Introduction
The advent of digital humans like MetaHumans in Unreal Engine has the potential to revolutionize the film industry. As a filmmaker, I’m fascinated by how these hyper-realistic digital characters could change the way films are made and the stories they tell. In this article, I’ll provide an in-depth look at MetaHumans and examine their implications for the future of filmmaking.
What Are MetaHumans?
MetaHumans are highly detailed digital human characters created using Unreal Engine’s tools and content. They have extremely lifelike facial expressions, hair, eyes, teeth, skin, and movements.
Key Features
Some of the key features of MetaHumans include:
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Photorealistic faces – MetaHumans have digital faces that are indistinguishable from real human faces. Their skin, eyes, hair, and teeth look incredibly realistic.
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Range of expressions – Using Unreal’s tools, MetaHumans can display a wide range of nuanced facial expressions like happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust, and more. Their facial movements are extremely lifelike.
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Diverse library – There is a diverse library of ready-made MetaHuman characters of different ages, genders, ethnicities to choose from.
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Customization – While starting with a base MetaHuman, developers can further customize skin tone, hair, eyes, outfit, props and more to create unique digital characters.
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Animation – MetaHumans have a sophisticated underlying facial animation rig that allows them to be animated easily and realistically. Their body movements are also highly realistic.
In summary, MetaHumans allow the creation of digital human characters that look and move like actual human beings with unprecedented realism.
How Are MetaHumans Made?
MetaHumans are created using a combination of Unreal Engine tools, 3D scanning, and AI:
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3D scans – Real people are 3D scanned to capture highly detailed facial data like wrinkles and skin imperfections.
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AI processing – The 3D scan data is processed using AI to generate the digital human models with precision.
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Facial rigging – A complex facial rig with hundreds of facial muscles is added to the MetaHumans to control their facial expressions.
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Animation – MetaHumans are animated using Unreal’s tools like Control Rig to make their movements extremely lifelike.
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Textures & shaders – Photorealistic hair, skin, eye textures and advanced shaders are used to make MetaHumans look real.
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** customizable** – While starting with a base model, developers can customize the MetaHuman’s hair, eyes, outfit, props and more.
The combination of 3D scans, AI, advanced rigging, textures, and animation is what gives MetaHumans their astonishing realism compared to previous digital doubles.
Benefits for Filmmaking
MetaHumans offer some exciting new possibilities for filmmaking:
Faster Production
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MetaHumans can significantly speed up production timelines. Highly realistic digital doubles for actors can be generated quickly without going through lengthy processes like makeup and prosthetics.
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Background crowds in large scenes can be easily populated with diverse MetaHumans rather than hiring and coordinating hundreds of extras.
More Creativity
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Directors have more creative freedom to put digital actors in scenarios too dangerous or impractical for real actors. For example, large battle scenes.
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MetaHumans age gracefully allowing them to play a character over decades without expensive aging makeup or recasting. Flashback scenes become easier.
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Unique alien, creature, or fantastical characters can be created by blending MetaHuman anatomy with non-human traits and textures.
Lower Costs
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MetaHuman actors don’t require salaries, trailers, or any of the overhead of human actors. This significantly reduces production costs.
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VFX costs for digital doubles and CGI crowds are greatly reduced with MetaHumans. Realistic digital actors require less post-production work.
While MetaHumans won’t completely replace human actors, they expand the creative palette for filmmakers substantially.
MetaHumans In Action
To see the potential of MetaHumans, here are some examples from films and other projects that have utilized these digital humans:
The Mandalorian
The Disney+ Star Wars series featured a digital double for actor Luke Skywalker created using similar Unreal Engine tools. The digital Luke was incredibly realistic with detailed facial expressions.
Siren
The short film Siren by Epic Games Research used a MetaHuman as the lead character to showcase emotional storytelling with digital actors.
Digital Andy Serkis
Unreal Engine creators recreated actor Andy Serkis as a MetaHuman to demonstrate their capabilities. The results were stunningly lifelike.
Ubisoft Avatar Game
Ubisoft used MetaHumans for the characters in the upcoming Avatar game. This shows their potential for creating realistic non-human digital characters by blending human anatomy with alien textures and features.
These examples demonstrate MetaHumans’ versatility in creating believable digital characters, from realistic doubles of real actors to fantastic creatures.
Challenges With MetaHumans
While promising, MetaHumans also pose some interesting challenges for filmmakers:
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Director must get compelling performances from digital actors via animation rather than working directly with human actors.
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Overuse of digital actors can make a film feel artificial and detached if not done judiciously.
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Digital actors still occasionally cross over into “uncanny valley” territory looking creepy and unnatural.
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Extensive VFX work is still required to integrate MetaHumans into live-action environments seamlessly.
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Audience acceptance of prominent digital actor roles rather than familiar human stars remains uncertain.
There will be a learning curve for directors to employ digital humans seamlessly into storytelling compared to working with flesh-and-blood actors.
The Future With MetaHumans
Some exciting possible futures opened up by MetaHumans and advancements in real-time digital humans:
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Lifelike digital actors – Digital humans could become so realistic that they seamlessly replace humans for many actor roles.
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Interactive Storytelling – Directors could create interactive films where users choose outcomes branching the story in different directions with MetaHuman actors.
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Virtual Production – Films are shot entirely in virtual environments using digital actors, with physics and camera work mirroring real production.
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AI-driven Acting – In the more distant future, MetaHumans could use AI algorithms to autonomously portray emotion and improvise acting to their scenes rather than being manually animated.
While still early, MetaHumans foreshadow a monumental shift in filmmaking. Their rapid progress shows a future quickly approaching where digital and human actors exist side-by-side to serve the stories filmmakers want to tell.
Conclusion
MetaHumans represent an exciting inflection point in digitizing film production. Their advantages like faster turnaround, expanded creative possibilities, and cost savings will rapidly make them indispensable in many filmmaking contexts. While still improving, MetaHumans get us substantially closer to the end goal – believable digital humans who open up creative frontiers in filmmaking.
I can’t wait to start experimenting with MetaHumans myself for my next film projects. The future of blending real human and digital actors is arriving faster than anticipated. With Unreal’s tools, even indie creators can start utilizing digital humans today. MetaHumans pose challenges around performance and audience acceptance, but their potential is too transformative for filmmakers to ignore. We’re at the dawn of an era defined by hybrid productions combining the best of human and digital actors.
