Year: 2022

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Featured Story

Architect by day, Digital Artist by night – CGI fantasy leaps off with Character Creator, iClone, and Cinema 4D

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Kay John Yim is a Chartered Architect at Spink Partners based in London. He has worked on a wide range of projects across the UK, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, including property development and landscape design. His work has been featured on Maxon, Artstation, CG Record and 80.LV.

Yim’s growing passion for crafting unbuilt architecture with technology has gradually driven himself to taking on the role of a CGI artist, delivering visuals that not only serve as client presentations but also as means of communication among the design and construction team. Since the 2021 COVID lockdown, he challenged himself to take courses in CG disciplines beyond architecture, and has since won more than a dozen CG competitions. 

Part I. ARTWORK

Q : Hi John, welcome to our Feature Story series. First of all, congratulations on all the art and architectural visualization awards you’ve won and on being elected into the Hall of Fame on CG Boost and VWArtclub in 2022!

Could you share with us the art concepts behind ‘Kagura’ and ‘Ballerina’ ? What are their similarities and what kind of message would you like to convey with ‘Kagura’?

Thank you so much for having me, it is such an honor to be featured again in Reallusion Magazine!

Both projects ‘Ballerina’ and ‘Kagura’ are representations of myself; they are metaphors for the inner conflicts and struggles in my artistic pursuit. As both an architect and a CGI artist, I am constantly struggling between creating art for mass appeal as opposed to simply creating a well-composed image that I love. In ‘Ballerina‘ I combined ballet with Baroque architecture, knowing full well that glamorous ballet poses and architectural style would draw the most attention.

Ballet, an art form widely known to have stringent standards of beauty and highly susceptible to public and self-criticism, is the metaphor of my artistic practice, particularly in gaining online traction through social media. No matter how proficient I become in my skills, the struggle never fades away as I feel like I am always competing against every other artist for attention.

‘Kagura‘, on the other hand, embodied my enthusiasm for Japanese culture and aesthetics. The project concept is a fantasized version of a Shinto ritual ceremonial dance in Japan. Traditionally, the dancer herself turns into a god during the performance – here depicted as the dancer’s ballerina tutu dress transforming into a hakama as she dances on the floating stage, purifying spirits of nature. The transformation sequence is a literal “reveal” of my inner conflict, as I have come to terms with it and accepted the fact that creating art could simply be an act of self-indulgence.

Q : Thank you for sharing such an uneasy yet beautiful struggle with us. The transformational moment really caught my eye—such a magic moment as the ballerina finally meets her true self!

Can you share more about the process of creating such a moment? Did you confront any difficulties during the process?

The 3D animation can be broken down into three parts: the character, the cloth simulation, and the transformation. The character animation was based on one mocap data found on Reallusion Marketplace, which I modified in iClone to get the specific gestures and slow-motion look that I envisioned.

For the cloth simulation, I used a combination of Marvelous Designer(MD) and iClone/Character Creator. MD gave very realistic results but it was very fiddly and time-consuming for simulating multi-layered clothing; iClone and CC cloth physics was essentially real-time but lacked realism for complex clothes. For these reasons I prepared two sets of garments in MD (tutu dress & hakama) and grouped them into two categories: skin-tight garments and loose garments. The skin-tight garments (tutu dress leotard & hakama inner layer) required less detail and were animated in iClone; the loose garments (tutu dress skirt & rest of the hakama) were simulated in MD for maximum detail. The transformation of the tutu dress into hakama was primarily driven by “PolyFX” within Cinema4D.

Even though the 3D animation was fairly simple—technically speaking—it was extremely challenging to reach a rhythm and an aesthetic that flowed naturally with the character’s movement. I ended up spending over two months just iterating over the ten seconds of animation.

Q : Is the final result close to what you envisaged? What could be done better next time?

The final result is quite close to what I envisaged, although I initially planned to include a zoom-in shot very early on but ultimately had to give up due to PC spec constraints. The model got extremely heavy early on and I spent a lot of time simply waiting for viewport feedback—in retrospect, I could have optimized the model a lot more and kept the model as simple as possible until the final render.

Part II. CHARACTER CREATION

Q : As mentioned in many interviews, you’re heavily influenced by Japanese culture, like the scene of ‘Kagura’ is set at a Japanese ryokan that inspired the high-grossing anime film “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” in 2020. Interestingly enough, the characters you have designed are more leaning toward realistic digital humans.

I wonder if you’ve ever considered creating more Japanese anime-like characters, or game characters such as “Final Fantasy XIII”, which also are hyper-realistic yet in anime style.

What are the pros and cons of using Character Creator to produce your characters ?

I have considered creating Japanese anime-like characters—in fact, Final Fantasy XIII inspired me to learn 3D. However, as architecture has become an inseparable part of my life throughout the past decade, I came to appreciate the beauty in subtle proportions, lighting, materials, and details found in photorealistic CGI, which ultimately led me to the path I have chosen.

Character Creator empowered architects like me to create CG characters without the professional knowledge of a character artist. As characters convey the scale and purpose of a space, Character Creator allows me to add narrative to my architectural renders, making them more relatable to the viewers.

Q : In terms of stylized characters, I’m quite curious about your thoughts on Disney-style characters such as the Toy Story tetralogy. Has this type of cartoon-style aesthetics ever influenced your character creations?

Like many other artists, I am also inspired by Disney animations, particularly the lighting and the color combinations, but to a lesser extent Disney-style characters. I find partially stylized characters in 3D—notably the combination of realistic materials and exaggerated proportions—not as immersive as fully stylized characters like those found in the recent Netflix series Arcane.

The unique combination of painterly textures and 3D models in Arcane looks nothing like every other Disney or stylized character I have ever seen. I am sure it will be a lot of fun and a challenge to design a fully stylized character myself, but there is still so much to explore in the world of photorealism I have no plans on publishing any stylized artwork yet.

Part III. COMPOSITION

Q : Wabi-sabi aesthetics is the core philosophy permeating Japanese art and lifestyle, which emphasizes asymmetry, simplicity, and modesty. However, John’s pieces always reveal a glamorous world where the exquisite characters situate in splendid surroundings.

I can’t help but wonder how this worldview influences you when you start creating something new.

I was heavily exposed to Japanese culture growing up in Hong Kong, and although I appreciate wabi-sabi aesthetics I see it more as a philosophy and a work ideal—in every artwork I create, I aim to bring out a sense of serene melancholy from the viewers, longing for more.

Take ‘Forfeited Souls: The Unfinished Chapels of Batalha‘ as an example, every element within the composition was doused with mystery—the giant cat appearing from the sky, the large standing statues, and the glowing flowers—everything was woven together into an incomplete narrative. Although I did have a story in mind while creating ‘Forfeited Souls’, I never described it explicitly and left it to the viewers’ imagination.

Q : Since you’re familiar with Cinema4D and Redshift to build up environments, could you elaborate on the artistic concept behind the winning entry ‘Ark Muse’ which eventually got featured in Maxon Redshift’s new 2022 official demo reel ?

How do you create such a convincing fantasy by combining C4D with Redshift and Character Creator? Did Wabi-sabi aesthetics inspire you in any way?

