A Look at Unreal Engine 5.2's Updated ML Deformer

During its State of Unreal keynote session at GDC 2023, the Epic Games team, among many other things, also shared an in-depth breakdown providing a look at the recently-demonstrated Unreal Engine 5.2's updated ML Deformer, a Machine Learning-powered feature that can approximate any complex deformation model to create accurate non-linear deformer systems, introduced in UE5.

In this breakdown, Epic Games' Senior Technical Animator Matt Stoneham thoroughly explained how the enhanced version of Deformer can be used to set up digital characters with deformations driven by full muscle, flesh, and cloth simulation. In his talk, Stoneham covered the entire working process, from creating your training data to setting up your network parameters and evaluating the result, showing how to utilize UE5.2's ML Deformer to achieve lifelike deformation on your own real-time characters. You can watch the full breakdown attached above, starting at 5:16:40.

During the same session, Epic Games also unveiled MetaHuman Animator, a new feature that allows you to reproduce any facial performance as high-fidelity animation on MetaHuman characters. You can learn more about it by clicking this link.

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