Hi All,
An interesting topic and after some research using both products this is my 2Cent observations:
Design/ModelingCharacter Creator has a wider variety of shape deformations and the ability to push past "Normalized humanoid" , raising the possibility of diversity substantially.
The Hair approach is no longer state-of-the-art but is certainly a valid approach for optimized rendering and game industry.
This is in contrast to
MetaHuman , with a restricted set of base models and minimal facial and body styling however, it can provide a wide variety of characters (though normalized)
The Hair approach is using individual strands and more in the direction of a VFX pipeline,thus a high-quality and more refined sculpting can be achieved.
both products support LOD so the difference there is minimal.
Look-dev/ RenderingCharacter Creator has certainly developed a solid workflow for getting characters and their textures looking nice ,they provide a wide range of extra layers including make up,freckles, skin tones etc.
Rendering quality is okay,( I would say about 85%) certainly usable as distant characters or where close-ups or photo-realism is not a requirement.
MetaHuman is based on scanned assets and textures thus taking longer to produce more base shapes to blend from, The advantage is more realism in the textures and displacement maps.
Rendering quality users newer technology and leverages on their detailed scan textures and curve based hair pushing closer to photo-realism ( I would say about 95%).
Facial Animation
Character Creator uses a large set of blend shapes to provide facial animation, blend shapes are still used in the VFX industry and can certainly reach high levels of realism.
they are easier to understand and implement but require higher memory and processing especially for transitional poses and blending into larger structures ( Jaws, mouth, brow, cheeks, lips) to get full facial animation.
MetaHuman on the other hand is taking a hybrid approach, using bones/joints to take on the general larger shapes and expressions ( open/close/ side movement of the jaw, lips and brow) , using smaller corrective blend shapes on the eyes and mouth.
this is generally faster to process at the cost of set up time and , they also implement displacement using textures to gain a finer granularity of skin defamation and wrinkles.
they have certainly put large effort into finding a good balance for Morphs/Joints as this is the main difficulty.
With its scanned textures and innovative facial rig
MetaHuman have certainly pushed the envelope, but only in regards to human characters and within their limited character set. (though slowly expanding)
changing
Character Creator to this new technology is no trivial task but if they feel it's worthwhile it would certainly open the door to creating a more diverse set of characters something currently metahuman can't do.
for example, headshot character generation, Orcs,Trolls, aliens or cartoon based characters, a rich set or body shapes and styles, all meta human compatible..
Cheers Curtis