‘Ark Muse‘ was created under a very tight deadline for a Clint Jones’ INFINITE JOURNEYS Challenge; the project concept is one’s desire of going back in time ultimately manifested while asleep (note the clock on the table). Unlike a lot of my other works, ‘Ark Muse‘ depicts a fantasy land, where elements of different eras collide. The CG character is the essential ingredient in creating a “suspension of disbelief”—an important role that anchors the viewers in a chaotic dreamy world.

I used Character Creator in combination with Marvelous Designer to create the character and placed her in the foreground of the composition. Character Creator allowed me to iterate on various character poses very quickly, and thus allowed me to make design decisions a lot quicker. The skin texture maps created using Character Creator’s Skingen plugin used in combination with Redshift added a lot of subtle detail and made the composition much more tangible.

Similar to ‘Forfeited Souls‘, nothing in ‘Ark Muse‘ was explicitly implied; it invites the viewers to ponder and question the fantasy land, leaving the viewers longing for more.

Part IV. ARCHITECT, ARCHVIZ & CG ART

Q : In the Renderbus CG Webinar, you shared four tips to CG enthusiasts from your industry background as a RIBA chartered architect.

I wonder how these personal CG arts projects have influenced your architectural career in the past two-plus years, whether positively or negatively?

My personal projects have definitely helped me progress with my career as an architect, especially in upping my work efficiency and making design decisions, and I stand by the four tips that I give to all CG enthusiasts.

Four tips from Renderbus CG Webinar 24:
▪ Iterate objectively.
▪ CG is not a lab experiment.
▪ Don’t reinvent the wheel.
▪ Meeting deadline.

The one piece of advice that I have been pondering a lot lately is “not reinventing the wheel”. I have built up a library of 3D assets that I could reuse to realize ideas much more quickly. This spared me a lot of repetitive modeling time that I could then spend elsewhere, for instance, learning character animation.

Q : ArchViz is a relatively new field in the AEC industry. As an “Architect by day, CGI Artist by night”, how do you see the development of ArchViz and Architecture industries for indie artists and pro studios in the next five years?

With the rapid advancement in real-time rendering and AI software, ArchViz has a much lower entry barrier than before.

Real-time rendering software like Unreal Engine 5 and D5 Render are very promising in delivering Archviz of decent quality, their instant visual feedback means much quicker turnarounds. On the other hand, AI software like Midjourney and Disco Diffusion are capable of generating images with lighting and composition pleasing to the eye—both of which used to take a lot of time for ArchViz artists to iterate. Though the aforementioned programs are still lacking in features to be reliably used on a daily basis, I can definitely see architects, including myself, being able to produce decent renders much quicker and hence communicate with clients much more efficiently in the next five years.

Q : So far, instead of using 3D characters, architecture firms tend to use 2D characters to decorate their architecture mocap.

In your opinion, how will 3D character animation be applied to the ArchViz and architectural industries in the near future ?

I think the majority of ArchViz always feel very distant from the general public due to the lack of convincing CG people and crowds. With realistic CG characters more readily available through software like Character Creator 4 and iClone, this will definitely help bridge the communication gap between architects and clients.

Part V. PIPELINE

Q : Being a self-taught and diligent artist, John has been learning more than thirty-plus software to create CG artwork.

Can you elaborate on your experiences of not fixating on one or two software? Instead, you seem to be trying new ones all the time. Isn’t that time-consuming or has it opened up new possibilities in your CG art?

Learning new software obviously takes time, but with software advancing so quickly in recent years, one is more likely to lose time, in the long run, fixating on outdated software and workflows.

Learning Houdini for instance, allowed me to look at 3D from a completely different perspective; I have since transitioned to a procedural workflow as opposed to a destructive workflow, which eliminated a lot of repetitive tasks that I used to do on a daily basis. I could not imagine completing projects ‘Ballerina’ or ‘Kagura’ without Houdini’s procedural workflow, particularly in cleaning up cloth simulations.

Q : ‘Kagura’ is probably your first work using Character Creator 4 (CC4) and iClone 8 (iC8). How did the transition between the software upgrades impact your work?

Did you confront any hindrances? If so, how did you solve them? Finally, what are your favorite features of CC4 and iC8?

The transition from CC3 to CC4 and iC7 to iC8 is relatively smooth; I appreciate the lack of GUI overhaul which makes transitioning much easier. My favorite features of CC4 are the timeline integration and the ability to mirror poses by body parts. The timeline integration eliminated the need to export CC Characters to iClone for previewing 3D animations, and the mirroring function gave me more flexibility while posing my characters.

My favorite feature of iClone 8 is the integration of 3DXChange, which streamlined my workflow of importing non-CC characters and mocap animations for use within iClone.

Part VI. ADVICE

Q : Architecture is a demanding profession, how do you gather new ideas beyond the daily routine, especially something not related to architecture?

For example, your piece ‘The Magician: Golden Gallery’ recently was highlighted in the ArtStation Fashion week.

A lot of the time my inspiration outside of architecture comes from movies. ‘The Magician: Golden Gallery‘ was indirectly inspired by the Disney movie “Cruella”. The elaborate costume designs really caught my eye and sparked my interest in fashion design. It motivated me to learn garment creation in Marvelous Designer, which I did so by studying sewing patterns and reading fashion magazines.

Q : As you addressed in the webinar, the best way to learn is to pick up one subject that interests you most and then dive in.

Could you describe your experiences of learning 3D modeling, rendering, and creating clothes in Marvelous Designer? Who are your role models for learning each topic?

Similar to learning Marvelous Designer, I think the best way to learn modeling and rendering is just to work on personal projects one is interested in and search for solutions online when encountering a hurdle.

I do not have a particular role model in CG, but I picked up advice from a mentor and a senior architect that I greatly respect, which is to work consistently as opposed to cramming for deadlines. I took the advice to heart and learned something new every day, consistently over the past two years.

Q : For people who are interested in the ArchViz industry, from your point of view, what are the best three learning resources to start with ?

I think official (software) documentation is the most underrated resource for learning any sort of 3D software; I personally learned to use Redshift render mostly from reading its official documentation.

Apart from official learning resources, I always recommend Ian Hubert’s Patreon and Hugo Guerra’s Youtube Channel for anyone interested in ArchViz or simply creating beautiful renders in general. Both of the aforementioned channels teach 3D and compositing in a software-agnostic manner that applies to any toolset.

Q : Please share with us one quote that influenced you a lot to this today.

‘Kagura’ is by far the most challenging personal project I have ever done since I had little to no experience in motion graphics or character animation half a year ago. I learned along the way as I worked on projects ‘Kagura’ and ‘Ballerina’ all through trial and error, rendering out iteration after iteration throughout the past 6 months.

With Reallusion and Fox Renderfarm’s support, I eventually brought ‘Kagura’ to life, and this has been the most rewarding project since I began my CGI journey. For any self-taught CG artist out there like myself, who is constantly struggling to up their quality and skill set, I would like to share a quote by American novelist Anne Lamott—the quote originally refers to writing but it deeply resonated with me as an artist:

Creating art is like driving a car at night. “You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.

