On Thursday 27 November 2025, I went to Unreal Evening: MetaHuman and came back with plenty of extra knowledge, teasers for the next few months and for Unreal Engine 5.7, and a lot of industry insight. Not an AI blip or word.
It is a very different world, but two people there for the conversations were Şefki Ibrahim, from the ABBA Voyage and DNEG side, and Elvis Morelli, whose work includes UEFN, One Battle After Another and Nobody 2.
A custom MetaHuman pipeline
The evening covered ways to take MetaHumans beyond their standard setup. Elvis Morelli presented his custom pipeline, from mesh and texture work to custom skin shading and game-ready character delivery.
The MetaHuman capture system is being pushed further, alongside wider use of LOD 3 for experiences that need to run on lower-end hardware. The comparison made the trade-off tangible: keeping the character and performance readable while reducing the real-time cost.
A striking example was Kill Bill: The Lost Chapter — Yuki's Revenge, made by The Third Floor with Unreal Engine: mostly a technical flex, and a convincing one.
Wireless facial capture
The other big subject was the Captive Devices CoreHMC headset, designed to move beyond the familiar iPhone-on-a-helmet solution. Paired with The Captury Live, it uses a stereo infrared camera setup for the face and a belt or pocket unit to transmit data wirelessly to Unreal Engine.
The production-ready package was discussed at around £29,000. It is aimed at industry heavyweights rather than small studios: the sort of two or three-unit setup used for a leading actor on a major game or feature film. The attraction is comfort and reliability while removing weight from the actor's face.
Roughly half the cost sits in the camera and the other half in the wireless unit. The system includes Ambient ACN timecode and frame synchronisation, hot-swappable batteries and its own software. It is not limited to MetaHuman Animator either: Di4D, Faceware, Facegood and FaceX were among the supported workflows discussed.
A stripped-back “built in a cave, with a box of scraps” version could be closer to £2,000, but only by trading away much of that ease and compatibility.
Helmet + boom + microphone + 4 MP ELP stereo camera + LED + IR + Android device + 4000 mAh battery + Ambient ACN-CL + wireless transmitter.
Watch the recording
The full MetaHuman, Captury and Captive Devices session is available below.