So most of you might have seen this amazing announcement from Epic Games/Unreal: MetaHuman Creator
Now this is crazy impressive, but wait it gets better…
Mind blowing stuff. You can download 2 free metahumans already. I’m very excited to see the full version of MetaHuman Creator when it comes on-line. It’s a cloud based application. You’ll be able to create real-time photorealistic digital humans in blazing speed.
This made for Unreal so it’s going to hook in nicely to all of unreal’s tools. 30 different hair styles using Unreal Engine’s strand-based hair, 18 different proportional body types. When you’ve completed your character download the asset via Quixel Bridge. It’s fully rigged, ready for animation and motion capture in Unreal. You can also get source data in Maya form with meshes, skeleton, facial rig, animation controls and materials. I think the possibilities of this tool are endless. It is a top tier fidelity cg human but you can also output a lower level of detail. You may have limitations of modifying this character into other applications. I haven’t really messed with Unreal that much but this just might push me over the edge to jump in.
Keep an eye out for updates on Epic Games’ MetaHumans creator and lets see where this goes.
This weekend I tried out The Void with three friends. We did the Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire VR interactive game. I’ve heard a lot of hype on this experience, and I have to say it did not disappoint. The combination of physical set, real time effects, and cutting edge virtual reality in a high detailed environment and rich story was just astounding and good all around fun. Afterwards, we all couldn’t stop talking about the technology making the experience feel so seamless. So I did some digging into it.
ILMxLAB creates next generation Immersive Entertainment Experiences. They combined the talents of ILM visual effects, Skywalker sound, and Lucasfilm to create amazing interaction and stories. I’m not sure the interaction between ILMxLAB and the Void.
This was by far the most fun experience I have had in VR. Reason it was so great is I forgot it was VR! Here’s more in depth info on the tech involved.
The headset or HMD (Head Mounted Display) is a combination of technology. The headset fit like a helmet that didn’t restrict my eyeglasses. It has multiple pieces of technology to it. What was amazing to my friends and myself was the fact that we weren’t wearing gloves to align/register our arms and hands to the vr world. The real time sync was pretty clean. I was able to wiggle my fingers, give a thumbs up, or flip my palms up. The CG synced to my hand movements pretty well. Leapmotion worked on the hand sync.
The backpack and vest feel like your were wearing a kind of body armor. Since the story line is that we were Storm Troopers it completely worked with what I was wearing. The vest has sensors that react to contact hits in the game. If a Storm Trooper shoots you in your left rib, you feel a vibration like the blast hit you. They said the vest backpack weighs about 25 lbs. but it didn’t feel it. It must be balance well with the vest straps to helps level out the weight. In the backpack, you have Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 GPU, Intel i7 Processor, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, hot swapple battery, and other gadgets to make Batman proud.
The staging of the physical set is very well done. You don’t feel like you only entered one room and kept re-entering it. The sync up of real and virtual is expertly done. The story line is pre-Rogue one. K-2SO is in the story. In a scene you walk by him, but if you reach out you can actually feel him there (obviously they built a prop of him).
Here’s a great video where you see the set and the VR portion from some of the other Void experiences and R&D.
The mission runs for 30 minutes and is well worth every penny.
Here’s a article on their take away. If more VR experiences can learn from the Void and xLab, I believe they can turn VR away from being a one trick pony but into a fully immersive rich new medium.
Thanks to Paul Rivera, Hans Keim, and Kiyong Kim for joining me in this awesome experience. And to my wonderful wife who surprised me with this as an early birthday present.
I was lucky enough to attend Gnomon’s “An Afternoon with Epic Games in the Unreal Engine” on June 15th. Andy Hess and Luis Cataldi gave an Introduction to Unreal, a four-hour lecture/workshop. They covered the basics of the program, UI, simple land creation, texturing, and how to incorporate game play/game mechanics. I have been interested in an having an excuse to look more deeply into Unreal and the VR applications of it along with game play.
This event inspired me to look more closely at Unreal and what others have done. A co-worker showed me the amazing “A Boy and his Kite” demo back in 2015. This is stellar. The astounding work put into this. There is an amazing making of for it as well:
Studio EB 