Learn more :

• Kay John Yim’s personal site https://johnyim.com/

• Kay John Yim’s ArtStation https://www.artstation.com/johnyim

• Character Creator https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/download.html

• iClone https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/download.html

Learning

Easy Cape Physics on Dragon Ball Piccolo | Free Blender Addon & Character Creator

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Greetings, my name is Peter Alexander and I specialize in Character Creator related workflows. In this video, I’m going to detail the process of adding physics to an article of clothing on my Piccolo character, specifically, his cape. I’ll also show you a few other tricks along the way. This feature tutorial leverages the CC4 Blender Pipeline Tool (Installed in CC4) and CC/iC Blender Tools (Installed in Blender) for Character Character and Blender.

Clothing Attributes

This character’s outfit consists of several layers of clothing, and proper layering is important when utilizing various functions in Character Creator, such as the Conform and Auto Hide Mesh features. However, physics is currently not impacted by these layers.

By default, if you have no clothing items, your first imported clothing item will start at the layer one slot, then after that, it’s two, three, and so on (the clothing layer menu allows you to rearrange these layers). Originally the layers were limited to twenty or so, now the limit is 252, so there’s plenty of room for adding clothes ⁠— the exceptions being the Gloves and Footwear slots, which are still limited to two layers.

Material Renaming

I created some of these items in ZBrush, and by default, the same material name is applied to all items imported through GoZ. However, Blender is strict in not allowing materials or items to share the same name ; For this reason, you must change the names of the materials before importing them into Blender.

Cape Weight Mapping

For the most part, I’ve weighted the cape to the Spine02 bone, which is just below the neck. I find this works best for capes, but your settings may vary. I would probably not weight the cape heavily to the legs or arms, as these bones move too often in a way that wouldn’t affect an actual cape.

Since we are using physics, I want the cape to move and follow the character, but not be impacted by a lot of movement beyond the torso.

Exporting to Blender

When you are ready, export the character using the CC4 Blender Pipeline Tool (Installed in CC4). Then go into Blender, go to the CC/iC Blender Tools (Installed in Blender), and import the FBX you just saved.

Adjusting Clothing with Sculpting Tools

Using the edit and sculpting tools, I will fix the various clipping issues that are apparent upon import. Note that the cape is not draped, as that can be handled by physics. Also, note there are no normal maps on this cape; In my experience, clothing folds faked with normal maps tend to look odd when actual physics are applied; So, I avoid applying cloth-fold normal maps for an item such as a cape.

Mesh Smoothing and Normals

For whatever reason, I find most imported items need to have Smooth Shading applied. After this, in Edit mode, you can recalculate the normals by average. This is not entirely necessary, but it saves from having to deal with miscalculated normals in Character Creator.

Adding and Painting a Physics Weight Map

A clothing weight map can be applied through the Cloth Settings area of the addon. When Add Weight Map is initiated, you can paint the map as you would a regular texture. Remember that White adds physics, and Black negates physics. A black weight map will have no physics, but adding black in areas can serve to pin your garment.

I found that using the Gradient tool was the best method of painting a weight map for a cape, though getting the right area to initiate the gradient can take some trial and error. When you are done weight painting, click on Done Weight Painting and save your map.

Exporting & Reimporting into Character Creator

Export the character through the CC/iC Blender Tools (Installed in Blender), and import it into Character. Hidden mesh settings will be lost in this process, so they must be set up again.

After the character has been reimported, you can see that the weight map has been automatically loaded. If you want to adjust the weight map further, you can play with the brightness and contrast settings.

Testing Physics

Using the Animation Player, I can see that I needed to add some collision shapes to the main character to prevent clipping with the cape. Collision shapes, based on my understanding, lessen the resources necessary to calculate physics. If you were to calculate between meshes with a high polygon density, many systems would stutter. 

Adding Collision Objects

There’s currently no physics on the rest of the clothing, therefore, I’m setting up these colliders so that the cape will also not clip with those items.

Colliders can be scaled on the X-, Y-, and Z-axis, rotated, repositioned, as well as changed from capsule to sphere shape.

With the colliders set up, I’m going to try another physics test. The new Animation Player in Character Creator 4 is very helpful in troubleshooting physics before a character gets sent over to iClone for more detailed animation.

If you’re still having trouble at this stage, I would play with the physics settings a bit and be patient with the results. I found that the cape shrank a bit during some simulations, so I adjusted the Tether Limit. Also, adjusting the Dampening setting can add or decrease air resistance. There is a breakdown of these properties listed in the iClone online manual.

▪ The Properties of a Rigid Body (click here)

▪ The Soft Cloth Simulation (click here)

While this demo covered some relatively common knowledge, I hope there were some tips along the way that were beneficial to your workflow. The CC4 Blender Pipeline Tool (Installed in CC4) and CC/iC Blender Tools (Installed in Blender) add-ons make the process much more streamlined, permitting an easier path for optimizing clothing and physics settings.

The ability to export and import content from Character Creator to Blender has never been easier and more accessible to the average user, and it’s getting better with each update to these wonderful tools.

Free Download :

• CC/iC Blender Tools (addon installed in Blender) https://github.com/soupday/cc_blender_tools 

• CC4 Blender Pipeline Tool Plugin (addon installed in Character Creator 4) https://github.com/soupday/CC4-Blender-Tools-Plugin 

• Character Creator https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/download.html 

Learn more :

• Peter Alexander (Mythcons) https://www.artstation.com/mythcons 

• Blender-Character Animation Pipeline https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/blender.html

• Character Creator https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/

• iClone https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/default.html

• Reallusion https://www.reallusion.com/

Pitch & Produce

Pitch & Produce | The Troublemakers: Using professional iClone 8 animation tools for feature film ‘Os Pestinhas’

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Nildo Essá – CEO, Founder, Writer

Nildo Essá – FX Animation Studios

I finished architecture and urban design in 2002. While I was still studying, back in 1998 I was invited by the university to start aiding teachers with their classes. Ever since I have been working part-time and freelancing in the archviz industry.

In 2004, I opened my studio FX Animation Studios, catering to the local market doing TV Ads and PSA’s. It’s what we’ve doing to this day. Our studio very is small, it’s mostly me and my wife plus a third member to handle all the administrative work a company requires. I’m the one behind most of the stories and all the 3D animation, editing, and more. My wife handles mostly modelling, story, sound and starting to get into 2D animation.

In 2011, “Os Pestinhas” aka the troublemakers were born. It’s a project comprising of shorts, comic book stories and also a feature film project. Over the years we were able to make (all self-funded) 2 award winning shorts, over 15 PSA’s and a few comic book stories under the same name. “Os Pestinhas” is a group of 3 kids who aim to educate and learn from their surroundings and adventures.

Our dream is to make the very first 3D Animated feature film and that’s why “Kibwe” was born, and after almost 8 years of working in the feature film project on and off, we are excited to have the support of Reallusion and Epic Games and also our partners at Ekaya Productions who will handle  the sound for the film.

In the making of the film “Os Pestinhas” we are heavily utilizing the power of real-time creation and 3D animation tools like Character Creator, iClone, Blender and Unreal Engine to get this project over the finish line.

“The Reallusion set of tools – iClone 8 and Character Creator 4, have allowed me to really tell my stories faster, and the way I want them to be told!”

