MetaHuman Creator - an Insane Level of Competition...
Jabba
Posts: 1,458
Unreal giving glimpse of their new cloud-based animation character creation suite called MetaHuman Creator.
It's just a reveal at this stage, so no info about prices etc (I expect it will cost a pretty penny - probably charged on a per-character basis rather than buying clothes and hair separates to use as you see fit on different characters)
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/digital-humans
I don't actually see myself using it, unless I want a young face to present YouTube videos with, LOL
This will not compete with DAZ for single-frame artwork, but obviously as far as animation is concerned, this is an insane level of competition.
Perhaps something that will be too expensive for the average DAZ user like myself anyway - but if Unreal include it in future versions rather than it being an expensive third-party service, then it will really start to mess with people's heads.
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yeah i was about to post about it too but you where more fast, holy moly this is another level of insanity, if we can have the character, hairs, cloths, outfits and most important "morphs!!!!" and all for free(, i means included in unreal engine license like the twinmotion it really gonna really blow up not only daz but even unreal market, many 3d artists selling characters in unreal market also can be affected, peoples will gonna insane with it.
This is making movies in real-time kind of stuff if you have all the motion capture equipment, or pre-recorded versions if using mocap packs (wouldn't even need to own mocap hardware for that)...
...There's got to be a catch somewhere, and I'm guessing it'll be price - all game assets are priced at extended license rates - oh yeah, and you'll only be allowed to use it in Unreal as well I would imagine, whereas DAZ let's us render using whatever engine we prefer.
In the Unreal 5 promo videos, they made a big deal about no longer needing to worry about poly counts (they were using latest Playstation to demonstrate), so MetaHumans could have poly counts in the tens of millions at the top end. If this is as easy to use as they're hinting at, then it's a massive step into the gap between game engines and professional studio digital movie making.
"Epic confirmed to PC Gamer that MetaHumans Creator will be free for use with Unreal Engine, which is also free to use, with commercial Unreal Engine game projects paying royalties only after earning over $1 million in revenue."
for Daz and Poser.. I say "Ouch"
Hmm, this guy actually says at the end of his video that Poser and DAZ might be worried about this...
https://youtu.be/5FH5XTp6vaY
...but there's nothing to indicate it will be any use for static images, and I don't use DAZ for animation, so hopefully not as much of a nightmare for DAZ as it first appears (fingers crossed)
-edit- crossposted with message above... free in Unreal Engine, and Unreal5 around the corner too - yes, this is a big OOF moment I fear.
well since animation is made up of static images.... yup. it's useable for static images. I can render via Twinmotion (which is unreal based) to either still image or animation....
well one thing which maybe gonna still make daz less worried would be if all the characters are for family friendly production, i means "barbie/ken dolls body", i means no gens, if the characters can't be exported naked or don't have any gen" then it can make then not desirable for "sexual productions(movies, animations, online comics/books/graphic novels and games), which would make daz still more desirable since it do have support for the "kink" while epic goes more to be a "family friendly production".
nice knowing you daz
I'm not following the logic here - it's always been possible to produce excellent results with other tools, but most of them are more generalised than DS (or Poser) and therefore tend to eb ahrder to use. There's also the matter of how much content isa vailable, and how eaasy it is to make your own - things which remain unknown here. It seems a bit premature to be writing obituaries.
i do agreee for exemple if it's only allow you to "customizate a character and throw it at unreal and you are unable to "export morphs" like the reallusion character creator it gonna make daz still better on that matter because for mte the current big seller point of daz is being able to export morphs which none other did so far.
Mmmm it's a little early to say it's the end of DAZ. MetaHumans indeed look amazing and much more real than Genesis 8.1. DAZ still may have their niche specially with more illustration oriented models (more stylized). MetaHumans are so real that they are also closer to the uncanney valley than genesis is. Another important factor here is if MetaHumans interface is not as friendly to use as DAZ Studio.
So far the MetaHumans demos have shown only closeups of the head (and they look amazing) and clothed models. It would be interesting to see the body rigs and how the characters bend (specially with more muscular characters). Are they planning any kind of muscle simulation system? We'll find out in the next months... thats for sure.
