首頁 » Page 56
Product Release

Character Creator 4.2 Feature Highlights: One Wrinkle for All Avatars

Leave a comment

Upgrade Character’s Realness to the Next Level 

Get ready to unleash the full potential of your digital actors with Character Creator 4‘s Dynamic Wrinkle system! This groundbreaking technology is a game-changer for industry professionals who dream of creating characters with unparalleled realism and personality. With facial expression morphs triggering high-resolution wrinkle maps, you’ll achieve an astonishing level of detail and expressiveness that truly brings your characters to life.

The Dynamic Wrinkle system is intuitive, customizable, and suitable for game and cinematic characters of any gender, age, and ethnicity. You can even fine-tune the nuances that make each character unique, ensuring that no two characters are alike. But what really sets our wrinkle system apart is the combination of two cutting-edge technologies: Flow Map and Wrinkle Constraints. These technologies work in tandem to create realistic and stylized wrinkles, perfect for pushing the boundaries of realism for digital human actors and giving comical expressions to cartoon characters.

With a slew of customization options at your fingertips, you have complete control over the final result. And the best part? The Dynamic Wrinkle system is completely free with the trial or purchase of Character Creator 4. That’s right, you can dip your toes in the water and if you are hooked, upgrade to unlock all of its features when you are ready. So what are you waiting for? Join the revolution and discover the most advanced wrinkle system on the market today! >> Download Here.

Release note: CC4.2 update | Dynamic Wrinkles Arise | Wrinkle Essentials | Where to Find New Wrinkle Assets

See the latest update  in CC4.2:

▪ Wrinkles Magnify Human Expressions – Facial nuances let your characters stand out.

▪ A Universal Wrinkle System – High adaptability for all ages, genders, and ethnicities.

▪ Real Human Wrinkles from 3D & 4D Scans – Hi-res scans 4K Texture Maps, Reactive Expression Wrinkles.

▪ Intuitive Wrinkle – Influence Sections, Wrinkle Texture Set, Custom Design.

▪ Our Proprietory Wrinkle Technologies – Flow Map, Constraint System, Rate of Appearance.

▪ Pipeline-Friendly Dynamic Wrinkles – Unreal Live Link, Unity, and Blender.

▪ Wrinkle Pattern Expansion for All Styles – 10 Expression Wrinkles for Realistic & Stylized Characters, fully customizable.

1. CC4.2 Spotlight 1: Wrinkles Magnify Human Expressions

Facial wrinkles are not just superficial details; they serve a deeper and more fundamental purpose of expressing our personalities. As our faces relax and complexions go blank, these wrinkles dynamically disappear, giving way to other expressions with their own set of unique wrinkles. 

When it comes to digital actors, the inclusion of this complex system of wrinkles can make all the difference in having them appear truly life-like. While wrinkles are often disregarded as trivial, they are actually a crucial part of what makes us human, and their portrayal in digital characters can elevate their believability and relatability.

2. CC4.2 Spotlight 2: A Universal Wrinkle System

Our proprietary General Wrinkle system is designed to seamlessly enhance the appearance of CC3+ characters of all ages, genders, and ethnicities. With our system, you can generate wrinkles that blend perfectly with your character’s skin tone and are fully compatible with SkinGen layer effects. Its advanced CC Wrinkle shader enables high-resolution multi-texture blending, without sacrificing real-time performance.

3. How it’s made: Real Human Wrinkles from 3D & 4D Scans

Our wrinkle texture patterns are meticulously extracted and baked from a full set of high-resolution human expression scans. By creating complementary morph and wrinkle data within the guidelines of our stringent process, we can ensure digital human performances that are nearly on-par with real-life actors.

Experience the ultimate level of detail with our 4K high-definition wrinkle textures. Each set of wrinkles is carefully crafted with diffuse, normal, roughness, ao, and flow map textures, allowing users to customize the blend level of each map for the perfect appearance. And if you need to conserve space or optimize performance, our wrinkle asset library makes it easy to downsize to 2K textures without sacrificing quality.

Upon activation, the expression wrinkles are synchronized with the facial movements that are triggered by a range of animation tools in Character Creator and iClone. With tools that include key editors, puppetry, and look-at constraints to features such as lip-sync and facial mocap, you will never run out of options to bring out the most from your characters.

4. How to use: Intuitive Wrinkle

Influence Section

Expression Wrinkles are divided into 13 common facial regions that govern the wrinkles lines, crows feet, smile lines, and more. Users can intensify or neutralize any target region of the face, down to the individual channel map like Normals, AO, and Redness. The colored regions of the facial diagram indicate the set of texture maps that is currently being controlled for blending.

Wrinkle Sets & Facial Regions

The expression of wrinkles on a character’s face is defined by three sets of wrinkle maps with each set corresponding to a specific wrinkle pattern. When certain expressions are performed, the corresponding texture blends are triggered at the targeted area at sufficient strengths. Learn more about the expression wrinkles and their corresponding morphs by watching the demo video below.

Custom Design: Live & Flattened Workflow

With our innovative flattening technology, you can save and load wrinkle textures and use your favorite image editor to make unique modifications that suit individual characters. You can also modify live wrinkle patterns while ensuring compatibility with all other CC3+ characters. This flexibility lets you bring your creative vision to life with greater precision and ease than ever before.

Wrinkle Crease Profiles

Get the perfect smile for your characters with our specially optimized wrinkle profiles designed for CC3+ facial topology. These profiles enhance the overall appearance of your character’s smile, creating a more pleasant and inviting expression. To ensure seamless compatibility with your existing characters, apply one of these facial profile extensions before making any changes to your character’s expressions.

