CC MasterClass #2: Fast Cartoon Design with Character Creator

In this 4 part series for – Master Class “Fast Cartoon Design” Luis Duarte shares his tips and tricks on how to take advantage of Character Creator and iClone to create a cartoon character and animate his face and body easily. This 4 part series will cover the entire of process with Character Creator, ZBrush, Substance Painter, and iClone.

Luis Duarte – 3D Artist

My name is Luis Duarte and I am a 3D instructor on LibelStudio.com.

PART #2 – Conformable Hair Generation

ZBrush hairstyle creation

To generate a hair design that fits the proportions of the concept, I go back to my project in ZBrush, make a duplicate of the mesh body, and then with the Zmodeler I make a selection of the lateral base of the hair. Next, I use the motion brushes to shape and create what would be the bottom and back lines of the hairstyle. To create the dreadlocks, I just use a library brush in ZBrush, but first I modify a couple of shape details with the stroke/curve modifiers menu. Later, I go through all the areas, generating individual locks on the entire head, and always paying attention to what my main reference would be.

Generate UVs and textured hair

Once the hair model is built, I take it to traditional modeling software. I prefer to use Autodesk Maya because it has very simple tools to create and organize UVs. In my case I position them together, with a proportional size to make the most of the texture space.

To apply the texture, we can export the Normal Map from ZBrush and then bring our model to Substance Painter to finish the job. In this phase, we can add trusses, a variety of shades, highlights, and thus adjust more to the rasta hairstyle.

To finish, we export the textures in a resolution of 2k or 4k as the case may be.

Hair integration in Character Creator

To integrate the hair to our character, I am going to re-import the mesh into ZBrush and from here I use the GoZ link to send it directly to our CC model, and update it.

Next, I activate the skin weight transfer box and select the next template for hair. This is very useful because we can instruct the program to interpret the selected meshes according to the type of accessory needed. For example, we can separately add clothes, skirts, capes, hair, and shoes.

Finally, I go to the material editor, activate the PBR shader, and add one of all the texture maps taken from substance.

On the other hand, when creating a hair asset, just like the body, it can be saved in the content library and it can also be used with any type of character generated through Character Creator.