Mutable: a character customization plugin for Unreal Engine

Mutable is a plugin for Unreal Engine that generates dynamic skeletal meshes, materials and textures at runtime. It is mostly used to create character customization systems but it can be used for all kinds of dynamic content. Mutable is already included with Unreal Engine starting with version 5.1 as an experimental plugin, and became a beta plugin as of version 5.5. This documentation is for the 5.5 version.

Additional tutorials can be found at the Unreal Developers Community.

Overview

What is it for?

The different ways Mutable can help your project and a summary of its features.

Basic concepts

Assets, classes and other concepts used by Mutable.

Example workflows

Description of how the different ways of using Mutable, and how to set them up.

Frequently asked questions

List of common inquires and requests.

User Reference

Node Reference

Description of all available nodes and their options.

Texture Layouts

Management of UV coordinates by Mutable.

Baking Instances

Tools to generate static characters assets inside the editor.

Populations and Crowds

Advice and tools to generate crowds with specific conditions and constraints.

Real-time morphs

What is the interaction of Mutable's morph system with Unreal Engine's?

Physics and clothing

Describe the interaction of Unreal's physics and clothing data with Mutable.

Grooms

Explain how to use Unreal Engine's grooms with Mutable.

Mutable and MetaHumans

Can mutable work with MetaHuman data?

UI Metadata

How to store extra information for UI generation

Mutable Macro Library

How to create reusable graphs using Mutable Macro Library Assets.

Integration

Using Mutable from C++

Explain the different ways Mutable can be used from C++.

Using Mutable from Blueprint

Explain the different ways Mutable can be used from Blueprint.

Performance

Resource usage

What Memory, CPU, GPU and disk resources are used and when.

Packaging projects

Explain what happens when packaging a project with Mutable assets.

Customizable Object States

What are they and how can they be used for each use case in your game.

Level of Detail

How to use the different features to LOD your data.

Texture Streaming

Interactions between Mutable and the Unreal Engine the texture streaming.

Storage and replication

How are customized objects stored and replicated on the network?