5. Why it’s important : The Uniqueness of Dynamic Wrinkle System

Flow Map

Realistic facial expressions are all about the details, and that’s why we developed the Flow map. As characters express deeper emotions, their facial muscles contract more, causing wrinkles to spread out over a wider area. With the Flow map, the wrinkle pattern gradually expands outward as the expression morphs intensify, providing an extra layer of realism to your virtual characters. Whether you’re animating a heartfelt conversation or an action-packed scene, the Flow map will bring your characters’ emotions to life in a way that feels natural and authentic.

Constraint Systems

Wrinkle Constraints are a game-changer for creating complex facial expressions in Character Creator. These constraints prevent overlapping wrinkles from conflicting with each other when multiple morphs are activated at the same time. By unifying the wrinkle pattern across facial regions, Wrinkle Constraints ensure that your virtual character’s expressions look natural and coherent, even when displaying extreme emotions.

6. Export to Major Platforms: Use Dynamic Wrinkle with Your Pipelines

Upgrade to Auto Setup 1.25 and gain access to the Expression Wrinkle shader in Unreal Engine, now equipped with advanced features like Flow Map and Wrinkle Constraints. Connect to iClone via Unreal Live Link or export your actors in FBX format from Character Creator to take advantage of these exciting capabilities. With this latest update, you can easily bring your virtual characters to life with even greater realism and detail. >> Free Download Here.

7. Customizable Wrinkles: Wrinkle Pattern Expansion for All Styles

Introducing our versatile wrinkle expansion pack, designed to enhance the realism and character depth of both realistic and stylized characters. With a vast selection of high-quality wrinkle patterns to choose from, you can easily customize and find the perfect fit, regardless of the character’s gender, age, and style.

These wrinkle assets utilize the General wrinkle standard, making them compatible with any existing CC3+ character so you can animate in iClone, export to Unreal, Unity, and even Blender.

Free Download:

>> Auto Setup for Unreal Engine: Release note, Plugin

>> Auto Setup for Unity : Release Note, Plugin

>> Auto Setup for Blender: Release Note, Plugin (scroll down to find the ‘Download’ button)

High-res 4K Wrinkles Scanned from Live Actors

Our high-fidelity source textures for the wrinkles were scanned using advanced photogrammetry and then meticulously refined in Zbrush. These textures are then partitioned into multiple high-resolution texture channels, which work in tandem to push the boundaries of realism.

5 Types of Groovy Notches for Toon Expressions

Wrinkle Essentials comes with a set of 5 wrinkle styles that are dedicated to cartoon characters and each style comes with its own unique groove profile to make them more interesting. >> Learn more about ‘Wrinkle Essentials’.

8. 3D scan & ZBrush workflow: Dynamic Wrinkle Design Guides for Character Artists

Reallusion is working on the tutorial and documentation on how to create dynamic wrinkle assets. For professional character designers or production studios who wish to create unique wrinkle assets for commercial projects. Please contact marketing@reallusion.com for dedicated support.

Website: Dynamic Wrinkle | Free Resource | Wrinkle Essentials | Where to Find Free Embedded Content

Forum: Character Creator 4.2 Discussion

Featured Story

3 Reasons Why Everyone Should Try 2D Animation

Leave a comment
This article is featured on MakeUseOf

How do you get people to listen to you? Easy! Don’t tell them, show them!

In this post, you will learn the three reasons why everybody should be using 2D animation to communicate with others. If you want to teach something new, promote a new product, share a new message, spread Bible stories, or talk about personal experiences, animation is something that can make whatever you have to say, much more interesting.

Let’s introduce Dr. Dan, who is proof of that. How do you get a little three-year-old girl to understand that she needs to go to the dentist? You don’t tell her, you show her! This is what Dr. Dan did with one of his patients. He managed to get her to stop hating going to the dentist and started loving it!

Instead of “going-to-the-dentist” day — it transformed into “going-to-see-the-next-animation-he-has-for-me” day.

Instead of her being afraid, she became excited to go.

Sounds crazy? A girl excited to go see the dentist? Read on to find out how he did it.

First we need to understand: Why does animation make your message much more interesting?

Easy! Because 

  1. It’s Easier to Understand
  2. It’s Fun to Watch
  3. It’s Fun to Do

1. EASIER TO UNDERSTAND

Animation is EASIER to understand precisely because of the principle “don’t tell them, show them.”

Let’s do a quick test.

Which one is easier (and sometimes faster) to understand?

OPTION A (telling):

OPTION B (showing):

(Animated with Cartoon Animator 5)

Be honest, which one would you prefer to see if you were in a class and the teacher was presenting this lesson in PowerPoint, option A or B?

2. FUN TO WATCH

Animation is more FUN TO WATCH and more entertaining, than just reading text.

Here is another quick test:

OPTION A (graphic card):

OPTION B (animated card):

If it was your birthday, which one would you prefer to see in your inbox, option A or B?

3. FUN TO DO

Animation is much more FUN TO DO than just writing.

We can all agree that doing an animated video takes more time. But it doesn’t take as much time as you think when you use the right tools! Having the right tools can get the job done really fast — maybe not as fast as just writing something, but it is so much fun to do!

To illustrate this point, let’s go back to Dr. Dan and explain why he started using Cartoon Animator to do animations for his family, friends, co-workers, and patients. He could just write his thoughts on a piece of paper, and instead, he used animation. That took him more time, but why did he do it? “Because animating is fun!” — Dr. Dan.

How a doctor with no 2D animation experience used cartoons to get a ten-year-old patient to love going to the dentist?

Dr. Dan is not an animator, he is a doctor with little time to animate. He got Cartoon Animator and started experimenting with it (today Cartoon Animator comes bundled with Free Courses so beginners can get a kick start).

