Unreal Engine 5 Character Creation, Animation, and Cinematics: Create custom 3D assets and bring them to life in Unreal Engine 5 using MetaHuman, Lumen, and Nanite

by Henk Venter, Wilhelm Ogterop

Overview

Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) offers beginners and seasoned professionals the ability to create detailed movie scenes with realistic human characters using MetaHuman and combine it with custom props and environments. It also comes with built-in industry standard animation tools to develop such scenes in a fraction of the time compared to old methods. This book takes you through the entire 3D movie production pipeline using free (open - source) software.
By following the step-by-step, beginner-friendly tutorials in this book, you'll learn how to create your own custom 3D assets in Blender and texture these 3D assets in Quixel Mixer. Next, you'll take these completed 3D assets into Unreal Engine 5 and use them to build a virtual 3D movie set for your 3D movie. You'll also populate your 3D movie set by using Quixel MegaScans assets and create and customize your own photorealistic human character using MetaHuman Creator and UE5. As you advance, you'll discover how to rig, skin, and animate these 3D assets and characters using Blender and UE5's new Control Rig. Finally, you'll explore the process of setting up your movie cameras and animation sequences and rendering your 3D movie using UE5's Sequencer.
By the end of this Unreal Engine book, you'll have learned how to combine different elements in UE5 to make your own movies and cinematics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781801819480
Publisher:	Packt Publishing
Publication date:	06/30/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	726,862
File size:	66 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Henk Venter is currently running his own 3D Art Production Studio. He was the Principal Character Artist at THQ Studio Australia and Senior Character Artist at Electronic Arts in Montreal, Canada. In the UK he worked for Microsoft's Studio Rare, Sumo Digital, and Eurocom Entertainment.
Wilhelm Ogterop worked in bigger games studios in the UK as Character Animator and later Lead Animator on several projects. He was also part of ingame real-time cinematics teams, motion capture direction, cleanup, and implementation. Studios he worked for on-site, as well as a contractor, include Raven Software, Deep Silver, Travelers Tales Fusion, Eurocom Entertainment Software, Instinct Games, Entrada Interactive, and Headfirst Productions.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. An Introduction to Blender's 3D Modeling and Sculpting Tools
2. Modeling a Robot Drone Character
3. Let's Sculpt an Alien Plant!
4. UV Maps and Texture Baking
5. Texturing Your Models inside Quixel Mixer
6. Exploring Unreal Engine 5
7. Setting Up Materials in UE 5
8. Using MetaHuman to Create a Photorealistic Human for UE5
9. Building a Virtual 3D Movie Set in UE5
10. Adding Lighting and Atmospheric Visual Effects in UE5
11. Alien Plant Joint Setup in Blender
12. Alien Plant Skinning in Blender
13. Robot Joint Setup and Skinning in Blender
14. Making a Custom Rig for Our Alien Plant with Control Rig
15. Creating a Control Rig with Basic IK Controls for a Robot in UE5
16. Creating a Simple Swaying Animation Cycle in UE5 Sequencer
17. Create Three Simple Animations for the Robot in UE5 Sequencer
18. Importing Motion Capture onto the MetaHuman Control Rig
19. Motion Capture Editing and Cleanup Using Control Rig and Sequencer
20. Using Sequencer to Construct Your Final Scene