An exciting news has been announced on State of Unreal: MetaHuman can now be used in the Unreal Editor Fortnite (UEFN) special edition.
This integration will enable creators to fill their islands with highly realistic human NPC characters, thus telling more attractive and immersive stories.
On State of Unreal, award-winning screenwriter and director Amy Hennig teamed up with Skydance New Media to unveil their latest collaborative adventure game, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, for the first time. In the exciting live streaming and tool demonstrations, we witnessed for the first time how Skydance uses MetaHuman to challenge the limits of creativity and technology.
In addition, we have announced the integration of CLO with Unreal Engine 5.4, which will allow you to create dynamic costumes for your MetaHuman characters.
Are you curious about this? Please continue reading to understand these significant developments and review the demonstrations used to illustrate the workflow.

MetaHuman in UEFN

The integration of MetaHuman and UEFN provides creators and developers with powerful and intuitive tools to bring high fidelity human characters to their Fortnite islands.
Through MetaHuman Creator, you can directly import MetaHuman into UEFN. MetaHuman and MetaHuman Animator have also been fully integrated into UEFN, achieving a workflow similar to the MetaHuman plugin of the Unreal Engine.
Through MetaHuman Animator, any UEFN user can quickly and intuitively create a digital human with realistic facial animations for use as an NPC. You only need to use an iPhone and a computer to capture an actor's performance and transform it into a high fidelity MetaHuman facial animation in just a few minutes.
You can also import any MetaHuman created for Unreal Engine projects into UEFN, reuse previously created animations or custom assets, to quickly leverage existing content.

 You can even apply animations made using MetaHuman Animator to Fortnite characters in UEFN, as these characters use bindings that comply with the MetaHuman Facial Description Standard. Check out the latest Fortnite comedy stand up show "Jokenite" performed by Trevor Noa h to learn about the effects that MetaHuman Animator can achieve in UEFN.

We can't wait to know how you will use MetaHuman to tell more engaging stories, establish deeper emotional connections with players, and fill the island with various characters to create a truly immersive experience.

However, not only will the creators of Fortnite benefit, but the integration of MetaHuman and UEFN will also provide performance improvements for developers working in Unreal Engine.

In order to introduce MetaHuman into UEFN, we have reduced the size of MetaHuman assets. It is necessary to use MetaHuman smoothly within the memory budget of Fortnite Island and ensure that they perform well on any device running Fortnite without sacrificing quality.

Many of these improvements will be incorporated into the Unreal Engine to provide performance improvements for Unreal developers using MetaHuman.

Marvelous Designer's dynamic clothing

At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2024, we unveiled a new way for you to wear custom dynamic outfits for your MetaHuman. This is thanks to Epic Games partnering with product manufacturer CLO Virtual Fashion to launch the new Marvelous Designer and CLO integration.

Marvelous Designer is based on traditional clothing production concepts and applies them to 3D fabric modeling. Regardless of the level of carving skills, anyone can use this tool to master fabric modeling and obtain fast and accurate fabric simulations, ultimately simplifying the artist's creative process.

This integration will be first launched in Unreal Engine 5.4 and provide powerful support for your MetaHuman in clothing. It also adds new USD clothing export options, which include data required for geometry, materials, and simulation settings.

You can also use the MetaHuman human body in Marvelous Designer to preview the effect of the clothing on the MetaHuman body before exporting it to the Unreal Engine.

This demonstration demonstrates how MetaHuman, dynamic clothing, and high fidelity environments can completely change the appearance and feel of Fortnite's islands, and allows people to understand how creators can use MetaHuman in UEFN to bring realistic and trustworthy human characters into a realistic environment.

Skydance New Media demonstrates MetaHuman and UE 5.4.

On State of Unreal, viewers witnessed how MetaHuman helps teams break through creative and technological limits and create next-generation content. And Amy Hennig, a renowned game director from Skydance New Media, along with her team, unveiled Marvel Games' new multi protagonist adventure game "Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra" for the first time

The team's goal is to integrate live streaming and gaming, creating an interactive and realistic experience that feels like a playable movie, thanks to excellent visual effects and exciting battles.

They have been using Unreal Engine 5 and MetaHuman to bring realistic effects to their graphic simulations, characters, and animations. MetaHuman technology helps them depict every detail of the character in real-time and create animations that match this fidelity.

Machine learning facial, body, and fabric deformation techniques driven by Unreal Engine can achieve incredible realism in game characters.

By using the processing pipeline of 3Lateral, captured facial data can be used to calibrate MetaHuman. Then, by utilizing this data and machine learning techniques, the underlying facial binding deformation can be enhanced, making it closer to the actor's appearance.

The deformation of the body and fabric is supported by the Machine Learning (ML) Deformer of Unreal Engine 5- a powerful tool that utilizes the latest machine learning techniques to drive surface deformation in Unreal Engine 5.

The MetaHuman binding it generates can be combined with MetaHuman Animator and full body performance capture to transform actors' exciting performances into stunning digital performances. The facial animation displayed on State of Unreal is directly solved using MetaHuman Animator without adding any additional keyframes.