This story started when a little three-year-old girl came to visit him at his clinic. She was an ideal patient for her age for many sessions. Around session four, Dr. Dan had to give her fluoride and she had to keep it in her mouth for one minute. This is when it started. She started screaming, yelling, and kicking, so they postponed the treatment.

Dan noticed that she had a puppet with her, before she went away he asked: “That puppet you’ve got there, what is her name?” She responded with one word: “Dolly” Dr. Dan then politely asked: “Is it ok if I take a picture of her?” She didn’t mind and Dr. Dan took a picture. Little did she know, Dr. Dan was planning to create a full animation with that picture. This was the picture of the doll with the respective adjustments to make an animated image.

One month later. The little girl comes back, again, adamant and reluctant as last time to open her mouth for the fluoride when Dr. Dan noticed she had another puppet with her, it was not Dolly, but a new one. Before Dr. Dan asked to sit down in the patient’s seat to check her out, he took out his iPad and said: “Remember when I took a picture of Dolly? Look, she prepared something for you” The little girl didn’t smile, and instead squinted her eyes. “What could that mean? Dolly did something for me?” Then Dr. Dan played an animated video of HER PUPPET dancing and singing a song, telling her to take care of her teeth so she could eat better and be happy.

The little girl was so impressed, she could not close her eyes and kept her mouth open the entire time. How was this possible? For her, that puppet was only one of many, and after the animation ended, she stared at the doctor, impressed and with respect.

Dr. Dan said: “If you listen to Dolly, I could take another picture of this other puppet and make another animated video if you promise to come back next month and take your fluoride for one minute.” Her whole attitude changed, she was now very cooperative and excited. She kept the fluoride for one min in her mouth and behaved like a little angel. She has been one of the most exceptional patients Dr. Dan has had.

After that she has never missed a month, always coming back happy and smiling, and always with a new puppet, always curious about the new animation Dr. Dan can make for her. In total, she brought all six of her puppet dolls. And Dr. Dan has created animated images for each of them.

Notice that this is probably not a 2D animation Netflix would put on their streaming channel but WHO CARES! It served its purpose! A little three-year-old got excited to go to the dentist! Not only that, but she now keeps her fluoride in her mouth for one minute without any screaming, yelling, or kicking! Any parent knows how valuable this is!

If a dentist with no experience in 2D animation can animate, anyone can.

Thanks to the advancement of technology, now everyone can do animation when they have the right tools.

Just like Steve Jobs made it possible for every single person to be able to use computers by making devices easy to use, Reallusion has made it possible for anyone to do complex 2D animations easily with a few clicks and drags in Cartoon Animator.

Animation is (1) easy to understand, (2) fun to watch, and (3) fun to do!

You don’t need years of experience to do it, you just need the right reasons and the right tools.

Know more users’ stories:

Reallusion Magazine – Cartoon Animator 

Learn more:

2D Animation Software for Cartoon Maker | Cartoon Animator 5

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

2D Animation Software Download | Cartoon Animator 5

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The original article is written by Mark Diaz and also featured on MakeUseOf.

Featured Story

Recreating Star Wars’ iconic “I am your father” scene with iClone 8 and Vicon

2 Comments

The article “Using iClone 8 with Vicon to Recreate the Iconic ‘I Am Your Father’ Scene from ‘Empire'” was recently published on the website Befores and Afters.

Luis Cepeda from Quitasueño Studios in Dominican Republic, provides a detailed step-by-step guide on how his studio recreated the iconic “I Am Your Father” scene from the movie “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back.”

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
I am your father – Darth Vader

Quitasueño Studios is the first studio specialized in film productions  in the Dominican Republic, they offer consulting on everything related to projects (Pre Production, Production and Post Production). The studio has completed over 35 feature films and other different scale productions.

Now Quitasueño Studios opens its brand-new motion capture theatre. A facility with a system that seamlessly integrates in its pipeline iClone 8, Character Creator, Unreal Engine, Vicon, Faceware and Rokoko, as well as many other software allowing Quitasueño Studio to capture +6 actors at the same time, saving time and effort for their clients.

In this showcase they start by introducing iClone 8 and Vicon, two professional animation and motion capture programs. They explain how they combined the two programs to bring the famous scene to life. The article provides a thorough explanation of the various stages involved in creating the scene, including setting up the Vicon system, calibrating the cameras, capturing the motion data, and using iClone 8 to animate the characters.

They break down the technical aspects of the process, explaining them in an easy-to-understand manner. And the accompanying images and videos help to further illustrate the steps involved in creating the scene. The article concludes by showcasing the final product and discussing some of the challenges faced during the creation process.

Overall, the showcase provides a comprehensive guide for anyone interested in using iClone 8 and Vicon optical motion capture to create their own professional motion-captured scenes, providing a clear and detailed guide making it easy for directors, cinematographers, animators and CG artists to learn how to create their own motion picture scenes with iClone and Character Creator.

Follow Quitasueño Studios:
https://www.estudioquitasueno.com/

Learning

iClone 8 User Tutorial : Employing Realistic Reflections inside of iClone 8

Leave a comment
Final scene render by Benjamin Sokomba Dazhi
Benjamin Sokomba Dazhi – Professional iClone Animator

Hi, I’m Benjamin Sokomba Dazhi and I welcome you to this iClone 8 (iC8) tutorial where we are going to talk about how to enhance your scenes visually using reflective surfaces in iClone 8.

The new features of iClone 8 includes a Mirror Plane Shader that simulates realistic reflective surfaces that can be applied to mirrors, televisions, floors or windows. You can define the mirror shape by Opacity texture, and adjust the strength and clarity of the mirror reflection with the Material Settings.

