Unreal Engine 5 Character Creation, Animation, and Cinematics

Get to grips with the base workflow and create your own cinematic scenes in UE5 by learning to develop the main elements, animate, and combine them into a complete rendered movie scene with the help of key images printed in color

Key Features

• Perform your entire rigging and animation workflow inside Unreal Engine 5 using Control Rig tools
• Create hand-keyed animations and clean up motion capture natively in Unreal Engine
• Learn the basics of creating 3D assets and customizing a MetaHuman for your movie needs

Book Description

Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) offers beginners and seasoned professionals the ability to create detailed movie scenes with realistic human characters using MetaHuman and combine it with custom props and environments. It also comes with built-in industry standard animation tools to develop such scenes in a fraction of the time compared to old methods. This book takes you through the entire 3D movie production pipeline using free (open - source) software.

By following the step-by-step, beginner-friendly tutorials in this book, you'll learn how to create your own custom 3D assets in Blender and texture these 3D assets in Quixel Mixer. Next, you'll take these completed 3D assets into Unreal Engine 5 and use them to build a virtual 3D movie set for your 3D movie. You'll also populate your 3D movie set by using Quixel MegaScans assets and create and customize your own photorealistic human character using MetaHuman Creator and UE5. As you advance, you'll discover how to rig, skin, and animate these 3D assets and characters using Blender and UE5's new Control Rig. Finally, you'll explore the process of setting up your movie cameras and animation sequences and rendering your 3D movie using UE5's Sequencer.

By the end of this Unreal Engine book, you'll have learned how to combine different elements in UE5 to make your own movies and cinematics.

What you will learn

• Create, customize, and use a MetaHuman in a cinematic scene in UE5
• Model and texture custom 3D assets for your movie using Blender and Quixel Mixer
• Use Nanite with Quixel Megascans assets to build 3D movie sets
• Rig and animate characters and 3D assets inside UE5 using Control Rig tools
• Combine your 3D assets in Sequencer, include the final effects, and render out a high-quality movie scene
• Light your 3D movie set using Lumen lighting in UE5

Who this book is for

This book is for beginners to Unreal Engine or 3D animation and art in general who want to learn the entire process of creating 3D movies with Unreal Engine 5. Experienced 3D artists and animators new to UE5 will also find this book invaluable as it covers cutting-edge techniques for making real-time 3D movies using Unreal Engine, Blender, Quixel Mixer, and Quixel Bridge. Although prior experience with 3D software is not necessary, it will be helpful in understanding the concepts more easily.

Table of Contents

1. An Introduction to Blender's 3D Modeling and Sculpting Tools
2. Modeling a Robot Drone Character
3. Let's Sculpt an Alien Plant!
4. UV Maps and Texture Baking
5. Texturing Your Models inside Quixel Mixer
6. Exploring Unreal Engine 5
7. Setting Up Materials in UE 5
8. Using MetaHuman to Create a Photorealistic Human for UE5
9. Building a Virtual 3D Movie Set in UE5
10. Adding Lighting and Atmospheric Visual Effects in UE5
11. Alien Plant Joint Setup in Blender
12. Alien Plant Skinning in Blender
13. Robot Joint Setup and Skinning in Blender
14. Making a Custom Rig for Our Alien Plant with Control Rig
15. Creating a Control Rig with Basic IK Controls for a Robot in UE5

(N.B. Please use the Look Inside option to see further chapters)

Henk Venter is currently running his own 3D Art Production Studio. He was the Principal Character Artist at THQ Studio Australia and Senior Character Artist at Electronic Arts in Montreal, Canada. In the UK he worked for Microsoft’s Studio Rare, Sumo Digital, and Eurocom Entertainment.

Wilhelm Ogterop worked in bigger games studios in the UK as Character Animator and later Lead Animator on several projects. He was also part of ingame real-time cinematics teams, motion capture direction, cleanup, and implementation. Studios he worked for on-site, as well as a contractor, include Raven Software, Deep Silver, Travelers Tales Fusion, Eurocom Entertainment Software, Instinct Games, Entrada Interactive, and Headfirst Productions.