Reallusion Unveils Disruptive 3D Game Character Creation and Animation Pipeline for GDC 2019, Booth #P1754

Reallusion debuts new 3D character and animation pipeline at GDC 2019 for games, cinematics and realtime experiences. Game visuals featuring RTX graphics and next-gen shaders now enable developers to make the most stunningly visual games ever. Reallusion’s Character Creator and iClone match the visual leap with a new real-time 3D game character solution for Unity, Unreal and the world of games, AR and VR. Design and deploy AAA-quality characters on an indie budget including tools for character creation, animation, motion capture for face and body, or a massive library of motions and moves to send to game engines. Optimize game characters with polygon reduction, LOD, UV and material merging for efficient game design. Import ready-to-play characters into game engines with Reallusion’s automated support for shader assignment, player animations and facial performances.

See Reallusion’s Game Tools: Character Creator, iClone and Motion Live at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, March 20-22 booth #P1754. From character creation to animation, Reallusion will showcase and demo Character Creator (CC) with automatic digital human shader assignments and characterization for Unreal UE4 and Unity mecanim character standard. Get a first look at the new Unreal LiveLink for iClone connecting iClone’s powerful real-time character animation pipeline to Unreal’s RTX raytrace render.

New Feature Highlights for Game Design at GDC 2019

Unreal Live Link – Connecting iClone’s powerful real-time character animation pipeline to Unreal’s RTX raytrace render

iClone is known among 3D creators for intuitive character animation and editing encompasses a complete set of tools for motion blending, curve editing, facial puppet, and audio lip sync. iClone offers an established, extensive marketplace with thousands of high quality mocap data files across a spectrum of motion themes. Now iClone combines with Unreal’s extreme RTX visuals to connect comprehensive character creation to the highest game quality standards.

A Super Fast Animation Production Workflow

Instead of sending character motions to Unreal via FBX, now users can directly stream facial and body animation from iClone. Reallusion’s realtime virtual production empowers users to easily create animation from previz to game development and filmmaking. “

Live Performance with RTX Realtime Raytracing Quality

Through iClone Motion LIVE access and utilize a concentrated hub of mocap hardware profiles and game motion libraries for Unreal. Capture full-body live performances in realtime with facial tracking and body mocap data. Combine Unreal Live Link motion capture with iClone animation to form a full digital human performance within the newly introduced RTX ray tracing capability. The Reallusion Character Creation and Animation pipeline equips and prepares characters to take full advantage of the Unreal’s RTX with iClone Motion Live and critical time-saving automations to instantly ready our characters for the best visuals and live animation in Unreal.

Automatic Digital Human Shader Assignments and Characterization for Unreal UE4 and Unity Mecanim Character Standard

Reallusion offers the most compatible and speed-to-game characters with automatic digital human shader assignments and characterization for Unreal UE4 and the Unity Mecanim Character Standard. Once characters and animation are complete, task still remain for game developers as they will need to potentially spend hours setting up their character shader and animations. Reallusion alleviates this time-consuming problem by automating the shader assignment and animation setup so your characters import ready to play.

Automatic Skeletal Mapping

Sending custom FBX characters to Unreal and Unity sounds like a common feature, but most designers still require great efforts to make the bone structure compatible with UE4 or Unity Mecanim so that their characters can be fully controlled by game engines. Typically in games, even one fully dressed character may have numerous materials with each needing to be assigned with an appropriate shader in order to show the best visual result. This process is quickened with automations for character setup from Character Creator 3.

Advanced Shader Options

Reallusion Character Creator has made game-engine character setup a simple drag-and-drop process. Users simply choose the character type and Reallusion automatically converts CC characters into Unity Mecanim or Unreal UE4 skeletal standards. The supported auto shader types for Unity – Standard PBR, HDRP (high definition for console), LWRP (light weight for mobile), as for Unreal it supports standard and advanced digital human shader. See the evolution of the Epic Games “Meet Mike”, demo with Mike Seymour featuring the digital human shader assignment for ultra-realistic hair, skin and teeth.

Generate face and body animatable AAA quality 3D Characters working with All Mocap Devices

The character creation system steps creators through the design process from character base, morphs, materials and clothing that results in a final look for characters, but that’s just half of what is possible with the Character Creator 3 characters. Once design is complete, characters are already setup for animation and motion capture when going to the next link in our character chain, iClone. The iClone Motion Live plugin aggregates the industry’s best mocap hardware with profiles to animate CC3 characters with Xsens, Noitom, Faceware, iPhone, Rokoko, Optitrack, Leap Motion, Qualisys and more. The iClone Motion Live system connects to Unreal Live Link for realtime or record motion and send along with character to any game engine via FBX. Take the guesswork out of animation and motion capture with the dedicated Reallusion character and motion system.

The game developer’s advantage for character creation and animation

“I have worked in the games industry for over 22 years for companies like EA and Disney and I have worked with a lot of different pipelines. Reallusion’s pipeline to get AAA quality characters done fast and efficient is amazing. From rigging to cutting Polygons down, for in-game models is by far the best software I have used. Lost Boys Interactive is very excited to introduce Reallusion software to our internal workflow.” – Mark Stefanowicz CVO/COO, Lost Boys Interactive

“We’re a small game studio making a big, ambitious game called – The Forgotten City. Reallusion’s Character Creator 3 and iClone 7 have allowed us to punch well above our weight and make a great looking game, with high-quality character models, and motion capture animations, on an indie budget. One of the coolest things about Character Creator 3 is the in-built tools for optimization; as we can effortlessly improve the performance of our game by reducing character polygons, creating LODs, and merging materials, so our game runs smoothly while still looking great.”
– Nick Pearce / Managing Director-Founder, Modern Storyteller

Learn more on Reallusion 3D Game Pipeline — https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/game.html
Learn more about Reallusion 3D Animation Product Line — https://www.reallusion.com/3d-animation-software/