Let’s get to it.

Already, I have a character in my scene which I’ve set up with lights placed at different Interior furniture. The goal here is to create reflective surfaces like the mirror and also make the floor reflective.

So the first thing you do is you click on PLANE.  I’ve already imported a Plane to the scene and set it up here. (Fig 1.0)

Fig 1.0

Go to modify.

Fig 2.0

Under Modify, go to Texture Settings. (Fig 3.0)

Fig 3.0

Here, you see the Shader Type is already on PBR. We want to change it to Reflection Surface as shown in Fig 4.0 below.

Fig 4.0

So once you click on Reflection Surface, boom! It starts reflecting as shown below in Fig 5.0. Now you can see the mirror and the characters reflection through it. It’s as easy and straightforward as that.

Fig 5.0

You can also tweak or modify the mirror.

Fig 6.0

This can be achieved by changing the Opacity of the mirror. You can put a different type of Opacity just so it doesn’t look too clean or sharp.

Fig 7.0

Once you play with the Opacity you can put a different Material or Texture to make the mirror look like glass. If you play it you see it’s still reflecting. (Fig 8.0)

Fig 8.0

You can also modify it further by using Diffuse color, Reflection strength, Reflection blur etc… but on this particular mirror surface, you don’t need the reflection to be blurred.

Fig 9.0

Another easy way to create a plane with reflection is to go to Create, then Reflection Surface. Once you click on it you should see a Reflection Surface in the scene right there. (Fig 10.0)

Fig 10.0

Next, resize the Reflection Surface to the shape or size of the object you want it on as in this case the mirror as shown below. Or you can reshape it to what you prefer and place it wherever you want.

Fig 11.0

That’s another easy method that is quite straightforward. We can delete it for now since we already have the reflective surface we previously placed.

Next thing we are going to work on is the Floor. As you can see we just have a basic floor. What we want to do right now is try to make it more reflective.

You might think it’s already reflecting from the image shown below but not quite. It’s only reflecting the light in the scene and has more to do with the roughness of the floor material. (Fig 12.0)

Fig 12.0

Same as before, click on the floor or the plane on the ground.

Fig 13.0

Go to modify. (Fig 14.0)

Fig 14.0

I have my textures already set under modify. So go to Shader Type under texture setting. Click on PBR then go to reflection surface again. (Fig 15.0)

Fig 15.0

As you can see below, it’s already reflecting but in this case you can see its more blur because I tried making it blur so it doesn’t have a water or glass feel. It needs to look like a marble floor.

Fig 16.0

How I did that is I went to the Modify Panel and under Shader settings I played with the Reflection Strength. (Fig 17.0)

Fig 17.0

Just as mentioned, you can increase or reduce the Reflection Strength using the slider highlighted in Fig 18.0 below.

Fig 18.0

You can pick a value of maybe say 47.

You can also increase the Reflection blur from 47 but it shouldn’t be too blurry, but it really just depends on what you’re looking for.  I don’t want it to be too sharp so it doesn’t look like a glass or mirror hence the selected value.

We can also change the Diffuse Color too.

I made it darker but you can make it brighter. I just decided to make it a little bit darker as that’s how you get this particular reflection created in the scene below. (Fig 19.0)

Fig 19.0

Finally, let’s review and see all the effects we have added:

The character is reflecting, everything in the scene is reflecting from the furniture to the ceiling, and the good thing is that you can still see that the material/texture of the floor is still there. From the final scene render, through the camera view I created, you can see that both the mirror and the floor are now reflective.

So this is how you create reflections in iClone 8 to enhance the visuals in your scene. It really gives it more life and realism and makes the whole project more interesting.

I hope this tutorial was straightforward and I hope you can use this to make more beautiful and realistic scenes in your projects using iClone 8.

Thank you for having me again.

Goodbye until next time!

————————————————————

Follow Benny Dee:

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/therealbennydee/

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ8aa9y8s52q90DvV3yI1OA

Featured Story

Scenes and Props for Cartoon Animator 5 by Loopie Animate

Leave a comment

As a newcomer to the 2D Marketplace, Loopie Animate has leapt on the scene and mad a big splash with new animation loops that can be used as motion backgrounds for 2D animations.

Adding more and more practical animated packs at a rapid pace, Loopie Animate sat down with Reallusion to discuss the idea behind this innovative content and what plans are being made for the future.

Q: Greetings and welcome to the 2D Marketplace. Having been a Cartoon Animator user for a while, but only recently becoming a developer for CTA, can you tell us about yourself and your background?

From a young age I always loved to draw, but had never ventured into animation.  My journey with Cartoon Animator started almost 2 years ago in December 2020, initially to create simple animated educational resources – as I am a ESL teacher.

Recently I have made the transition to create animated scenes and props for Cartoon Animator users.  Teaching myself techniques to use animated scenes within Cartoon Animator, it all started when I wanted to speed up my workflow, to see how one of my animated 2D characters would appear in a scene without using the export or pipeline feature to After Effects. To my surprise I successfully had a working animated scene in Cartoon Animator after a few hours.  At this moment I thought to myself that other cartoon animator and iClone users could benefit from this. The great thing about this is that the user still has the option to export the scene as a video file to edit in their video editor of choice if they prefer.  

Q: You discovered you were able to create videos of animated loops and then import them into Cartoon Animator to use as motion backgrounds. Why did you choose Cartoon Animator for your 2D Animation content?

