How to Rig and Animate a Metahuman: Maya to Unreal Engine 5 Workflow

How to export a Metahuman from Unreal Engine to Maya and rig for animation. And how to reimport to Unreal Engine with face and body animation.

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Hope it is helpful.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to exporting metahumans Unreal Engine to maya and back
00:38 - Export your Metahuman to Unreal Engine
01:25 - Download and install Quixel Bridge
02:20 - Install Quixel Bridge Maya plugin
02:49 - Download and install Maya 2022
03:33 - Export Metahuman from Bridge to Maya
06:14 - Download and install Auto-rig plugin but Mad Guru
07:20 - Animator's Survival Guide
08:03 - Exporting Body Animation from Maya
10:21 - Exporting Face Animation from Maya
11:29 - Importing FBX Body Animation into Unreal Engine
13:00 - Creating a Level Sequence
14:22 - How to cycle and animation post-infinity
15:10 - Importing FBX Face Animation into Level Sequence
15:47 - Fix Metahuman body type mismatch

[Madguru]

Thanks for the shout out :). I'm so glad the tools have been helpful for you.

[jonairenikus]

First time I write a comment) But you deserve it. Thanks a lot, man! I learned how to model, to animate, to rig and a little bit about UE. Now it's really possible to put everything in one project with Metahuman. I am really excited!

[rezk]

updated Bridge can export rig into maya 2023 pretty decent, but for shaders it wants render engine to be DirectX 11 (preferences/display/viewport 2.0).
and, not for the record, there is a free autorig - advanced skeleton

[Dominicn]

hey bro, i just wanted to write and say thank you very much, i've gone insane the last 3-4 weeks trying to learn how to make cutscenes for my game project in unreal, seriously, i've been learning unreal and working on my game for a year now and this has been the most irritating part, every tutorial is all mixamo bullshit that you don't want lol, but you did exactly what you said at the start and took the thing i wanted to do in my head and presented a solution for it, like, exactly lol you did so so well, and earned youself another sub and fan in me lol

[azielarts]

‼PSA‼ - Due to a recent update, Maya 2023 now works with the plugin, and past versions may give you some issues. Thanks so much to @janedwardmanibay8414 for the heads up 👍

[matinmhd]

Use in Bridge for UE5
The UAsset version of this MetaHuman is not compatible with UE4. You can download it in Bridge for UE5.
I want to download, I get this error from the bridge software, what should I do?
Thank you

[ronaldolamont]

Good, clear, concise and easy to understand! Well done! I'm a new subscriber! 👍🏾

[ryanjstever]

Thank you so much! A walk tutorial would be great, please. Have you worked with mocap data and metahumans in maya yet? Id like to see that as well. Thanks!

[jamqdlaty]

So it seems there's been some change. Standalone Bridge tells me to downlaod Metahumans for UE5 in the build-in Bridge for UE, I can't do it in the Standalone one. And Bridge for UE doesn't have option to export, just to add to the project.

[anjason-nk]

great! Thank you, bro, this is of great help for beginners

[kevinsvlog]

thank you man. This will help me a lot!

[rafayelkotbashyan]

hi, I did everything according to your tutorial, but when I click export May it doesn’t give any response, can you help? :(

[alpboysan]

Hey, great tutorial, seems to work fine apart from one thing, when i apply the animation and play it in the sequencer, the body scales up about ten percent, pretty strange. Any thoughts on this?

[ryanjstever]

thanks for the video, how would you compare this script to the free Advanced Skeleton script?

[fsze]

You have a mistake in the description with the word BRDIGE
BTW thanks for the tutorial!

[arkadiuszgaska]

Hello, is this working only with retargeted metahuman or is italso works with a custom animation blueprint which uses the metahuman skeleton not the manequin skeleton.
It looks like the plugin exports the animation only for the mannequin skeleton?

[ZMihran]

Bro, thank you very much for a great tutorial!
From the video we can see that Madguru's rig controllers are too big, it won't be convenient to animate. Please tell me, is it possible to resize the controllers in Maya?

[BaolongZhang]

this is soo useful! thank you so much!

[iamwatmissu]

Thank you for your superb tutorial! Help me a lot.
BTW, if I am a rigger and want to hand the rig May file to the team, how best setup as the animator team require to install a lot of driver(UE/bridge)?

[raretype]

is there a way to optimize the project with the rig? its pretty slow, and I can see that in the video it is as well. Particulary the torso and root