In my research project with Lucy Bryant of the UTS Speech Pathology Department we are seeing how viable it is to use Epic Unreal’s Metahumans in combination with the Hololens 2 for therapy.
Previous apps that have run on headsets, while intriguing and interesting for patients, have had the feedback that the ‘uncanny valley‘ feeling is distracting and detrimental to the therapy outcomes.
So when I came across Epic Game’s Metahuman Creator I immediately realised they could be a viable option for use in therapy. Epic have been really supportive and have provided us with a grant to make a Hololens 2 experience. However I quickly realised that I knew nothing about lighting theory (being just a coding nerd) and no matter what I did nothing looked right.
Thankfully, Epic had released a set of MHC lighting presets specifically designed by Greig Fraser (Dune) for use in the Unreal Engine. After playing around with them I found major improvements in the rendering of my Metahumans by using the Split setup.
Because I’m working with the Hololens, I duplicated the lighting setup into my current Unreal file so that I could immediately test in the Hololens. When copying them across I did have to make some very minor adjustments to a couple of settings to replicate the look more closely. I’ll make a note of those below.
I replicated the main lights but I didn’t copy across the Airglow or the PostProcessVolume. You’ll just have to play around with your scene to see what is necessary and what runs well.
There was no change to the AmbientLight
BackgroundLight had a slight change in Temperature
FillSpotLight1 had a change in Intensity
FillSpotLight2 had a change in Intensity