Nildo Essá – Founder, Animator, Writer

Read More “Pitch & Produce | The Troublemakers: Using professional iClone 8 animation tools for feature film ‘Os Pestinhas’”

Product Release

Character Creator 4.1 Feature Highlights

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Living up to the motto of “Enlivening Any Character”, Character Creator 4.1 (CC4.1) aims to overcome the obstacle of rigging characters for animation. Aided by the built-in technology of AccuRIG, CC4.1 can turn any static model into an animation-ready character with cross-platform support in minutes. Furthermore, enhanced subdivision export combined with the flexibility to generate levels of detail (LODs) empower both pro and indie studios to enhance their characters toward hyper-realistic digital actors for film or optimize for massively multiplayer online games without compromising real-time performance.

See the latest update in CC4.1:

1. Advanced AccuRIG Turns Any Static 3D Models to Live Characters

Powered by AccuRIG, Character Creator can auto-rig humanoid models as well as handle complicated multi-mesh structures with cutting-edge features. Hard surfaces can be isolated from skin weights to retain their rigidity, while painted skin weights can be pruned and tweaked, regardless of complexity.

For the non-rigged characters, you can choose the desired items to undergo a simple 3-step auto-rig process⁠ with each step being configurable and reversible. Game developers can apply the same bone definition profile to other game avatars of similar body scales⁠, which is a massive time-saver with the elimination of repetitive steps.

Rig Selected Mesh & Auto-Attach Hard Surface Items

Besides the accuracy, the customizability and the flexibility of Advanced AccuRIG in Character Creator 4 are what distinguishes it from the free AccuRIG tool of ActorCore. Items can be designated as rigging targets, and rigid items such as helmets and armor are auto-attached to the closest bones as accessories to prevent mesh distortion.

Re-rigging, Repurpose & Reduction

Rigged and humanoid characters or static meshes can be transformed into CC avatars while retaining original facial bones and animations. Polycount and bone count can then be effortlessly reduced for re-rigged characters.

Easily Setting for Any Type of Character : Masking Unused Bones

Even if your character isn’t whole, like a desecrated greek statue or an amputee, AccuRIG can still ensure proper animation for the rest of the body by masking away the unused bones. Masking is also suitable for partial body movement and characters with imperfect T- or A-poses. >> Learn more

2. Character Scalability – Easily up/downgrade character level (LOD) to suit all application needs

Optimized and decimated characters can be attained with one simple click for one-man teams and AAA production studios alike. Character Creator maximizes usability for each character you make while outfitting them for film production, game design, VR/AR applications, and massive crowd simulations.

Filled to the brim with intuitive one-click solutions, Character Creator can easily upscale a character for film production and extreme closeups. By contrast, the same character can be downgraded to comply with ActorBuild, LOD1, or LOD2 standards that are suitable for AEC industries, crowd simulations, and mobile games — wherever optimization is of the utmost importance.

By upgrading and downgrading character quality with Character Creator, artists can generate multiple levels of detail and have complete control over the revamping process, including bone count, polycount, texture size, and facial details. >> Learn more

3.  The World’s Only Subdivision Export for Animated Characters

Exquisite quality for film production & all render engines

The capacity to subdivide a low poly real-time character model is crucial for close-up shots and high-resolution image/video output. Subdivided animation-ready characters are compatible with all render engines and provide salient improvements to visual quality.

Character Creator’s Subdivision Export is a solid step in becoming a universal character system by removing obstacles to FBX and USD interoperability. Consequently, artists can rest assured that their rigged quad-based characters render without a hitch and that facial morphs perform in the most exquisite manner across different applications.

CC Avatars and any imported low-res, quad-based characters can benefit from Subdivision Export, including realistic and stylized characters. The outline and shading of accessories, clothes, and props are optimized as well. Subdivision Export keeps CC avatars nimble for live performances while retaining hi-res details suitable for final production, from cinema to TV commercials. 

With FBX/USD format and LiveLink, Subdivision Export greatly elevates the quality of all types of real-time characters for professional high-resolution rendering. >> Learn more

Website: Character Creator 4 | Advanced AccuRIG | Optimize & Decimate Characters | Subdivision Export

Forum : Character Creator 4.1 Discussion

Learning

AccuRIG to Blender Pipeline: An Easy & Accurate Way to Auto-rig Any Character

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Introduction

Greetings, this is Peter Alexander. In this tutorial I’m going to demonstrate Reallusion’s free auto-rig tool, AccuRIG. There have been many videos exploring this great tool, so I hope I can provide a new angle by exploring these unique characters, each with their own attributes that are useful for demonstrating some of AccuRIG’s potential.

Character One: Non-Human, Stylized Monkey

First up is this stylized monkey character which I purchased through Artstation from an artist named Ali Farsangi. It’s a charming character which I chose because it is very stylized and cartoonish. It served as a nice challenge for AccuRIG, as it’s not a typical human character. The same applies to the other character types, but the monkey has its own set of challenges.

For example, the fingers were too close together which confused the rigging algorithm when it came time to calculate that aspect of the auto-rig. I had to manually increase the space between the monkey’s fingers, allowing it to succeed. Also, as with many cartoon characters, this one had fewer fingers. Luckily, AccuRIG can accommodate hands with zero to five fingers.

As with most characters, the AccuRIG algorithm does a good job of estimating where the bones should go on this monkey character.

Hovering Joint Guides

A feature I really like is that when you hover over a joint, it shows you the ideal position compared to a human model. AccuRIG struggled to calculate the position of the fingers, but thanks to the feature mentioned, it was easy to move the joints to the correct positions.

The Thumb Direction Guide

The thumb has an additional guide which helps alleviate issues with the thumb seen in other character rigging tools.

Mirror Function

Any adjustments to the joint nodes on one hand can be applied to the other hand using the Mirror Function.

Previewing Animations

AccuRIG has several animations selected to preview the rigging of your models, and if needed, to adjust them using the Pose Offset feature. Although most characters will have a high degree of compatibility with ActorCore animations, offsetting a pose can allow for a better flow of movement for highly exaggerated characters.

Uploading to ActorCore

Uploading to ActorCore provides you access to the full animation library, limited only by what you’ve purchased. From here you can preview animations and download them for use in a 3D application of your choice.  This character probably has a childlike personality, so I chose one of the Kids animation packs.

Exporting to Blender

I’m a Blender user, so I’ll be using that format to demonstrate the very useful Rigify integration provided by the Character Creator addon.

Using Rigify through the Character Creator Add-on

By importing through this addon, you can add Rigify controls to your character, vastly increasing the animation integration with Blender.

Expanding on AccuRIG and Rigify

Many times when I import a character for any animation work, I’ll switch to the Matcap shader, which is significantly less laggy than the other shaders (It’s more of a habit of mine and not a necessity).

AccuRIG does not currently rig the eyes of characters, but Rigify does support those controls. For those with slightly more experience in character rigging, you can easily make advancements to the AccuRIG’s base setup into a very capable rig with full eye controls.

Here I am just making sure that smooth shading is applied, then I average out the normals. I do this with most imported characters and items in Blender.

Using IK and FK Controls

Rigify supports both IK and FK controls, which can be found under the Item menu. From here, you can also toggle controls that you don’t need.

