In the world of computer graphics, creating realistic digital humans has been something of a holy grail for a couple of decades now. Many have achieved the goal of making a still image of a digital human that is indistinguishable from reality. But often, it’s when these characters are called on to perform—especially if they are required to be rendered in real time—that the “Uncanny Valley” creeps in.Epic Games’ MetaHuman team, which includes digital human innovators 3Lateral and Cubic Motion, is on a mission to change all that. First, with MetaHuman Creator, they made the creation of realistic digital humans accessible to everyone. Then, with Mesh to MetaHuman, they took the technology a step further by enabling you to create a MetaHuman based on a sculpt of a character or a scan of an existing person.
In their most recent release, the team introduced MetaHuman Animator, enabling you to capture an actor’s performance and turn it into high-fidelity facial animation for your MetaHuman in minutes, using a stereo head-mounted camera, or even just an iPhone. MetaHuman Animator faithfully recreates every nuance of the actor’s performance on a digital character—something that would have previously taken a team of experts months.
To push MetaHuman Animator to its limits during its development, the Serbia-based 3Lateral team collaborated with local artists and filmmakers to produce Blue Dot, a short film featuring renowned actor Radivoje Bukvić, with cinematographer Ivan Šijak acting as director of photography. The entire sequence, including hair, was all rendered in Unreal Engine, and is able to run in real time.
The film demonstrates how MetaHuman Animator unlocks the ability for teams to create cinematics of stunning fidelity and impact by using a creative on-set process typical of traditional filmmaking to direct and capture a performance. What’s more, the quality of animation delivered straight out of the box was so high, only a small team of animators was required for final polishing.
Source: Unreal Engine Blog