Technical Art Director Tyler Wilson has created a system in Unreal Engine 5 that reacts to how much a 3D model is stretched or squished in real-time and automatically changes things like color, wrinkles, or surface roughness, as you can see in the demo.

So far, he has tested the solver with regular skin clusters, RBF morphs, and ML deformers to make sure it works in multiple setups. Technically, it's built using HLSL within Unreal's Deformer Graph system, and Tyler is currently working through different engine versions to make sure it's compatible with MetaHuman.

After that, he plans to release it publicly. You can follow him on LinkedIn for updates. "Sqworm" is a reference to Chris Jones' original Blender demo:

We actually had the chance to speak with Chris Jones last year, where he talked about how the industry has changed over the past decade, discussed his hyperrealistic projects, and explained why he heavily dislikes generative AI.

Also, if you haven't seen what's new in Unreal Engine 5.8, the preview adds the experimental Mesh Terrain system and more:

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