In the Reallusion 2024 3D Character Contest, artist Francis Bon Vun Hong was among the winners in the “Best AccuRIG Character” category. In this article, he takes us through the workflow that brought his winning entry, “Azura (Combat Bunny)”, to life.
FRANCIS BONG VUN HONG
Hello, I’m Francis, a recent graduate with a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Creative Digital Media, completed over three and a half years. My journey into the 3D industry began during my studies, where I discovered a passion for animation, character design, and digital storytelling.
In September 2023, I joined Betapuru Digital Studio as an intern, immersing myself in a professional environment to hone my skills and gain hands-on experience. Now, I am continuing to build my career in 3D and animation, aiming to create visually captivating content.
Blender Character Design
I designed “Azura” with a cyberpunk, bunny-inspired style, aiming for the intricate detail of an in-game character. I used Blender, Marvelous Designer, and Substance Painter to bring her to life, and AccuRig ActorCore helped streamline the rigging process, making her movements fluid and lifelike.
Inspiration
My character design was inspired by stylized games like Valorant, Deadlock, Apex Legends, and Overwatch, which combine striking visuals with rich backstories. I admire how games like Overwatch and League of Legends use cinematic storytelling to develop characters, and this blend of design and narrative drives me to create visually engaging characters with strong connections to their worlds.
Design Process
I’ve been using Blender for about 3–4 years, starting back in my studies. I find human anatomy particularly challenging when it comes to sculpting. Estimating proportions accurately is tough, so I rely on various online references to help me adjust body proportions while working on my characters.
Blender Character Sculpting
I start my sculpting process with a basic cube, then apply a multiresolution modifier. This lets me subdivide the mesh like the subdivision surface modifier, but with the added benefit of editing each subdivision level directly in sculpt mode.
Body Sculpt
The Multires modifier allows me to subdivide my mesh to add more detail during sculpting without altering the base mesh, similar to subsurf. Unlike Dyntopo, which generates extra geometry and can result in messy topology, Multires helps me maintain a clean model by preserving a lower-resolution base while I add high-resolution detail. I can also bake this detail into normal or bump maps, allowing me to keep my viewport low-poly while still achieving high-quality renders.
Hair Modeling
For hairs, I used curves in Blender, which I found to be the most effective method for creating stylized hair. With plenty of tutorials available, it wasn’t difficult to master.
For accessories like clothing, I turned to Marvelous Designer. It’s a highly efficient tool that simulates clothing in real time, offering a more streamlined process compared to baking garments in Blender, which can be time-consuming.
Cloth Modeling and Simulation
I only get to explore Marvelous Designer when I come across this competition. So I would say this competition has also urged me to learn new software which would greatly increase the efficiency of workflow.
For accessories like clothing, I turned to Marvelous Designer. It’s a highly efficient tool that simulates clothing in real time, offering a more streamlined process compared to baking garments in Blender, which can be time-consuming.
The Inspiration
The image above features characters from the anime “Cyberpunk Edgerunners”. Their clothing is designed in a typical cyberpunk style, reflecting the genre’s aesthetic. The design is futuristic and edgy, with high-tech elements such as illuminated or glowing patterns, panels, and logos, emphasizing the cyberpunk theme. Additional details like zippers, buckles, and integrated gadgets or armor further enhance the tech-inspired look.
Texturing
As for texturing, instead of using textures, I mostly hand painted the character, including her outfits and accessories in substance painter so it would look more stylized. Therefore, colors come into play and I have to make use of fancy bright and neon colors that would enhance the cyberpunk-inspired look of the character.
Rigging, Posing, and Animation
When I joined this competition, I had just started using AccuRIG and ActorCore. I first became familiar with Reallusion during my internships at Betapuru, where I attended Mr. Aydeen’s Reallusion workshop in Sri Aman. After a deeper understanding of the tools, I discovered that you can actually achieve more with the AccuRIG from Character Creator. These are truly great software tools.
Besides Actorcore, there are also Reallusion’s content store and marketplace which allows you to find similar characters that you could take references from or purchases for use.
AccuRIG does provide an automated rigging process, which is super nice and I also find various poses online. I took down the walking poses while most of the free poses may not fit my character well so I have to pose them myself in Blender. However, all these animations and poses are really time-saving if it becomes a fit with your character.
Recommended Blender Addons
1) Wiggle Bones
The Wiggle Bones add-on is a simple yet powerful tool that allows you to easily add physics-based motion to bones in your rig. With this add-on, you can assign specific bones a dynamic, jiggly-wiggly effect, bringing more life and realism to your animations with minimal effort.
2) QuadRemesher
The QuadRemesh command quickly creates clean quad-based meshes from surfaces, existing meshes, or SubDs. It uses a smart algorithm to make the mesh easier to work with, which is great for things like rendering, animation, simulations, and reverse engineering. This makes it simple to get high-quality results for various projects.
3) CC/IC Pipeline
This plugin is mainly used to retarget the downloaded animation from the ActorCore website to my character.
On Improving Skills
I wouldn’t call myself a professional 3D artist just yet — there’s still so much to learn in the 3D field, and many software tools I’ve yet to explore. In my opinion, the more software you master, the better your work can be. It’s not just about saving time — different programs excel at different tasks. For example, Marvelous Designer is great for creating realistic clothing, Houdini is ideal for VFX, and AccuRig makes rigging and posing easier. By streamlining your workflow with the right tools, you can focus less on repetitive tasks and spend more time enhancing your character in other creative ways.
Final Thoughts
Streamlining Your Character Creation
Character Creator excels at quickly generating high-quality, customizable characters. It’s perfect for speeding up the character creation process while still allowing for detailed control, saving you a lot of time compared to starting from scratch.
Seamless Integration
Character Creator works well with other 3D software, like Blender, Maya, or Unreal Engine. Take advantage of this compatibility to integrate characters smoothly into your larger pipeline.
Being Great for Beginners and Pros
Whether you’re a beginner looking for an easy way to create characters, or a more experienced artist looking to streamline your workflow, Character Creator offers tools that can help you focus more on creative choices and less on technical hurdles.
Related Posts
- Winner Select: Mastering Mysterious Character with ZBrush Face Tools
- Reallusion’s 2024 3D Character Contest – Meet the Winners!