A big plus for DAZ could be the HD morphs support. MetaHumans come with 8 Levels of Details but it seems that the high rez level still has less vertices than what Daz Studio can handle using subdivision levels (levels 3, 4 or higher). Wish DAZ would change their policy and make the HD morphs creation support available for all users and not only for PAs. That could be a real game changer specially when combined with the new bridges for Blender, Maya, and so on... Maybe they can free at least the multiresolution support up to level 3 for all users and keep the access to levels 4, 5 and above for PAs. It's very frustrating trying to create your own characters when you can create morphs only to the low level resolution. Yes, we all understand that you can use displacement maps but you can use displacement maps in MetaHumans too. If DAZ wants to compete that could be a big plus. Daz doesn't want to free the multiresolution support because they don't want other sites selling HD characters for Genesis 8. Really? That shouldn't be their concern. What are they really afraid of. If they sell the best quality HD characters what do they have to fear. If they fear other sites coming with better quality HD characters than their own then the real problem is in their product.
Also, if DAZ Studio wants to compete they need to offer a proper IK system inside of DAZ Studio. Years and years pass and DAZ always ignores this problem. Come on... is it really that hard to have a proper IK rig where hip and feet stay still if pinned and not sliding all over the scene when you move other bones? Is it really that hard?
If MetaHumans is not that expensive (or maybe even free), they offer a proper IK system (which they do), if they offer an ever growing library (which they will) and the possibility to create your own morphs even in high resolution levels then DAZ is in real trouble.
This is the beginning of the end for other Character Creation Products. MetaHuman is backed by industry-standard DCC's and workflows. The assets will not only be useable in UE4 (for free!), but also in Maya and other platforms (at a cost). They will be interchangeable thru USD. You can LiveStream with them between Unreal Engine, Maya, Houdini, 3dMax, Blender and more. You will see a slowly whittling away of market share from players like CC3 and Daz Studio. Epic has done (buy purchasing studios) what Daz3d has been trying to do (by crowdsourcing) and they have done it much better. This is a changing of the guard. Of course, there will still be users of Daz, but If I am someone starting fresh, I'd be a little crazy not to go with Epic now. From a creator's standpoint, the tools in MetaHuman are far superior.
This looks IN-CRE-DI-BLE:
I'm extremely impressed and more than a little scared for Daz!
I think the quality is insane, especially the hair, eyes, and dynamic wrinkles.
Daz still has a leg up in terms of amount of content, but for how long?
I do imagine Unreal probably won't have gens, but I imagine 3rd-parties would fix that pretty quick.
Are we seeing for Daz what happened with Poser?
It will for sure be some competition, but unless all DS users start using the Unreal engine, I doubt it since this won't work in DS (yet). Users will still have to do some of the work and many here don't want to do anything other than click a few buttons and render.
I have never been an advocate of using DAZ models for game design, so hopefully this will be a viable option for the game devs.
I'm simply shocked by the quality! This is real-time, but they look more photoreal than 8.1, IMO.
It won't unless there's a massive amount of additional content available. This appears to have the content of an average modern game create-a-character, and while the quality is amazing, everyone's going to be looking good and mocapping in the same basic clothing and recognizable hairstyles. We have the creativity to kitbash, and that's what will keep us going until someone can do better.
I imagine there will be many things to buy in the Unreal store.
Depends on a lot of things. Cost, ease of use (a big one), what's available for content, etc, etc, etc ;)
Laurie
Yeh Allen, and that cost will depend on level of detail for character, the clothes, and hair used. As far as I can figure, you create your project with the Live Link online (cloud) plugin and then download it. You then need to buy a number of other plugins to enable your MetaHuman "project" to work in a Unreal Engine. A high-end system with a powerful graphics card (un-specified) is recomended. I think this would be of most interest to animators, but I agree the level of detail and realism is so good that still-renderers would be interested too.
For me it depends a lot on the licensing limitations. Knowing I could use the assets here in almost any work royalty-free and modify them however I liked was critical to my buy in with Daz. It does sound like their intent is to make this as accessible as possible and that you're free to alter the mesh. The current examples look a little too Blockbuster AAA Game for my tastes, but it's interesting that they aimed for stylized realism, because I think that's one of the key things that makes most Daz characters look appealing rather than horrifying.
I would expect Epic to try to acquire Daz and make it part of their content ecosystem for this before I'd expect it to be an outright Daz killer (which isn't to say that I expect either to happen). But my long-time prediction is that 3D is on the verge of blowing up as an art form because it's finally in a place where it's comparatively accessible and the results can be truly beautiful. It can open paths for people to tell their stories who might not have had the right medium otherwise. If so, this might be the first of many company-owned platforms, and I think Daz might easily mantain a foothold as extremely easy to use and flexible.
