Free Character DNA Addon Brings OpenRigLogic into Blender!

Following Epic's official announcement of the MetaHuman Devkit at the State of Unreal, Poly Hammer is excited to unveil the next major milestone for our Blender integration. With Epic Games releasing OpenRigLogic under an MIT license, we have refactored the Character DNA addon to natively bundle it for a seamless installation. And best of all, it's now completely FREE!

Full MetaHuman Support in Free Version

To celebrate the new MetaHuman ecosystem updates, we are launching a completely free version of the Character DNA addon! This version handles the full DNA import/export and directly integrates the OpenRigLogic evaluation system into Blender. If you've been waiting to test our tools, you can now experience a seamless 1-to-1 integration of your MetaHuman rigs in Blender, just like what you see in Unreal Engine, unlocking new workflows for your MetaHuman pipelines.

Here are a few of the free features you can start leveraging right now in your workflows:

• Face Animation Support: Import face board animation curves from MetaHuman Animator directly onto your MetaHuman's Face Board.
• Body Animation Support: Import body animations from MetaHuman Animator or other re-targeted animations directly onto your MetaHuman's skeleton.
• Bake RigLogic to Blender Data: Bake face board and RBF-driven data to native Blender scene data for simulations or exporting a performance.
• Pose Library: Choose from various emotions, visemes, and scan reference poses to better understand your MetaHuman's rig.
• Export DNA: Export your modifications from the Blender scene back to the DNA file format, then update your MetaHuman in Unreal Engine.

Advanced DNA Workflows in Pro Version

For character artists, technical animators, and industry professionals looking to push the boundaries of custom character creation, we are packaging our advanced features in Character DNA Pro.

Pro introduces powerful new features that allow you to customize MetaHumans beyond what is possible in MetaHuman Creator. It also gives you an alternative to Maya for advanced DNA calibration workflows. Here are a few of the latest updates:

• Raw Editor: Edit bone poses for each active raw expression with precision.
• Shape Key Editor: Gain controlled isolation of expression dependency chains and sculpt your correctives.
• DNA Auto-Fitting: Run a deterministic algorithm from the Converter panel to calibrate your DNA based on your wrapped mesh's UV layout.
• Automatic LOD Calibration: Synchronize mesh shapes directly based on LOD0.
• Bone Matching Solver: Leverage your hardware and run a blazing-fast, hyper-opt job that computes bone transformations to best fit your target mesh sculpts. (Supports CPU, CUDA, and MPS platforms)

Help Us Harden the Beta

As we finalize this integration, we are calling on our community to help test these features and report any bugs before we officially leave our beta period. Head over to the Poly Hammer Portal, connect to our Blender Extension Server, and download the latest release today.

A huge thank you to everyone who has provided feedback, shared our updates, and supported our journey so far. Stay tuned. More exciting news is on the way!