A few weeks ago, Epic introduced MetaHuman Creator, a new development tool designed to facilitate the creation of credible human faces. Now you can sign up for an early access version, meaning you can try it out if you are i) a game developer interested in the future of character design or ii) a curious spectator wondering if you can use it to recreate Gigaknight.
Big fan of the low-poly version of the character 2 minutes and 23 seconds after that:
In a news post, Epic explained that since the tool is cloud-based, it lets people enter slowly over the course of a few days. However, there doesn’t seem to be a limit or criterion for qualifying for access, so if you’d like to try, you can sign up here. You will need an Epic cover.
Epic released a few copies of MetaHumans last month, but if you want to go straight to using the characters in your game, there are now “50 MetaHumans ready to download and use in your projects.” There is also documentation that explains how to get started with the tool and how to bring the characters into Unreal Engine.
What seems so powerful in this regard – apart from the fact that it makes amazing pores – is that it also seems accessible to me, a mannequin. In essence, it looks like many other video game character creators, only with much more power and the ability to dig deeper if you are a real 3D artist or animator.
Of course, we continue to move towards a kind of claim to the singularity of the face, in which the difference between real and virtual makes no sense, and our own society becomes metavers. But hey.