Behind the Seams - Mini breakdown

Creating a Real-Time Soldier Character for Unreal Engine: A Step-by-Step Breakdown

You can find a link to the Trey metahuman blueprint file (.MHB) at the bottom of the page.
Grab the project for yourself here

Combat-Ready Soldier

Creating a game-ready soldier involves several critical steps before achieving a polished final product. In this mini breakdown, we'll walk you through the process of creating a Game-Ready MetaHuman Soldier Outfit for Unreal Engine, from concept design to rendering.

The Workflow

Concept Design Phase

The concept design phase lays the groundwork for the entire project. For a detailed look into this phase, jump back to the previous breakdown here.

Low-Poly Modelling

Since the high-poly model was already created, we moved straight into creating the low-poly model. This involved a combination of poly modeling and conform tools within 3ds Max. It’s was crucial at this early stage to test the overall poly count using the retopology modifier in 3ds Max before committing to a specific poly count. You can also check to see which density give a good silhouette without it being too dense. In this case it was the 5K version.

Unwrapping

We separated the model by main garments and accessories to allow for changes in accessories. This step ensures that textures can be easily modified without affecting the entire model.

Baking

Baking was done in Marmoset. Separating all elements for baking was a challenging task. Planning using color-coordinated meshes proved vital to the process. Any object that came in contact with another mesh needed to be seperated to keep the bake as clean as possible. 

Textures and Color Variations

Textures and colors were created in Substance Painter. We developed a base material and texture, then overlaid various patterns to create the different camo patterns and SWAT variations

Rigging

The outfit was skinned to the MetaHuman, UE4, and UE5 skeletons for compatibility with the existing resources available in Unreal. This makes sure the character can be easily slotted into projects.

Final Soldier character rendered realtime in Unreal 5

Grab the project here

MetaHuman Blueprint File

To perfectly match the soldier character, download the MetaHuman blueprint file below. This config file allows you to import the exact settings for the MetaHuman character to match the outfit:

  1. Download the .mhb file.

  2. Open MetaHuman Creator in your browser.

  3. Import the file.

  4. Download the MetaHuman into your Unreal Engine scene.

Download MetaHuman Blueprint File here

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Rina Tavik