Unreal Engine 5.8 plugin · Windows · version 1.0.4
An editor plugin for posing and animating MetaHumans inside Unreal, and for moving a MetaHuman's hair and clothes out to Blender:
The panel works on its own. The exporters, the library and the live link are for use with the AlphaHuman Studio add-on for Blender, which is sold separately.
Everything is in one menu, Tools → AlphaHuman Studio:
It turns on the engine plugins it needs if they are off: Control Rig, Level Sequence Editor, Hair Strands, Chaos Cloth Asset, Chaos Outfit Asset, MetaHuman Character and USD Importer. Epic marks three of these as beta: MetaHuman Character, Chaos Outfit Asset and USD Importer.
If a project has its own copy of the plugin in its
Plugins folder, or one under the old name
MHControlPanel, delete that folder. It clashes with the engine
copy.
Tools → AlphaHuman Studio → AlphaHuman MH Control. At the top are three pages (Face, Body and Poses) and a dropdown that picks which MetaHuman in the level you are driving. Refresh rescans the level.
The panel poses a MetaHuman through its face and body Control Rigs, and those only exist on a character that is in a Level Sequence. Do this once per character, before anything else — the board, the picker, the pose library and the live link all need it:
Until then the panel says Open a Level Sequence with this MetaHuman's face Control Rig (or body Control Rig) under its buttons, and the handles do nothing.
The MetaHuman face board. Drag a handle to pose the face. Drag on empty board to box-select (Shift adds to the selection); Ctrl-click adds or removes one handle.
| Mouse | |
|---|---|
| Right-click | Puts the selected handles back where they rest, or every handle when nothing is selected. With Symmetry on, the other side too. |
| Double-click a handle | Puts that one handle back (and its other side, with Symmetry). |
| Middle-drag / wheel | Pans / zooms the board. Fit puts the view back. |
| Control | |
|---|---|
| Symmetry | Moving one side moves the other. |
| Tweakers | Shows the fine controls beside the main board. |
| Key Sel / Key All | Keys the selected handles, or every handle, at the current time. |
| Reset Sel / Reset All | Puts them back to rest. |
| Fit | Resets the board's zoom and pan. |
| Face Cam | Shows a small camera view in front of the face that follows the head. |
| Face Light | Lights the face cam with its own spotlight instead of the scene's lighting. |
| Live | Receives the live link from Blender; see below. |
A body picker. Click a control to select it (Shift or Ctrl adds), or drag a box around several, then pose them in the viewport.
| Control | |
|---|---|
| Select All | Selects every body control. |
| Key Sel, Reset Sel, Reset All | As on the Face page. |
| Symmetry | Makes the pose symmetrical. |
| Copy L→R / Copy R→L | Mirrors one side onto the other, for the selection. |
| Swap Arms, Swap Legs, Swap Upper, Swap Lower | Swaps left and right for that part of the body. |
| Toes, Labels, Show Ctrls | Show the toe controls, name each control on the picker, and show the rig's controls in the viewport. |
A pose library, saved with the project. Filter it by Face, Hand, Body or All. Type a name and press Save; for a hand, Save L or Save R. On a saved pose, set Blend and press Apply. The × deletes it.
With the AlphaHuman Studio add-on, whatever you pose in Blender moves the same character in Unreal. Set up the Unreal end first:
17890;
leave it unless you changed it in Blender.From Blender you can then key the current frame in Unreal, bake the whole shot into the sequence, or pull the sequence back into Blender. The add-on's manual covers that end.
Writes a MetaHuman's hair as Alembic, for the add-on's Hair section.
/Game/MetaHumans).
It writes <folder>/<character>/Grooms/*.abc and a
grooms.json, with the polygon cards in Grooms/Cards.
Writes garments as Alembic, each with the body it was cut for, so the add-on can fit it to another character.
Each garment gets a folder under <export root>/Clothes/.
Exporting again overwrites it. Rescan refreshes the list
after you add assets.
| Switch | |
|---|---|
| Textures | Writes the material's maps as PNG, up to 4K. The slow part; turn it off to check a fit quickly. |
| The body it was cut for | Leave it on. Without it the garment fits, but clings where it should hang. |
| Every skeletal mesh | Also lists skeletal meshes that do not look like clothing. Off by default. |
A bought outfit often comes in four body sizes. The export uses
the first; the CA_ cloth assets beside it are the individual
sizes.
Wardrobe assets published from Blender, and Unreal's own, in a shared folder. Blender can be closed.
/Game/AlphaHuman/Wardrobe and selects it
in the Content Browser, ready for MetaHuman Hair & Clothing. Updating
again keeps the same item.Assets travel as USD: fitted meshes, bones, weights, material bindings and PBR textures. Chaos simulation, parametric resizing, morph targets and custom shader graphs do not. Keep a published folder whole when you move it.
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
The dropdown says (no MetaHumans) | Put a MetaHuman in the level, press Refresh, and pick it. |
| Open a Level Sequence with this MetaHuman's face Control Rig, and the handles do nothing | The character is not in an open Level Sequence. Drag it from the Outliner into Sequencer; see First. |
| The live link is on in Blender, nothing moves here | The character must be in an open Level Sequence (its Control Rigs are what the link moves), picked in the dropdown, with Live ticked on the same port as Blender. |
| Export Grooms says No grooms under /Game/MetaHumans | No MetaHuman in the project has a groom asset. |
| A garment is missing from Export Clothes | Press Rescan, or tick Every skeletal mesh. |
| The menu is not there after installing | A copy of the plugin in the project's own Plugins folder is overriding the engine copy. Delete it. |
Write to [email protected] with the Unreal version, what you pressed and what happened.