It is the ease of use, unlike other software packages I have tried, secondly it is great value for money, not subscription based. Plus it is packed full of high quality characters, assets and features to create a professional product.  Another reason I chose to use Cartoon Animator is the amount of readily available body and face motions you have access to.  I needed a fast workflow, so to manually keyframe each animated 2D character was not conducive to my workflow.  Cartoon Animator gives the automated option, or the option to customize, which appealed to me.

“It is the ease of use, unlike other software packages I have tried, secondly it is great value for money, not subscription based. Plus it is packed full of high quality characters, assets and features to create a professional product.  Another reason I chose to use Cartoon Animator is the amount of readily available body and face motions you have access to. “

Loopie Animate – Cartoon Animator users

Q: Do you have a particular style or design that you prefer working with?

I like to create both cartoon and realistic style scene settings, whether that be a summer, winter, city, or space scene.  My content tends to lean to motion based scenes.  I think there are a lot of animated characters out there, but there is a lack of animated backgrounds for these characters.  Growing up with 80’s cartoons and retro video games there was a great deal of motion which kept my eyes peeled. That has inspired me somewhat to come up with what I create.  Motion is the key, it gives the viewer/user an immersive experience.

Q: You have produced a lot of content in such a short time, so you must be having fun. Is the process of creating your content enjoyable and easy?

I find the process of creating characters for Cartoon Animator very smooth.  I love the fact that Photopea and After Effects are linked to Cartoon Animator, because without these it would be very time-consuming.  The pipeline allows you to go back and forth to edit, and change colours very smoothly. I always like to add expressions to my characters and using the facial puppet tool for customization is fairly a quick process, as Cartoon Animator has a large range of facial emotions to choose from.

I would say once you have become familiar with the Cartoon Animator user interface, it is really simple to use. For me I learn what I need to know for that particular project, so there is no pressure in knowing every feature.

“I would say once you have become familiar with the Cartoon Animator user interface, it is really simple to use. For me I learn what I need to know for that particular project, so there is no pressure in knowing every feature.”

Loopie Animate – Cartoon Animator users

Q: What features of Cartoon Animator do you make the most use of when creating your content? And what are some of your favourite CTA features and tools?

The ability to easily apply a vast range of motions to any character, is one of the main features which beats other cartoon animator packages.  Collect clip is also a great feature, because you can build your own set of motions and apply them to other characters… saving heaps of time.  

Morph head feature is also a great tool. If time is not on your side you can quickly set up an animated face without the need to draw individual facial features.

Being able to instantly apply 3D animations onto 2D characters, depending on the angle of the character is a practical tool to. This is advanced stuff for 2D animators which I have not seen featured with any other 2D software package.  That’s not all!  I also added my own motion capture data to my characters using a free mocap software. Although I had to do a lot of cleaning up to get a decent loop, it was worth the time and effort, and once again it shows Cartoon Animator’s capabilities.

And finally I can’t forget the audio sync feature which gives me the ability to create stories, adverts, shorts, and even edit the phonemes to convey a seamless piece.

Q: Now that you have become a content developer for the 2D Marketplace, what advice would you have for other artists and animators who are considering the marketplace for their art?

My advice for potential Reallusion developers is to make sure their product is of high quality, and ask yourself “is it content which I would use”?   Can it speed up the animator’s workflow?  Is it something original, well it should be, because you are in the field of creation.

If you haven’t already, then join the Cartoon Animator Facebook groups, display your work, pose questions to 2D Community Manager Garry Pye, and other helpful guys and girls in the group who are sure to give you good and honest feedback.

Q: So what can we expect to see from you in the future?

I plan to upload more 2D/3D animated scenes from different angles with additional props to the 2D Marketplace, to give animators an opportunity to create cartoons within Cartoon Animator.  

As well as that, I am excited to use the new vector animation tools in CTA5. I admit starting out, a lot of my characters were raster based and therefore not good for close ups, so the vector element is a game changer for those zoom in shots or explainer videos.  I have animated vector elements in other software suites, but Cartoon Animator 5 has added spring and bounce which in turn will add to the dynamism and potentially speed up my workflow.

Q: How have you found your time working with Cartoon Animator and learning to use all the tools and features?

I can honestly say that the learning curve for me was quick. Oh yes, I made loads of mistakes at the beginning but that quickly showed what not to do. Also I find that there is a great deal of tutorials on YouTube to assist me should I run into any difficulties. And that fact there is a 2D Marketplace full of ready made assets if I don’t have time to create an asset.  

Q: You always seem to be working on something new and exciting. What projects have you most recently been working on?

I have recently started a YouTube channel promoting Physical Education for schools, mainly using Cartoon Animator to produce the bulk of the content. I am very happy with the results and will continue to push the boundaries of Cartoon Animator in this genre. 

I have also set up a page for any user who wishes to purchase the scenes in MOV and MP4 formats.

Follow Loopie Animate:

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@loopieanimate/videos
https://youtu.be/pBBb6PLFQjA

2D Marketplace:
https://marketplace.reallusion.com/cartoon-animator/search/loopie

Website:
https://bit.ly/3WxJ05G

YouTube CTA ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWye5uz5EWM

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/loopieanimate

Learning

An introduction into Vector Art in Cartoon Animator 5 by Garry Pye

1 Comment

Overview: 

  • Introduction – What are vector images?
  • List new features of CTA5 – Vector art, Free Form Deformation (FFD)
  • Spring Bones
  • What is vector art? Vector vs Raster. 
  • What vector software can be used to create CTA5 characters
  • Benefits of vector art.
  • Basic flow of creating a vector character.
  • Learning character build folders – RLBone human, RLBone Head, RLImage.
  • Rules to follow when creating characters.
  • Exporting SVG for CTA5
  • Spring Bones
  • Free Form Deformation (FFD)
  • Conclusion

G’day! My name is Garry Pye and I am the 2D Community Manager for Reallusion. In addition, I have been a content developer for Cartoon Animators 2D Marketplace for the past nine years. I would like to introduce you to the 2D animation software Cartoon Animator 5, which delivers a new set of amazing and practical tools that will help you to create professional 2D animation faster and easier than ever before. 

