Until now, getting a home-made character into the MetaHuman pipeline meant respecting a precise topology. Unreal Engine 5.8 lifts that constraint: the engine can wrap the MetaHuman mesh onto any mesh, as long as it is humanoid. Full test on a character built from scratch.
Building the source mesh
- 1Gather two references: one for the face, one for the body.
- 2Have an image AI generate a front view, neutral expression, in a tight bodysuit and in an A-pose.
- 3Run that image through a 3D generator to get a high-poly mesh.
The A-pose and the tight bodysuit are not details: they avoid loose clothing and arms pinned to the body, which throw the wrapping off.
Preparing Unreal
- 1In the engine version options, on the Epic Launcher side, tick the MetaHuman Creator essential data.
- 2Once the editor is open, enable the MetaHuman Creator plugin.
- 3Import the mesh into the project, unticking material and texture import — MetaHuman’s own will replace them.
- 4Create a MetaHuman Creator file, and hand it the mesh in the Import section.
The import accepts head and body together, or the two separately. A single mesh works perfectly well.
Placing the points
The imported mesh has neither the size nor the proportions of the MetaHuman. So you have to tell the engine which part matches which, by placing pairs of points.
- The MH Offset line shifts the MetaHuman aside to clear the view.
- Make sure Show Preset Key Point and Show Custom Point are ticked.
- Ctrl + left click places a point on the MetaHuman.
- Ctrl + right click places the matching point on the imported mesh.
- A plain left click selects a point already present on the MetaHuman, to be paired the same way.
There is no need to mark everything. The chin — to locate the head — and the main body joints are enough to guide the wrapping.
Wrapping and assembly
One click on Autosolve starts the computation: the body first, then the head. At the end, the Manual Solve Action entry gives access to Refine Vertices to improve the result, and all the usual MetaHuman Creator tools remain available for polishing — hand proportions, picking a coherent skin texture, clothes pulled from FAB.
- 1Go to the Assemble section.
- 2Create the rig and the source textures.
- 3Click Assembly, and wait.
The character you get is a full MetaHuman: it inherits every feature of the ecosystem — facial rig, animations, LODs. The final render depends heavily on the quality of the source mesh and the care taken over the points, but the door is open for any humanoid character.