THIS PAGE IS WRONG NOW AS OF UE5.4. THE SOURCE FILES HAVE CHANGED AND THE VALUES BELOW ARE INCORRECT.

If you have a MetaHuman source file open in Maya (ie. you have used Quixel Bridge to export a MetaHuman to Maya), you’ll see that it comes with a facial rig but not a body rig. (That is, there is a body SKELETON, but there’s no way to easily control it.)

So let’s add a body rig that supports FK and IK. In Maya, one of the easiest ways to do that is to add a HumanIK rig.

Step 1. Change the character into a t-pose

We need to change the character into a t-pose to make this work.

1. In the viewport click in a blank area to deselect everything.
2. Now go to the Show menu and turn on “joints”.
3. In the same Show menu, turn off polygons.
4. You might want to hide “DHIhead:spine_04” entirely in the Outliner, because it shares bones with the main body and it can get confusing.
5. Go to the first frame of the Timeline. (I usually change the scene to start on frame 0)
6. Turn on the “Auto keyframe toggle“, which is in the right bottom of the Maya interface
   
7. CLAVICLES:
   1. In the Viewport, click on the right clavicle. Hold down shift and click the left clavicle.
   2. In the Channel Box, change the “Rotate Y” amount. You will need to change it to varying amounts depending on the size of your MetaHuman:
      

      UNDERWEIGHT	MEDIUM WEIGHT	OVERWEIGHT
      f_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -7	f_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -10	m_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??

      **Eventually I’d love to fill this table out with ROTATE Y values for all 18 MetaHuman body types.
      
      

8. UPPER ARMS:
   1. In the Viewport, click on the right upper arm joint.
   2. Hold down shift and click the left upper arm joint.
   3. In the Channel Box, change the “Rotate Y” amount. You will need to change it to varying amounts depending on the size of your MetaHuman:
      

      UNDERWEIGHT	MEDIUM WEIGHT	OVERWEIGHT
      f_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -45	f_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      f_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	f_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_srt_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_srt_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_med_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_med_nrw ROTATE Y: -44	m_med_ovw ROTATE Y: ??
      m_tal_unw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_nrw ROTATE Y: ??	m_tal_ovw ROTATE Y: ??

      **Eventually I’d love to fill this table out with ROTATE Y values for all 18 MetaHuman body types.

   4. Now in the viewport click in a blank area to deselect everything.
      
9. LOWER ARMS:
   1. Click the right lower arm. Hold down shift and click the left lower arm.
   2. Then in the Channel Box, change the “Rotate Z” amount. You will need to change it to varying amounts depending on the size of your MetaHuman:
      

      UNDERWEIGHT	MEDIUM WEIGHT	OVERWEIGHT
      f_srt_unw ROTATE Z: ??	f_srt_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	f_srt_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      f_med_unw ROTATE Z: ??	f_med_nrw ROTATE Z: 36	f_med_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      f_tal_unw ROTATE Z: ??	f_tal_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	f_tal_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      m_srt_unw ROTATE Z: ??	m_srt_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	m_srt_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      m_med_unw ROTATE Z: ??	m_med_nrw ROTATE Z: 36	m_med_ovw ROTATE Z: ??
      m_tal_unw ROTATE Z: ??	m_tal_nrw ROTATE Z: ??	m_tal_ovw ROTATE Z: ??

      **Eventually I’d love to fill this table out with ROTATE Z values for all 18 MetaHuman body types
      
      

Step 2. Characterize the skeleton

Ok so we have our t-pose. Now let’s characterize the skeleton.

1. Click the brown root bone between the legs.
2. Open up the Human IK panel. (If you don’t have this panel visible, go to the top menu WINDOW> ANIMATION EDITORS > HUMAN IK.)
3. Change the “character” dropdown to “none“.
4. Click “create character definition”.
5. Select the brown root bone again.
6. Click on the blue button in the HumanIK panel, then hover over “edit character definition” > “load character definition template”.
7. Then in the template drop down, choose “Metahuman_UE5_V1”. If you don’t have that option, you need to download it here then unzip the file and move it to:
   C:\Users\{yourname}\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\HIKCharacterizationTool6\template
8. Click to enable “match all bones bones with prefix”
9. In the text field, delete all text so it’s entirely blank.
10. Click OK.
11. Check that EVERY bone has turned green. If not, you need to adjust the ROTATE Y and ROTATE Z values of the upper and lower arms.
12. Once it’s processed click the padlock icon to lock the bone setup.
13. Change the source drop down to control rig, to generate the HumanIK Control rig.
14. Now click  the blue button and choose “Rename character”.
15. Type in the name “charaternameHIK” (eg. “billyHIK“). Or you could use MetaHuman body type, so something like “MH_{bodytype}_HIK” (eg. “MH_m_med_nrw_HIK“).
16. Click OK to apply the name.
17. In the viewport, go to the Show menu and turn off “joints”.
18. In the same Show menu, turn on polygons.
19. I usually save this Maya scene as “_full_rig_02Y-upHIK.mb“. (I come back and open this file really often as part of my animation process, so I make sure I name it properly!)