In addition, you can import any animation you’ve downloaded from ActorCore to preview, adjust, and apply to your AccuRIG character.

Character Two: High Polygon Werecat with Huge Claws and Exaggerated Limbs

Next up is this stylized werecat model that I’ve purchased through Artstation from an artist named Anton Rabarskyi.

Dealing with Anatomy and Stylization with AccuRIG

Like the monkey, this character is highly stylized but in a different direction. He has exaggerated muscles, limbs and is only partially humanoid. The fingers have claws, and the finger joints differ from humans. The feet have an extended hind-leg aspect to them. Finally, the model has a high polygon count. For this reason, it serves as a good problem-solving demonstration for AccuRIG.

The only real issue I had was some minor distortion due to the stylized nature of the head and neck, but I made some adjustments and didn’t run into any problems after the second run through this process.

I did find the fingers more difficult to deal with due to the claws, and my impression is that this character has limited finger joints compared to a human. Overall I found that AccuRIG was able to accommodate this character very well. It just took a few seconds longer to process due to the much higher polygon count.

Even the fingers, which I was concerned about, seemed fine.

After uploading to ActorCore, I briefly tested some animations to inspect his movements, then I selected the “Grumpy Claw” animation, which fit the character well.

Character Scaling Issues Using Rigify

As with the stylized monkey, I was able to import and apply Rigify and the selected animations with no difficulty. One thing I will point out is that if your character is not scaled similarly to characters you’d find with Character Creator and ActorCore, you may find that Rigify has difficulty assigning controls properly. For example, if your character is thought to be a few millimeters or hundreds of meters in size, your controls will likely be out of place. So if you find your Rigify controls are not fitting your character, this is likely the reason.

Character Three: Very Low Polygon Demon Lord

Finally, I tried AccuRIG with a model purchased from Sketchfab, a 2,000+ polygon Demon Lord, from the artist Bitgem. While this model was already appropriately rigged, I wanted to see how AccuRIG would handle a very low polygon character — like the ones you would find in a lightweight mobile game.

I switched the hand rigging to four digits, after which, AccuRIG correctly detected the fingers with only minor adjustments needed.

Reassigning Character Vertices and Weights in Blender

After uploading the character to the ActorCore server, I assigned the character a “spell summoning” animation and downloaded the files for use in Blender. Once in Blender, the Rigify controls were allocated to the rig and worked as expected. The only issue I ran into was that the lower teeth were not identified as part of the face. However, I assigned those vertices surrounding the teeth to the rest of the group associated with the head bone, which has fixed the issue.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have found AccuRIG is a wonderful free tool for Blender.  All three characters were Rigify-ready in Blender after being rigged by AccuRIG, saving me lots of time.  Although these characters were quite different in shapes and sizes, AccuRIG can handle them easily and the rigged results were impressive. And since the rig is compatible with the mocap animation on ActorCore, it serves as a great way to bring non-standard, animated characters into game engines like Unity or Unreal, or in 3rd party 3D applications like Blender or Maya. 

And with that, I’ll bring this demo to a close. I hope there was something you learned or found useful. I would encourage everyone to check out AccuRIG and see for yourself how powerful it is.

Related Posts

Product Release

Reallusion Releases Cartoon Animator 5

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Level Up 2D Animation with Spring Physics, FFD Exaggeration, and Vector Graphics

Cartoon Animator 5 (CTA 5) launches with several crucial features introduced to level the playing field for amateur and professional artists alike. In addition to overhauling rudimentary animations with the secondary motion from Spring physics, free-form deformation (FFD) makes cartoonish anticipation and exaggeration accessible to any aspiring animator. CTA 5 also supports vector animation giving rise to boosted render quality with high-res output and a highly-acclaimed SVG pipeline.


Cartoon Animator is a 2D animation software designed for ease of entry and productivity. It can turn static images into animated characters, drive facial expressions with facial mocap animation, generate lip-sync animation from audio, create 3D parallax scenes, and produce 2D visual effects. Artists can access content resources and wield a comprehensive photoshop/vector pipeline to rapidly customize sprite characters and create interesting content. While implementing the most innovative workflow by synergizing industry-leading applications, 3D animation resources, and motion capture devices, Cartoon Animator brings the ultimate freedom for high-quality production.

Key Features

  • Whether vector or bitmap, any image can be imported, rigged, and animated in Cartoon Animator. 
  • Automated secondary motion is applicable to any object and extremely easy to work with.
  • 3D Head Creator transforms 2D art into 3D styled characters with 0 to 360° head turns.
  • Motion Link connects iClone with CTA 2D characters to stream and converts 3D motion to 2D animation.

Spring Dynamics

Few things are more rewarding than watching your static 2D artwork suddenly turn into living and breathing animations. CTA’s autonomous Spring dynamics puts you in creative control without fussing over complex physics and follow-through motion. These flashy physics effects are perfectly fit to energize character and prop animation.

New Features

  • Spring bones bring a secondary motion to characters so that they jiggle as they move.
  • An object can have multiple Spring settings set up with different Spring groups with distinctive behavior.
  • Spring physics reacts to all types of movement including simple transform keys, mouse-driven facial puppets, and live performances made by facial tracking or motion capture.
  • Ten Spring presets of different material types make it easy to find the most eligible starting point for Spring animation. 
  • Spring attributes include bounciness, speed, gravity, and angle limitations for squash and stretch characteristics.
  • A set of 14 samples and templates designed after common items work in tandem with manual rigging.

Free-form Deformation

FFD can easily exaggerate motion by simply moving the bounded lattice points. With 109 FFD presets and customizable timeline keys, designers can create cartoonish effects like squash and stretch, anticipation, and exaggeration. FFD presets can be dragged and dropped onto static objects to make them come alive.

New Features

  • By adding FFD to existing animated 2D characters, designers can accentuate different parts of the animated drawing by moving lattice points and adjusting intensity levels. 
  • FFD keys can also be exaggerated by using transition curves in the timeline or deployed with pre-made FFD templates to instantly enrich existing animation.
  • 36 squash and stretch presets in the FFD Editor can give a cartoonish style to any type of animation.
  • The asset library is updated with free G3 Human motion files containing adjustable FFDs.
  • Multiple FFDs can be additively stacked to fine-tune exaggerations and deform with precision.
  • FFDs can be dragged and dropped onto photos and vector graphics to make them come alive and emote.

Vector Graphics

Vector graphics support lets users import widely available SVG vector assets to CTA5; whether they are downloaded from stock image sites, or custom created with Illustrator, CorelDRAW, or other compatible tools. Unlike raster images that allocate file size to store pixel data, you can zoom in and out of vector graphics and still enjoy a picture quality that is both crisp and sharp. There is no better way to build a large scene than with vector graphics that can be scrolled, zoomed, and navigated throughout.

