How to Create a Game Ready Character Hexblade Anathema: From Original ZBrush Model to CC4

Francis Lamoureux

Hello everyone, my name is Francis Lamoureux, and I’m a junior character artist. My most recent professional experience was at Larian Studios, where I worked as an intern for four months. During that time, I discovered Character Creator 4 (CC4) through social media and immediately saw the high potential of Reallusion’s software. I spent time watching many excellent tutorials because I wanted to integrate CC4 into my pipeline to create a game character, which I eventually did.

I ended up developing a workflow that suits me well, and I’m really grateful to Reallusion for the opportunity to share it with you. This workflow consists of six main steps:

1. Transfer a custom mesh onto a CC4 base mesh topology
2. Create the high-resolution model, the low-resolution model, and textures for clothing and accessories
3. Use GoZ to create clothing from the character’s outfit
4. Clean up the skinning results
5. Simulate physics
6. Export to your preferred rendering engine

The first step is entirely optional if you begin your project using the CC4 base mesh. However, before my collaboration with Reallusion, I had already started sculpting the face and body without the CC4 topology. So I had to find a way to transfer my custom sculpt to a CC4-compatible base mesh.

You can find my portfolio on ArtStation.

Step 1. Transform the custom 3d mesh into a CC4 base topology

So, let’s say you’ve sculpted a face in ZBrush and want to convert it to a CC4 topology character to take advantage of all the software features. To transfer your mesh to a CC4 topology character, you’ll need Headshot 2.0, which can be found in the Plugin section of CC4 in the Reallusion Hub. It’s a wrapping tool, and like any wrapping software, the CC4 base mesh will be wrapped around your custom sculpt. But there’s more to it: it also automatically generates a body, eyes, mouth interior, teeth, tongue, lashes, and more, all based on CC4 topology.

Once the custom head information is transferred and attached to a CC4 base mesh, you can use the GoZ tool to send your character back to ZBrush and wrap the CC4 character body around your custom body sculpt. All the details from your custom sculpt can be transferred to the CC4 base mesh using Project History or the History Recall brush.

Step 2: Create the high-poly, low-poly, and textures for clothing and accessories

Once the custom face and body information had been transferred to a CC4 topology character, I took a break from CC4 to finish the high-resolution models of the armor, clothing, and accessories. I also completed the low-resolution versions (including the hair) and created all the textures.

Step 3: Create cloth assets from the premade garment models using GoZ

For this step, I imported the low-resolution parts of the character’s clothing into the same ZBrush scene that contains the GoZ CC4 character. Then, piece by piece, I linked the clothing back to the character using GoZ. By selecting Create Cloth in CC4, the software generates these parts as new assets and automatically transfers the character’s skin weights to them. This is a powerful feature that significantly speeds up the process of animating and posing a fully clothed character.

Once all clothing elements have gone through the previous steps, you’ll end up with a fully custom clothed character that shares the CC4 topology. By doing this, you unlock all the benefits of the software, such as blendshapes, facial and body animation, motion capture compatibility, advanced materials, and asset integration. The possibilities for creating different faces and body types are endless, making it especially efficient for generating a wide range of NPCs. For example: a bulkier version, a thinner version, a taller or shorter one.

You can also use the Morph tools to easily create various facial variations.

Step 4: Clean up skinning results

To achieve cleaner deformation results, you may need to adjust the skinning — especially if the low-poly mesh imported from ZBrush is complex.

Fortunately, CC4’s skinning tools are quite user-friendly compared to other software. In my case, I didn’t need to spend much time on this, as CC4’s auto weight transfer handled about 90% of the work. However, there were areas, like the bag and scabbard, where I needed to manually refine the skin weights.

In the image, you can see that some vertices on the bag are being influenced by multiple bones, causing unwanted stretching when the character walks. To fix this, I selected the affected vertices, selected the hip bone, and clicked the “1” button to assign 100% influence from the hip bone to those vertices.

I applied the same process to the scabbard, adding a bit of smoothing to create a cleaner transition along the belt. (Side note: I used the visibility toggle to manage the different layers of clothing. While all clothing items were rigged using the Create Cloth function, some parts were hidden to maintain the proper layered appearance.)

Step 5: Simulate physics

Once you’re satisfied with the character’s skinning, it’s time to test the physics simulation. Start by browsing Reallusion’s animation assets and drag an animation onto your character to observe how the clothing behaves during movement.

To control which areas are affected by the simulation, you’ll need to import a black-and-white texture map. I exported a JPEG of the UV layout from Maya and painted a weight map in Photoshop (white areas will be simulated, while black areas will remain static).

Next, enable the necessary checkboxes for simulation. You can adjust settings to fine-tune the results until you’re happy. There are multiple presets available as starting points.

Here are a few key parameters you can experiment with:

• Distance between the simulated mesh and the collision volumes
• Distance between the simulated mesh’s vertices
• Wind force and direction

To avoid clipping issues, you may need to add collision volumes to the character.

Lastly, in the Global Physics Settings under Project Settings, make sure to enable Rigid Body and Soft vs Soft Collision to achieve the best results.

Adding collision volumes is quite simple:

1. Select the character and click on Collision Shape.
2. Make sure both Collision On/Off and Activate Selected Part are enabled (with a body part of the dummy selected).
3. Choose the appropriate collision shape for the selected part.
4. Adjust the position and scale directly in the viewport until you achieve the desired effect.

Then, play the animation to see how the collision volumes interact with the simulated clothing.

Step 6: Export to your preferred render engine

Export settings will vary depending on the purpose of your project. Personally, I use Marmoset for rendering, so I export everything in FBX format, except for the simulated parts of the character. For those simulated elements, I export them as Alembic (.abc) files so that the simulation data carries over into Marmoset. This ensures the physics-based motion remains intact even outside of CC4.

Final Thoughts

This was a small glimpse into my workflow and how I integrate Character Creator 4 into it. CC4 offers a fun, fast, and intuitive way not only to bring your characters to life but also to experiment with variations in animation, facial features, silhouettes, and more. I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to share this pipeline with you (special thanks to Reallusion for making it possible). I hope you found it helpful. And if you haven’t tried Character Creator 4 yet, I highly encourage you to give it a shot and see how well it fits into your own creative process.

Related Posts

• Burn the Darkness: Forging a 3D Sorceress Between Shadow and Flame with CC4
• Antareus Studio Reinvents Graphic Novel Production with iClone and Character Creator
• Feature Animation at 1% Cost: One Pixel Brush Founder Leverages CC & iC for Real-Time Filmmaking