On a side note--and I may just be tired from being in MMOs for almost 20 years and seeing every new game with promise being evaluated in terms of whether or not it could completely obliterate the others--it made me a little sad to see such a cool platform positioned first as the potential end of another program I love and have invested a lot in.
Well,at least now anyone can make any video "evidence" they want/need to accuse anyone of anything.
I wonder how many "leaked" videos are coming in the near future?
It was going to happen someday,,looks like we are there now.
something...something..nothing you hear...something...something....half of what you see...
Maybe we should all be a little worried for lots of reasons.
Other than that , yep, it looks like a great toy to spend some of my hobby money on.
the iPhoneX, 11, 12 limitations pretty much rule me out of using it unless there is also a text to speech or lipsync option, even if I had the money I refuse to buy a phone that allows so much access to my data.
I have an iPad for that which never leaves the house I can remotely disable if stolen at least preventing the thief from getting verification codes and stuff from my bank, taxation office etc as well as my emails.
I don't put all my eggs on one device.
Even if my computer stolen I can get into my gmail and change my password on another machine but these things all need a secure phone to get a 2 factor verification so my phone stays home not on me.
(not fun during Covid19 with the tracking verification everywhere, I sign a sheet instead)
An iPhone is just too big a security risk to me.
It say unavailable for me too
and all my Unreal Engine versions saying please wait so maybe they are overwhelmed
Here's a hands on look.
All those verts don't hurt either.
As far as DAZ is concerned, I think it may depend on what percentage of their sales come from keen amateurs that are unwilling to "lift the hood" and make their own adjustments - if playing with sliders in DS seems scary, then basic settings for something like UE will appear terrifying.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying DAZ products are low-end (after all, why would we be here if we hated the products?), but even if every single game dev and movie artist dropped everything else and all switched to UE with MetaHuman, I'm sure there will still be plenty of us still here looking for new products to buy.
I buy from both DAZ-related stores and the UE Marketplace (I don't use Unity anymore), and I can say that my Bank manager would easily be able to tell me that I spend far more money here than elsewhere. I have no sense of any impending compulsion to abandon DAZ because someone else has an impressive shiny shiny that isn't even part of what I do at the moment anyway.
I think any "concern for DAZ" is us trying to second-guess DAZ expanding their business with game engine bridges etc rather than what most of us buy product for (and again, this totally depends what percentage of DAZ turnover comes from us, or are we simply a public face while the serious money is made in a parallel sector)...
...But for what I use DAZ for, I don't feel the need to be worrying about anything much at this stage. It is nevertheless "interesting times" that may soon offer us additional possibilities moreso than replacing current activities ;)
Time to renovate votes to Unreal then!
You need an RTX to get decent performance with the Meta Human Demo. It took over 15 min to load the sample project on an older GTX. The demo project is available in the Marketplace. Be sure to update you unreal version to 4.26.1 that in itself is a huge download.
BTW Daz to unreal does not work with 4.26.1 so be careful when opening old projects, use the copy mode so it will not destroy you original project.
i feel which the great game changing for daz would be they "really get into the 3d market, like RI chracter creator and improve they work to not be only focused on "still stand rending" and making products which can work for all stuffs, which means render images, animations and most important games, if they start to switch stuffs to be more dinamic and less focused then i also think which they really don't need to be worried, because they indeed still have market, they just need to "improve over it and use the bridge stuffs as a start point to really move on from only render to something more generic., like unreal is doing now.
anyway epic is really trying they best to full dominate all the 3d market, making unreal work on each possible branch of 3d and be the "all in on" tool, which at long term can kill a lot of stuffs like blender, maya, motion builder or even zbrush since they are also creating inside unreal they own modelng tools and with the covid i'm believe they gonna improve another tool inside unreal which for now allow you connect peoples in ilocal net connection in unreal (multiple users accessing the same engine at the same time and be able to each one work on they "own work", currently unreal have really a huge number of features which are still on "beta' which if they keep improving in a future not soo far (like probably between 10 or 20 years) it will really be the all purpose 3d application they are aimming and top market tool which a huge number of peoples using it.
I already found out you need to edit the uproject file in notepad and change the DAZtoUnreal plugin from true to false if you want to open a 4.26.1 project where you stupidly enabled it
I only see heads. No bodies?