Test
I decided to make some quick test to see how easy it would be to create a MetaHuman of real people. Based on the method I used to create a MetaHuman Identity out of a stylized model, I knew I had to create 3D models of the people who I wanted to make MetaHumans of. I asked one of the studio members for help as they had worked on 3D scanning technology. She told me about PolyCam which is quite the easy tool to make 3D scans of anything you want and creates relatively good models. I grabbed two studio members and created a scan of them using PolyCam
I sadly cropped one of the scans a bit too much so for the other scan I decided not to crop so i don't have to fix anything after.
The next step was to add the meshes created by polycam into a 3D software. I put them in blender and cut off the access around the face. Essentially leaving a mask of the person who was scanned. I had to fix the hole in the nose so I just bridged the gap with some polygons within blender.
Once I finished the meshes I put them into Unreal the same way I created the stylized head in the blog mentioned above.
I created a MetaHuman Identity by placing down trackers onto the model. Once the identity was finished I assigned a skin and added hair in the MetaHumanCreator tool.
Here are the results (1) (2)
The Metahumans don't fully resemble the people they are from as alot of what makes your face recognizable are more details in the skin, discoloration bags, creases etc. and metahuman does quite uniform skintones.
A way to change this would be to use the texture created by the scan and editing it to fit onto the new model created by MetaHuman Identity solver. This ofcourse requires a clean texture. Sadly Polycam makes bad textures that could not be used to create new textures with easily. (1) (2) The textures are disjointed and almost set up like a puzzle.
Here is one more example. I asked the group that worked with scanning equipment if I could use the scan they made of Cristian to create another Metahuman, since they created a cleaner model. The mesh has a really good texture (1) that isn't a puzzle.
However, even with a good mesh you still can't get super accurate. And just adjusting the good texture to fit in the same space as the MetaHumans skin wont cut it. The scanned texture has light data from where it was scanned, so the eyebrow casts a shadow and there are over exposed areas where the light hits the skin and reflects the most.
You need to be able to transform the skin from that to this. Which requires a lot of time and work to color match perfectly and not eras too many details away.
What I discovered through this is that a lot more goes into creating a MetaHuman that looks like you, you can get an approximation easily but almost a replica requires a lot of editing and creating of custom grooms (hair, eyebrows, facial hair etc.)
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