In addition to the abilities you are already familiar with in Cartoon Animator, version 5 now has object Free Form Deformation (FFD), Spring Bones and most importantly, the ability to create characters using vector software. Each of these new features will enhance your animated projects in all new ways, and when mixed with the powerful tools you already use, Cartoon Animator 5 is about to take your 2D animation to a whole new level. 

In this article, I am going to take you on a tour of some of the new tools and features Cartoon Animator has to offer. 

Vector Based Character Design

Cartoon Animator 5 introduces the ability to design and build your characters as vector art in your favourite drawing software, including Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Affinity Designer, Photopea and Inkscape. 

So what is vector art? Unlike raster art which is made up of pixels that can blur when enlarged or zoomed, vector graphics are created from geometric shapes like points, lines, curves and polygons, which means you can enlarge them indefinitely without any loss of quality and without any annoying feathering around the edge of your art. So you can zoom in as close as you want to a character and never worry about losing quality. 

With a drawing tablet like my XP-Pen 24 Pro, you can still free draw your art, but as vectors, you have the ability to make instant changes to shape and colour, meaning changes to your design can be made spontaneously, as opposed to working with raster images which need to be completely redrawn. 

And the best news is, creating vector characters for Cartoon Animator 5 is easy, provided you keep in mind a few important rules. 

As you are creating your new vector character, you are going to want to make sure all your colour environment is RGB mode. This way, users will have the chance to change the colour of individual parts of your character like skin, hair and clothing, directly inside Cartoon Animator 5, adding more value to your content. 

As you build your character, remember to group all your body parts like arms, legs and torso for easy management, and name them the same as the corresponding body part in the Cartoon Animator 5 character template, so that you can import your finished character straight in to CTA. 

Have fun drawing your most creative ideas, just be sure to keep all your parts grouped together so you can match them up with the character template and have them work in CTA5. Now once your character is designed and all your parts are grouped correctly, it’s time to assemble your character using the bones that will control movement. And the number one rule here is ‘make sure your layers are named correctly’. You have three main folders that make up a character build, and they are RLBoneHuman: RLBoneHead: and RLImage: And it’s worth taking a closer look at these to see just what they do.

First, the RLBoneHuman: folder contains all the pivot points for the bones of the body and you can position these any way you want to create your own unique skeletons for your characters. 

Next is the RLBoneHead: folder containing the pivot points for the individual parts that make up the face. These are important because they determine how the head rotates for your 360 Head movement. 

And finally we have the RLImage: folder which contains all the actual drawn parts of the face and body. Everything in here needs to be layered in the correct order so all your characters face and body parts appear in front or behind each other as required. 

Now you have your character all drawn up, with its bone points in place and all your layers in the correct order. It’s time to send it in to Cartoon Animator 5 and bring it to life!

Now you are going to export your new character as an SVG file, which is your Scalable Vector Graphic. Make sure your Compatibility is set to 1.1 and your Styling Options are set to Presentation and you can export your character.  

Move across to Cartoon Animator 5 and drop your SVG file in to Stage Mode and your character will appear! Now you only need to set up your 360 Head movement and your character is complete.

So that’s it. That’s how easy it is to create your own custom vector characters for Cartoon Animator 5. But there are a couple of other really clever new things Cartoon Animator 5 can do with your characters, and I am going to show you now.

Object Free Form Deformation (FFD)

New to Cartoon Animator 5 is Object Free Form Deformation (FFD). This is the ability to apply squash and stretch to your character to exaggerate movement and give your characters the feeling of being more flexible.  And it’s really easy to apply. 

Once you have animated your characters, you can apply Free Form Deformation. On your characters Timeline, you will see a tab named FFD. Open this track and this is where you will see the Free Form Deformation as it is applied. Select your character and open the Free Form Deformation menu. Now you will see a bounding box surrounding your character. You can move each of these points to affect the squash and stretch to your character and manually keyframe its movement, or you can apply one of the preset deformations. You can rotate, shift, scale and adjust the strength of the deformation to get your animation just the way you want and give your characters a more exaggerated, cartoony performance.

Spring Bones

Another new feature for Cartoon Animator 5 are Spring Bones. Think of Spring Bones as being able to automatically apply physics and gravity to your characters body parts. In the past, if you had a character with long flowing hair, when you applied a motion, the hair would still remain static. You could use the Deform tool and keyframe movement, but that process took a considerable amount of time. 

Not any more. 

Now, with Cartoon Animator 5’s Spring Bones, character parts can move freely, as the Spring Bones will automatically control their movement. There is no keyframing involved. Nothing you have to do. Just apply the Spring Bones and watch your character move like never before. 

And the best part is, adding Spring Bones is so easy! Spring Bones are going to change the way your characters move in the most amazing, dynamic way. 

With your character open in Composer Mode, open the Bone Editor. Select the bone pivot point you want to apply your Spring Bones to. Now add new bones starting from this point. You can do this to any face or body part. Then open the Spring Bone Editor, create a new group and assign the bone to that group. When you do, you will see all the bones attach to this bone are added to the group and they will all change colour. Now click Preview and watch as your hair moves naturally on its own when you move the characters head.

