★ — FUNDAMENTALS
The MetaHuman pipeline, end-to-end.
A production-grade MetaHuman touches at least seven pieces of software across five distinct craft disciplines. Here's the full pipeline used by working studios — including ours.
Stage 1 — Sculpt
ZBrush for the high-poly sculpt of likeness. Reference photos imported, head and body sculpted in tandem. Pore-level detail at this stage. Output: ZBrush .ztl file.
Stage 2 — Conform
Wrap3D conforms the ZBrush sculpt onto the MetaHuman base mesh, preserving edge flow and rig compatibility. Output: conformed mesh on the MetaHuman topology.
Stage 3 — Hair
Maya Xgen for interactive groom — head, brows, lashes. Strand-by-strand sculpting for hero. Houdini Vellum for simulation. Bake to hair cards for real-time. Output: groom + cache + LODs.
Stage 4 — Wardrobe
Marvelous Designer for pattern design and cloth simulation. Re-topology in Maya/Blender. UV layout and texturing in Substance Painter / Mari. Output: skinned wardrobe meshes.
Stage 5 — Rig
MetaHuman ships a UE5 mannequin-compatible body skeleton. Layer custom face rig (ARKit + jaw + tongue + correctives). Mocap retargeting setup. Output: rigged character.
Stage 6 — Shade & Light
Custom skin shader (subsurface scattering), eye caustics, hair shader. UE5 Lumen lighting setup. Movie Render Queue for cinematic. Output: final shaded asset.
Stage 7 — Ship
Export to UE5 + Maya + Blender + USD + Unity. Package with LODs, hair cards, ARKit blendshapes. Final QA for runtime performance. Ship.