The main focus of Character Creator 4 (CC4) is to enliven and give personality to any biped humanoid, whether they are humans or creatures.
In version 4.0, imagination and creativity are no longer limited by an existing character base. Instead, any rigged character can be imported, characterized, and optimized in Character Creator 4. Characters will be fully compatible with iClone for lip-syncing, facial/body animation, and also be ready for ActorCore mocap animations to save time in production.
To present a character’s personality, Character Creator 4 supports customizing facial expression morphs to create vivid, and unique facial expressions. Users can further check talking and body animation, cloth/hair physics, spring dynamics, and preview animations directly in Character Creator 4.
You can check the 3D Character Creation & Animation webpage for more information about presale orders, feature comparison, and FAQs.
The following are the new features revealed in Part One of Work-in-Progress Preview:
- Enliven Any Character Rig
- Animation Preview, Display and Render
- Advanced Facial Performance
- Custom Expression Blendshapes
- Asset Import, Prop Editing, and Optimization Using InstaLOD
- Other Enhancements
Let’s take you for a tour for a new feature highlight….
If you are interested in diving deep into the details, you can refer to this document.
More information – Feature comparison of CC4 and CC3.
Enliven Any Character Rig
Introducing a fast way to bring your character into animation, with thousands of ActorCore mo-cap motions, with added support from iClone facial and body animation system.
Any rigged biped humanoid character can be imported, and converted to a Non-Standard character, while any rigged model can be converted to a Non-Human character.
Creating Non-Standard Characters with HumanIK Rig: When importing a biped character rig, you can characterize the character by mapping bones to be compatible with the HIK system for body animation.
Bringing in Custom Facial Blendshapes to Non-Standard Character: Bring in custom morphs to the embedded facial system.
Setting Up Spring Dynamics: Define character’ parts as spring bones to create vivid animation.
Auto Import Character with Standard Profiles: If the imported FBX belongs to standard profiles (i.g. Daz G3/G4, Maximo, Maya HIK, 3ds Max Biped, Blender Human Meta Rig, and Unreal UE4), Character Creator 4 will detect the file, and automatically convert it to Non-Standard character with mapped bones and activated HIK.
Creating Non-Human Character with Custom Bones: Any object with custom bones can also be imported into Character Creator for pose editing, defining spring bones, refining skin weights, and applying its custom motions for preview.
Animation Preview, Display and Render
Make a live display of your character, check its body rig, lip-sync, facial and body animation, cloth and hair physics, and finally present your character with animated renders.
The preset motions include customized facial and body motions for male, female, neutral, and children. Different camera angles are designed for each preset motion for easier observation.
Advanced Facial Performance
There will be an advanced facial expression set that includes 140+ morphs to give your CC3+ characters authentic facial expressions.
- Optimized Base Level Control (facial control, nasal & cheek movement, lip & ear options)
- Advanced Eye, Pupil and Eyelash Controls (eyeball rotation, eye widening, eye blink crease lines, pupil size)
- Advanced Mouth and Lip Controls (lip roll in & out, push & pucker, asymmetrical control quadrants)
Custom Expression Blendshapes
Customizing Expression Morphs via GoZ: Exporting a character model to a sculpting tool, and updating the results in Character Creator 4 as customized facial expression morphs. For ZBrush users, you can use the GoZ function to send the model and update the resulting morphs efficiently.
Asset Import, Prop Editing, and Optimization Using InstaLOD
Character Creator 4 supports importing any mesh data. The Scene Manager not only displays the objects in the scene, but also child nodes, and mesh data for each object. Users are allowed to:
- Organize meshes by converting them to be sub-items (either group them as a node, or single mesh as a content)
- Convert node or mesh to accessory, clothes, facial hair content
- Edit mesh
- Optimize mesh and material by using InstaLOD
- Attach and detach bones
- Merge props
- Export selected item(s) in OBJ
Batch Import Character Assets: Import a multi-mesh model, re-organize meshes and convert meshes into several reusable assets.
Bringing in Objects as Independent Accessories: Create props by importing the external sources. Every imported mesh is editable and each sub-prop can be attached/detached freely to make different combinations, as independent accessories.
Flexibly Setup Props and Animate in iClone 8: Two methods for creating props. One is to import it as a whole, by which the user can animate the object by editing the Motion Layers. The other way is to break up the meshes into sub-props while importing the object. By doing so, the user not only can apply the Transform function to animate each sub-prop separately but can also easily add Constraints in iClone 8 to achieve lifelike animations.
Other Enhancements
Smart Human Skin Color: quickly change skin color by adjusting the color of blend maps, or applying colors with ease. Common default colors are also available.
*Note: This is also achievable in SkinGen, which is a powerful skin layering and editing tool. However, using SkinGen to simply change a character’s skin tone might be excessive.
Creating ActorBUILD Characters for Crowd Rendering: Converting a standard CC character to an ActorBUILD character for crowd rendering.
You can check the 3D Character Creation & Animation webpage for more information about pre-sales orders, feature comparison, and FAQs. If you have further questions, please contact our Support Team, or join the discussion at Reallusion Forum.
