Sidenius

Character creator

Added 2024-06-22 22:45:58 +0000 UTC

This extended progress report features some additional information about the human character creator.

Technical breakdown
I'm using a UE feature called MetaHumans as the base for the mesh topology, shaders and facial animations. These are highly realistic digital humans that are freely available for UE users to download and play around with. A problem with MetaHumans however is that they are created in an editor and are not easily changeable after they have been made, so they are not meant for in-game character customization. I still wanted to give them a shot though, mainly because of the realistic skin shader and the world-class facial animation rig that can be animated using AI facial motion capture.

As you can see in the videos, I figured out a process for adjusting the face at runtime without breaking the animation rig or introducing other issues. It's using the standard way for making this kind of face sculpting called morph targets in UE, and adjusts the animation rig based on how the player sculpted the face.

Features

So far, this is the only thing I've implemented for the character creator. There are some important bits left, namely hair, skin texture, skin color and eye color. I may also improve the sculpting capabilities when I have tried it out some more if needed. Some other things that are less important but would be cool to get in there at some point are for example skin paintings like tattoos, make-up etc, scars and maybe horns/scales or other draconic features.