How good is that! No more tedious keyframing. No more unnatural, stiff movement. You can apply Spring Bones to any face or body part. Anything that you want to move naturally. Hair, clothing, tails, trunks. Turn anything in to a wobbly, jelly like substance in seconds. And then control the strength of the Spring Bones bounce, speed, gravity and more and Cartoon Animator 5 will automatically animate it all for you.   

Conclusions

So there you have it. Just some of the new features and tools of Cartoon Animator 5. Tools that are designed to enhance your characters performance through natural, automated movement, like squash and stretch, as well free flowing movement with Spring Bones. Techniques applied in the traditional 12 principles of animation, as well as vector art that will give your final 2D animations a higher quality output for professionals. 

Cartoon Animator is already powerful animation software designed with both the beginner and professional in mind. With version 5 we have added new features that will bring your characters to life in exciting new ways!

Follow Garry Pye:

https://www.reallusion.com/contentstore/FeaturedDeveloper/profile/#!/GarryPye/Cartoon%20Animator
https://www.facebook.com/garrypyeanimations
https://garrypyecreations.com/

Pitch & Produce

Pitch & Produce | Walter Precipitous: Using Cartoon Animator for Global Science Education

1 Comment
José Vaz– CEO, Founder

José Vaz – Toma Creators

José Vaz, also known by his internet moniker Zez, is a freelance 2D animator and director based in Porto, Portugal. With over ten years of remote work experience, he leads a small team at Toma Creators in producing animated explainers and music videos. In addition to commercial projects, Zez creates personal projects in the form of animated series, podcasts, video games, and comics. His specialty is 2D animation, and he finds enjoyment in realizing his ideas with an artistic composition that has been carefully curated.

The team at Toma Creators create explainer videos for various industries and serve clients that offer goods and services worldwide. The showcased screenshots demonstrate the company’s ability to tell succinct stories in under a minute. The person in charge of the upcoming project began using Cartoon Animator (CTA) to bring it to life and eventually utilized CTA for the first time in the production of a short film named “Walter Precipitous,” after receiving the project brief.

The following is an interview of José and Toma Creator’s about their work on Walter Preciptous.

Q: Greetings, José. Congratulations on being the inaugural 2D participant in the Reallusion Pitch & Produce program. Firstly, can you tell us a little about your character, Walter Precipitous, and walk us through his 2D character creation process?

Walter is a water molecule that transforms between solid, liquid, and gas states. However, we primarily see him as a big-headed droplet. After discovering CTA’s 360 head rotation tutorial, which featured an angry bird-like character, I knew CTA would be the perfect software to make Walter come alive. My 2D character designs are heavily influenced by Cartoon Network, and I quickly drew sketches of the characters that were inspired by its shows. Using Procreate on my iPad, I drew the characters in a neutral position with all the necessary facial features for the film. Later, in Photoshop, I added colors and prepared the models for CTA.

The story contains many emotional scenes, prompting me to create two sets of mouth syllables conveying sadness 😔 and happiness 😃. In CTA, Crystal’s character was animated as a green screen body, with the intricate texture added in post-production using After Effects. I must say, the creation of characters in Cartoon Animator was both enjoyable and efficient. Once character models were complete, animating them was a breath of fresh air.

Q: Thank you for sharing your experience! Could you please provide further details on your typical creation workflow with Cartoon Animator and other tools?

Typically, I draw my characters using Procreate and add carefully selected colors in Photoshop. Once character creation is finished, I bring the models to Cartoon Animator for 2D animation. In “Walter Precipitous”, there were several lip-sync sequences that would have stumped most facial animators. I’m just so grateful that Cartoon Animator simplified the process and made facial and talking animation more manageable using their intuitive built-in functions.

Once I complete the character animations, I bring them into After Effects, a software that I’m already familiar and comfortable with. After Effects is where I add most of the background images and handle post-production. This is also where I add textures to some of the characters, and I’m thrilled to see how my past experiences have had an impact on the vividness of the characters.

Q: In what ways did Cartoon Animator 5 contribute to enhancing the talking animations for this project?

Cartoon Animator is a fantastic software for both indie and professional animators. With the latest update of Cartoon Animator 5, we were able to incorporate many new features, allowing us to give Walter and Crystal more personality. One of the new features we used was the FFD effect for secondary animations. This feature allows us to squash and stretch the characters to create intricate effects reminiscent of classic animation. In my story, Walter is portrayed as a bubbly character with a dream to explore the world. The FFD effect was a game-changer, helping us animate Walter with attitude and create more cartoony motions.

The Spring Effect enables new physics possibilities. I used the Spring Editor to animate an otter with bounciness and tail motion. Pre-set animations are available and can be added to character bones for testing. Reallusion provides free tutorials with sample animations, and playing with tested secondary animations can improve final results. The ability to use vector graphic files was important for me because many of my illustrations were vector files in the first place. Cartoon Animator 5 allows users to import vector graphics from other online libraries or obtain them from Reallusion’s free, embedded vector characters.

Q: Could you describe your communication and coordination process with your team for this project? Additionally, do you face any difficulties when collaborating remotely on team projects?

Effective communication is crucial for success, especially in larger projects. Having worked together on various projects for a few years, I am familiar with Mariana’s and Andre’s capabilities and workflow, which can be surprising and innovative. Toblerusse, the Canadian creator and producer, was easy to work with and gave us creative freedom. Although we all live in Porto, Portugal, we worked remotely, which was natural for us. To promote good communication, it helps to work with nice colleagues and be supportive. Our collaboration on this project was inspiring, and remote work created new opportunities for teamwork that weren’t available before.

Q: We’re delighted that your team successfully completed and delivered an excellent project. Can you share your future plans for the Walter Precipitous Project?