New Features

  • Vector Grouping Tool gives designers the power to define color combinations and opacity settings, letting users set color options for any vector object or sprite character and create various looks in a snap. 
  • Adjustable coloring for entire groups that do not break the cohesion of custom color schemes. 
  • Color grouping and opacity settings can swap clothing styles and even adjust cuts of clothing.
  • Any visual style can be realized with the aid of spline curves, line styles, gradient fills, and vector layers. 
  • New tools make it easy to animate sketches, line art, fashion designs, and photo-realistic images. 
  • Vector graphics of various formats can be converted to SVG and imported into CTA for a variety of applications. 
  • Color Grouping Tool automatically bands together elements and defines associated vector groups for effortless color change. 

Smart Content Manager

Smart Content Manager lets users one-click install purchased assets and free designer resources. Artists can easily search and browse personal works, upload, and download items to and from their online inventory.

New Features

  • Newly purchased assets from the Content Store, ActorCore, or Marketplace automatically sync to the Smart Content Manager during checkout and are immediately accessible in CTA.
  • New purchases download and install directly within the application.
  • Marketplace trial assets are directly downloadable from the Smart Content Manager.
  • Content of any type can be searched and filtered by category, keywords, and tags.
  • Content can be found based on user-defined categories: project, genre, usage, abbreviations, and more.

Complementary Paid Assets 

To fully take advantage of CTA5’s powerful new features and see what CTA5 can do, make sure to look into this new series of content releases.

Know more about Cartoon Animator 5:

2D Animation Software for Cartoon Maker | Cartoon Animator

FREE for 30 days, and get 1,700+ ready-made content:

2D Animation Software Download | Cartoon Animator

Learning

The Making of He-Man VS Skeletor with AccuRig, Character Creator, iClone and Unreal Engine

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Based out of Los Angeles, California – Taiyaki Studios builds avatars and avatar collections optimized for Tiktok and YouTube content creation. They help to build a community of virtual creators across all genres and platforms by educating, collaborating and honoring their hard work. Whether you’re using Unreal Engine, Unity, or never touched 3D at all, Taiyaki Studios can help you learn and grow in the world of virtual production and audience building.

Taiyaki Studios also partners with select creators to help them build and design custom avatars and universes with their staff of highly skilled 3D artists, animators and tech wizards.

Cory Williams

In July of 2022, Cory Williams – Unreal Engine Technical Artist at Taiyaki Studios animated one of his favourite childhood toys He-Man in an animated short film, by use of photogrammetry, clever rigging, motion capture and Unreal Engine.

His first video proved to be a wonderous success with audiences, who were amazed at the smooth animated results delivered onto a renown plastic figurine.

Both Mr. Yaki and Virtual He-Man were created by Cory. With voice acting, cinematography and animation all performed by him using an Xsens MVN Link motion capture suit, Manus Prime II gloves, an iPhone X (Apple AR Kit), iClone 8 and Unreal Engine 5 (UE5).

After the introduction of Reallusion’s free AccuRIG tool, Cory decided to one-up himself by introducing a second well-known character – but this time using a much faster and easier process.

In the end, He-Man battles his long-time nemesis Skeletor in an epic dance-off that was possible thanks to Blender, AccuRIG, Character Creator, iClone, and Unreal Engine 5. Enjoy!

Now, the Making of He-Man VS Skeletor might sound like a daunting task to many… and rightfully so. But Cory has been able to distill the process into an easy to follow process that involves a collection of new and powerful tools.

His original step was to take many pictures of his characters with an iPhone in a process known as photogrammetry. But Cory was able to enhance that process by purchasing a portable scanner known as a Revopoint MINI, which he used to scan his Xsens character for a test, prior to scanning Skeletor.

Next Cory used his new secret weapon — ActorCore’s free AccuRIG tool to import the scanned FBX character and auto-rig it for full body and finger animations. This process takes about 15 minutes and is perfect for working with all kinds of static poses and well known 3D character rigs, to later export as FBX, which you can even test and correct for mesh deformations caused by motion stretching.

Then Cory used Character Creator 4 to import his new AccuRIGGED character to test and add custom dance animations he captured with his mocap suit, including individual finger tests which AccuRIG definitely rigs for. Inside Character Creator you can even do specific characterizations for non-standard 3D characters which will allow you to work with any specific motion you design through your mocap suit.

Once you know your character is ready, Cory starts production by doing all the voice recordings, and animations for each character. Amazingly he does this all by himself, which gives him a mental picture of each character’s gestures, nuances and performances.

When the custom 3D animations are ready, they are brought into iClone 8 with the auto-rigged characters. Now there is a reason why iClone is used instead of going straight into Unreal Engine, because iClone allows you to correct any offset motions that are much easier to fix in iClone rather than Unreal.

iClone is especially useful when you really want that high quality feel in your performances where you want to do small motion editing like on hand gestures in specific timeframes.

For example: you can easily adjust any facial expression or lipsync on Skeletor (if you are not using a face mocap device), or if the Mr. Yaki character needs to look up because he is missing the mark of He-Man’s face, then with iClone you can easily correct this by motion editing any specific track for face, eyes, hands, and fingers.

Finally, Cory adds everything into Unreal Engine to start setting up his shots by creating a level sequence, synchronizing everything with his audio wave forms, positions and 3D animations, cameras, lighting and any special effects! Done!

Follow Taiyaki Studios:

Website:
https://taiyakistudios.com/

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/taiyakistudios

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/taiyakistudios

Learning

Natural MetaHuman Control using iClone

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Intro

My name is Petar and today I’ll be showing you my workflow of animating MetaHuman with the latest iClone tools. As iClone has updated to version 8.1, there are plenty of new animation features to improve your MetaHuman Animation. In this showcase, I am building everything from scratch, but you will see my sharing with the use of Rokoko SmartSuite and learning how to deal with motion capture data. Let’s see what we made and work toward that.

Scene preparation in Unreal Engine

Before we jump into motion capture we should do some block out of our scene or have already the final scene where we’re going to place our animation. We made a simple scene with a few things in the background, and our main props which include a chair, a table, a few lights, and a laptop. It’s good to have some plans for what you are going to capture and how the environment is going to interact with it.

Set-up: Use the Metahuman Kit

Prior to jumping into iClone, be sure to download and install the necessary plugins. Reallusion provides you with the LiveLink plugin and Dummy models which are retargeted MetaHuman bodies. Just copy and paste dummies in your iClone content folders and copy and paste Livelink folders into your Plugin folders inside the Unreal project. The next thing on the list is to set up our MetaHuman blueprint so it can receive real-time animation data. There is a step-by-step tutorial on the official Reallusion youtube channel so be sure to check that out. Once we are done, we are ready to animate.

Motion recording in Rokoko

Once done with a motion capture session, we made a few tries so we can pick the best one for the job. We will use Rokoko to post-process effects on our data to get a much cleaner export to iClone. I always use Locomotion and Drift fixes just to be sure that weird noise in data is processed. Once we are done with the effect we can export our animation as FBX. iClone also provides a Rokoko Profile for iClone which allows us to stream data directly onto our character.

