the object tree on the left, delete the Root node that the Body was under originally.

On the left hand side under the tree, find the Variables menu, and look for Live Retarget, open that menu.
Double click the “Use Live Retarget Mode” menu item.
On the right menu, click the “Use Live Retarget Mode” checkbox.
The MetaHuman should now be moving along with the mannequin.
Next, click on the Mesh node in the scene tree (where body was dragged to earlier)
On the right side, search for visible, and under Optimization, find the Visiblity Based Anim Tick Option and change it to “Always Tick Pose and Refresh Bones”
Next, uncheck the Visible checkbox under the Rendering menu, which should now hide the mannequin.
Click on Compile, and an error should pop up. Double click the error, and it will bring you to the blueprint editor.
To fix, drag the Mesh node in the scene tree into the graph area, and drag that node into the target slot in the node that shows the error.
Click on Compile again and it should fix that error.

In the Content Browser, go to the Content->Third Person->Blueprints folder and open the BP_ThirdPersonGameMode
Change the Default Pawn Class and choose the MetaHuman you created earlier.
Hit Compile, and then hit Play. You should now have the MetaHuman, but you aren’t able to control it yet.
To fix, back in the Content Browser, open up the BP_ThirdPersonCharacter blueprint.
Highlight all the nodes and copy them.
Go back to the Content Browser, and go to the “Player” version of your character, and double click it.
Click the Event Graph tab.
Paste the nodes you copied earlier.
A error will show up, mainly saying that we now have two Begin Play nodes.
Delete the Begin Play node that was pasted, and connect the existing Begin Play node to where the old one was connected to.
Hit Compile, and then when you play, you should be able to control your MetaHuman now!