The team had a great time working on Walter Precipitous and is continuing with the creation of more educational content. To keep things organized, a landing page called Walter Teaches Kids has been established, featuring upcoming material such as water and science videos, a regularly updated YouTube channel, and a Teachers Pay Teachers profile. Backed by remarkable synergy, the team looks forward to introducing new characters and short films.

Follow Jose and Walter Precipitous:

Toma Creators:
https://www.tomacreators.com/

Walter’s YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@walterprecipitous

Walter’s Teacher’s Pays Teacher website:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Walter-Teaches-Kids

Learning

Bringing static 3D Scans to life in minutes with AccuRIG by Frank Zwick

Leave a comment
Frank Zwick – Dipl. Designer (FH) für elektronische Medien

Frank Zwick – Dipl. Designer (FH)

My name is Frank Zwick, I am a 3D artist from Germany with over 30 years experience in the 3d industry.

Since 2015 I offer a 3D scanning service, specialized in full body scanning. Anyone who has been involved in character rigging knows how much know-how, time and work it takes to get good results.

.

To rig 3D scans of humans takes even a little more effort. Most of the time there is no exact symmetry to use, the fingers are often not separated from each other, as well as the critical areas. ( e.g. in the neck where the clothing collar merges with the skin) Hours of aligning local rotation axes combined with the tedious process of painting skinweights are a thing of the past since auto-rigging software has been around.

Unfortunately, the results were not always as good as expected, due to the reasons already mentioned, which is why I did not use auto-rigging software for my 3D scans. With AccuRig, Reallusion is launching a free auto rigging software with great features, which will attract attention in this area. With AccuRig it is now possible to transform a static 3D scan into a living 4D scan in just five simple steps, but with sufficient control over the rig. The ability to easily adjust and fine-tune the position of the body joints in an iterative process is almost always necessary for 3D scans of people.

“With AccuRig it is now possible to transform a static 3D scan into a living 4D scan in just five simple steps, but with sufficient control over the rig.”

Frank Zwick – Dipl. Designer (FH) für elektronische Medien

The same applies to the joints of the fingers. AccuRig delivers surprisingly good skinweights even under difficult conditions like in this example with non-separated fingers. In addition, the PoseOffset offers the possibility of retargeting even while the animation is playing. If the result is satisfying you can export it as FBX and pass it to other 3D applications or you can pass the character to ActorCore. There you can choose from a large library of motion capture data and transfer the motion data per click to the CharacterRig and evaluate it in the Real-time viewer from all sides.

For example, in ArchViz one often wishes for people in a certain pose to liven up the 3D scene, but of course you don’t have any suitable ready-posed 3D scans in the archive on your hard disk – with AccuRig it is now easier than ever to bring static 3D scans into the desired pose. All you need is a single 3D scan of a human in T or A pose to get started. After completing the five simple steps in AccuRig , countless poses can now be taken by the 3D character as desired. So easily one A Pose Model becomes multiple models to populate architectural visualizations.

This is just another benefit besides the actual goal of bringing the static people scan from 3D to 4D. An animated People Scan naturally attracts more attention and you get a better impression of the character, compared to a static unnatural A Pose or T Pose with which 3D characters are usually presented.

AccuRig is for me the best free auto-rigging tool I have used so far. Fast, easy to use, but enough control over the auto-rigging process to get the best out of it, and the best part is you have fun doing it.

AccuRig makes it easy for all 3D modeling artists to enter the next dimension – the 4D community will grow quickly. Please try it out for yourself and I wish you happy rigging!

Sketchfab :
https://sketchfab.com/Frank_Zwick

Sketchfab AccuRig :
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/firefighterambulance-idle-accurigb1ce46dddb4f4a23b1b51215c76686a8

Homepage/3DScanService :
https://www.optimission.de/

Featured Story

Virtual Production Company adapts Live Action Projects to Real-time Animation

Leave a comment
Piero Varda – Filmmaker, Creative Director, Co-Founder

Piero Varda – La Escena Virtual

My name is Piero Varda and I’m a filmmaker based in Lima, Peru with more than 15 years of experience in the advertisement and movie industry.  I originally started as an editor but then moved on to cinematography.  I’m now co-founder and creative director at La Escena Virtual, a virtual production company that provides virtual production services. We mainly work with LED wall technology and Unreal Engine. We create photorealistic 3D environments and track real cameras to virtual ones for FX purposes.

As part of our work, we recently started to upgrade and focus on real-time and motion capture workflows.  Our main goal is to migrate into a full real-time production company.  La Escena Virtual has also recently begun using Reallusion, primarily with iClone and Character Creator.  Additionally, we use different Reallusion plugins and 3D animation bundles as a hub for character creation and mocap animation.

Before we started our company, I wrote and filmed a sci-fi live action movie project called “The Within” that is deeply inspired by Andean mythology and sacred practices.  Today La Escena Virtual uses the project to test techniques and pipelines as it’s a fantasy series that includes FX scenes with opportunities for digital doubles.

A couple of years back, regular post production meant this was a highly ambitious project which necessarily required co-producers to join in on the project to make it happen.  Today, thanks to virtual production and the doors it opens for collaboration, we believe we will be able to finish The Within in house.  Passionate filmmakers like ourselves have been waiting for these kinds of procedural tools, capable of working with other industry standard  software to help reduce time frames and regain creative control of the film process.  

“We learned that iClone and Character Creator were tools that worked seamlessly with Unreal Engine. Additionally, we eventually discovered iClone’s LIVE LINK and how it lets all the animation tools we were now using, work in conjunction with Unreal Engine — and after that we were totally hooked.”

Piero Varda – Filmmaker, Creative Director, Co-Founder

Read More “Virtual Production Company adapts Live Action Projects to Real-time Animation”