Overview: use iClone as your main 3D animation software

Before we do any work, let’s see the iClone user interface and tools we’ll use. On the left, there’s Smart Gallery and Content Manager. It is an intuitive and streamlined library for managing the various iClone 3D files such as models, animations, and everything associated with a project. On the right side. The Modify Panel contains adjustable parameters that belong to the selected object. It contains the main and powerful animation tools that we’ll use. Timeline is your main playing area, where you can mix animations, set keyframes, filter, sample, and so on. iClone 8 got major timelines upgrades and my favorite is the ability to have independent channels for every bone and morph target. This comes in handy when you want to polish your animations. The great thing that works with timelines is Curve Editor. For the ones who are not familiar with curves, it’s basically just a different interface of keyframes and a much more initiative way to inspect and edit your animations once you grasp the concept.

iClone 8 Highlights: Animation clean-up

Let’s talk about Reach Target, one of my favorite tools in this 3D animation software. Instead of setting several motion layer keys to reach a character’s head, hands, feet, or target object, you may use a Reach Target key to easily accomplish this animation. What it does is, when you set a target, iClone uses IK from your body to align animation.

In the timeline, you can set the transition type and duration when the reach target will be activated or released. In our project, we use it when our character pulls a chair, lays down their hands on the table, or grabs the laptop.

Next, we use the Curve Editor to inspect some jitters in movements and try to locate them. Using curves you can easily spot areas that need fixing. We delete the selected keyframes, set tangents, and smooth out a little bit. Be careful not to smooth too much, you may get a really generic movement then. To edit animation you can head to the modify panel and use the Edit Motion layer. A window will pop up with a bone picker and FK and IK options. Click on bone, select mode, and adjust animation. To spot pop-ups in the Curve Editor, it takes a little bit of practice but the basic principle is searching for spikes. Curves should be mostly smooth with some little noise. Any sharp spikes that break patterns are errors we need to fix.

In the end, we can animate fingers. iClone provides you with a great number of poses called Gestures. You double-click on them in Content Manager and they will apply to your body. You can use more Gestures, mix them, and set transitions for smoother animation. Once you are done animating fingers, you can adjust them manually to fit around your props.

Facial animation: animate lip-sync and facial expressions

There are a number of different tools to animate our faces. I’d like to start with mouth first, so I’m gonna use the one and only, AccuLips for lipsync animation. AccuLips feature for you to convert voice to readable text, and align the text to the audio waves to ensure the correctness for generating accurate visemes. Once I imported my audio and AccuLips will generate the text from me. I’ll modify and fix some words. After the talking animation is applied, you can still edit it and tweak individual visemes and their strength, smoothness, and moods all while being in the timeline.

Once I’m finished with AccuLips, I laid down a layer of live facial animation. For that I’ll head to the motion live plugin, connect my iPhone and capture the animation. Be sure to make a mask to exclude the mouth and jaw since they are influenced by the AccuLips. I’ll also set some smoothness and record my animation. This will give me a great start for animating the rest of the face.

For additional editing, you can use the Face Puppet System or Face Keys Systems. Face Keys are basically manual keyframing with an awesome bigger interface. They can be used to emphasize some crucial facial expressions while using a puppet system is great for a neck, in this case. Using a puppet this time, you play the animation in real-time and move your mouse cursor to increase or decrease the strength of the movement.

Bonus: AccuRIG

New stuff worth mentioning is Reallusion is the new AccuRIG: it lets you easily rig any character. Why is that cool? Because Reallusion expects iClone for animation and AccuRIG has a library of high-quality animation called ActorCore, allowing you to purchase motions, put on your character and mix and edit character animations in iClone. iClone is really becoming a one-stop solution for animating characters!

iClone 8.1 Highlights: Transfer character animation data to Unreal Engine

Once we finished the animation, it’s time to get it to Unreal Engine. There are a few options you can use, like exporting FBX or using the iClone Unreal LiveLink plugin, the one we are gonna use it now. Open take recorder in Unreal, select your actor, and record. It’s a really fast workflow. In Reallusion’s iClone 8.1 update, there is a major update. In the past, you could encounter some frame drop issues while using Live Link. Quite frankly, juggling between apps not only increases CPU loading but also causes a drop in productivity. However, with iClone Unreal Live Link starting to support timecode sync, it makes sure the motion data is always sent out in the full frame. Making the recording process less painful.

Making cloth simulation

When the export is finished, our animation will be saved. For this showcase, we are gonna use Simulation on our clothes so we need to export our MetaHuman so we can import a Marvelous Designer. We’ll make a new level export whole blueprint of MetaHuman. Then we open Blender where we’ll import our MetaHuman and all other animated props that we’ll be needed for collision.

Lastly, I export everything from Blender as one alembic one and import it to the Marvelous Designer, run the simulation, and export as OGAWA Alembic.

Conclusion

Reallusion’s iClone is truly a one-stop solution for Unreal MetaHuman animation. From my experience, it is best that you have a clear concept of how you’d like to tell your story and start with a nice script. Once you have passed the concept stage, then you will need to learn how to build your technical pipeline with the needed skills. Luckily Reallusion had incorporated all its official tutorial and learning materials online at a combined portal called Reallusion LEARN. To help, let me also share the webpages that I have mentioned in this page, so everyone can also learn and create as I did!

Animate MetaHuman | https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/live-link/unreal-engine/metahuman/default.html
Rokoko SmartSuite | https://mocap.reallusion.com/iclone-motion-live-mocap/rokoko.html
Animate Facial Expression (Face Key and face Puppet) | https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/3d-facial-expression.html
iClone | https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/default.html
Curve Editor | https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/animation-curve-editor/
Try iClone MetaHuman Kit | https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/live-link/unreal-engine/download.html

Follow Petar:

YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ8v3H6fBsNB8QPkAlvqriQ/featured

Featured Story

Learn from Winners : Animating Korean Justitia with Cinema 4D, Character Creator and iClone

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Hello, I’m Seungchan Lee, an NFT artist who is active under the nickname Leesaek. I am a professional designer who is working on various late-stage graphics such as synthesis, motion graphics, VR, etc. at the same time as producing personal works.

Sometimes working on NFTs, it’s fun to meet with the buyers, so I continue to study and learn new things to improve and perfect my personal work. As a hobby, I spend a lot of time watching movies. As I like movies, I am very satisfied with my work on graphics related to video.

A few years ago, I was very impressed by the Netflix series LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS, and since then, I’ve been working in this field, studying 3D graphics tools and doing personal work after work hours, and I think I’ve come closer to my goal of making short animations like LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. I will continue to study for personal NFT artwork and short animation production goals.

Part I. Winner Entry Workflow

Step 1. Reference Search

I spent the most time searching for references during the process of working on the ‘Goddess of Justice-DIKE’ project.

I thought it was most important to decide gender, age, story, concept, etc. when creating a character, and after deciding which character to make, it took a long time to decide on the costume of the character, space for the character, and pose of the character.

Step 2. Character Creator

I bought Character Creator (CC) and tried making a test character. With CC, a lot of the elements to think about when a character was already set. So it was possible to do morph work on all the parts, and since it was templatized, I only had to pick the parts I wanted, one by one.

Step 3. iClone

iClone is quite intuitive for character animation, especially facial animation, so it didn’t take as long as I thought. In fact, there are very few 3D animations for ‘The DIKE’ character. In the animation where I posed and turned the character’s head, I simply added in a facial template and it was finished.

Step 4. Marvelous Designer

There were high-quality costumes in the Reallusion Content Store and Marketplace, but the character pose that I decided to make was sitting on a chair, so after making the costume that fits the character mood, we brought the animated character from iClone to create a character costume with natural wrinkles in the sitting position. For the texture of the outfit, the color map was produced in Photoshop after setting and snapshotting the UV map in Marvelous Designer.

Step 5. Cinema 4D

After combining the animated character in iClone and the costume in Marvelous Designer with the character in Cinema 4D, I modified the material of the skin in Octane Render, and then modeled and create the costume texture, background, character accessories, and other props in the renderer.

Step 6. After Effects

Compositing and post-processing were done on all images outputted from Octane Render in Cinema 4D. And since it takes a lot of time to render high quality in a 3D program, I improved the image quality with Topaz Video Enhance AI.

Part II. Feature story

Q : Hi Leesaek, thank you very much for sharing the workflow with us. First of all, congratulations for winning first place!

The Goddess of Justice DIKE has a very intriguing setup, from the character design to the surroundings, not to mention there’s an organ on the weight scale.

Could you share more of your artistic thoughts behind this project?

Hello!

The sculptures of goddess Dike are often loaded with symbolism related to courts, fairness, and justice. She holds a scale in one hand and a knife in the other and judges when justice is off balance. I infused the subject matter with modernity and mythical symbolism befitting of the character.

In other words, it’s a scene where Dike, the goddess of justice, is emanating luxury and materialism, weighing a heart and a dollar bill while checking for likes on (Korean) Social Networking Service (SNS), which is reminiscent of the theme in Netflix series Squid Game!

Interestingly enough, this “organ on the scale” setup also appeared in your previous work Value. Compared to DIKE, the banknote and the hourglass in Value reveal more clues to the audience.

It’s easily associated with organ trafficking which showed up in the survival drama Squid Game as well.

The previous work Value was made in the early days while studying 3D tools, and it is different from Dike, but it is also a similar topic. At that time, I was impressed by Vanitas still life paintings, and it touched me from the perspective of “life’s futility,” and I thought of time flowing in an hourglass, the time of labor, the time of life, and the heart being reduced by working hours.

Q: I’m curious about what kind of messages you intend to convey through these two projects?

The message contained in the two projects is simple. It’s a story about choice and priorities. It’s the priority of work and life, life and matter.

Q: Also, what’s the advantage and disadvantage of using Cinema 4D for modeling and rendering your design, including character creation and character animation?

It’s too much to talk about the pinnacle features of Cinema4D one by one. Among them, the reason I work with Cinema 4D is accessibility—I’m not good with English, so I have to use a translator for the software manual, and I’m watching a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube because I learn tools by myself. In this regard, Cinema 4D has a lot of materials online. If you get stuck while working, you can find a solution relatively quickly. So I use Cinema 4D, and there are a lot of renderer and sub-plugins that I can choose from, so I can work flexibly on the final output.

The disadvantage is that the use of external plug-ins may be relatively essential when working on a project that includes character and character animation. Cinema 4D will do the job, but I understand it takes a lot of time and effort, so the use of Character Creator and iClone can be a very efficient workflow combination!

Q : Working as a professional designer in your day job, doing motion graphics and compositing are probably second nature to you.

So what interests you most about being a NFT artist in your free time? Can you elaborate more about your good and bad experiences of meeting the buyers?

As an NFT artist, the charm of my work is that I create the pictures that I want to create, and as a career, motion graphics and compositing are largely based on the needs of my client and my boss, and at some point, I’m falling into mannerism. I can work with NFTs in a way that I want and I can freely put in messages, thoughts, and stories that I want to embed.

Making an NFT is very meaningful in that it’s a graphic that’s recorded as an original in a digital work, and that it’s shared with the buyer, and of course, it’s also meaningful in terms of purchasing a work. My work is not expensive, but there is a person who bought it with cryptocurrency. And the fact that I sometimes communicate with the buyer about the work is so attractive and enjoyable as a creator.

Maybe the temptation to start making NFT works as a commercial project will lead to a bad experience. With that said, I also became an artist at a time when NFTs were getting a bad reputation, so there were a lot of false messages and suggestions, and I hope the NFT market will go in a good direction.

Q : Does that inspire you to do more creative projects, such as Beyond Light which won second place in the Rhythmical NFT contest last year?

Please share with us more of your concepts behind its melancholic story with the theme of “Finding the happiest moment beyond the light”, and how you created it in Cinema 4D.

Thank you for asking about Beyond Light which is my first NFT work, and it has a special meaning. My stories and ideals are self-contained such as a story that is impossible in reality or a wish that comes true in a virtual world.

Most of the production was done in Cinema 4D and the rest of the compositing was done in After Effects after rendering using Octane Render.

Q : With good use of camera movement, you created a warm and magic moment in the Christmas Ball and Santa Works at Home. Both of them have great coordination on music and lighting.

I wonder if you began these two projects with music? Could you share three things that inspire you the most when you start a new project?

In both projects, Christmas Ball and Santa Works at Home, I wanted to create a motion-graphic with a warm atmosphere, so of course the music selection was important. When I heard about the theme of the contest, I started with a small story setting that came to mind on Christmas Day when the Corona virus was in full swing, which goes like this: 

In a cold country called Corona where giants and Santa Claus lived, a giant would leave presents for Santa every night that he worked tirelessly to prepare gifts for children.

I think the three things that inspire me when I start a new project are daily experiences, movies, and music. When I think of a keyword or subject in a movie or music, I write it down briefly. If I decide to proceed with the work, I will search for images on websites such as Behance or Pinterest.

Q : You mentioned that the Netflix series LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS motivated you to start learning 3D graphics tools. How did the transition of software upgrade impact your creations, for example, from CC3 to CC4?

Did you confront any hindrance? How did you solve that? Or did it give you new inspirations for your NFTs? What are your favorite features of Character Creator 4 and iClone 8?

I think LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS is a cool piece of work, the theme and the concepts are my favorite kind, and they are attractive characters. While working as a designer, I wanted to try it.

As I learned Cinema 4D, I was able to work on the background and motion graphics to some extent. However, there were many cases where I was disappointed in the character. So while I was looking for an easy way to make a character, I got to learn Character Creator, and I thought it would be good to organize a workflow to make a character from CC on the existing workflow with Cinema 4D and Octane Render. And fortunately, I entered the contest and won the award.

What I like about CC4 and iC8 is that it’s very intuitive and easy to use, and all the materials for character production are already ready. It didn’t take much time to work on the Dike character. It took longer to think about the identity, image, accessories, background elements, and character poses of the Dike than the actual production.

In short, the biggest advantage is that we can spend more time on what to make than how to make it.

Q : We’re curious about your next move; Are you planning to mix 2D graphics and 3D animations in your upcoming projects, just like the distinctive style of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS?

I’m going to continue studying and working on my personal work after work hours. I need to practice more with CC4 and iC8. I’m going to continue working as an NFT artist even if I’m slow. And when I’m ready, my final goal is to make a short animation by myself.

Thank you for reading the long article!

Learn more :

• Leesaek on Behance https://www.behance.net/solelsc

• Leesaek on Social/NFT patfroms https://linktr.ee/SeungchanLee

• Character Creator https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/download.html

• iClone https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/download.html