首頁 » Page 65
Learning

3D Render Engines for iClone: Choosing The Best (Part 2)

Leave a comment

Comparison of Omniverse, Unreal Engine 5, and Maya V-Ray for 3D Real-time Animation

V-Ray for Maya

This tutorial is going to be carried out with V-Ray for Maya. Keep in mind that although the program works in a similar way in some applications, in others it does not. The common factor is the high price of the one-year license. If you have never used Maya or a similar advanced 3D program before, be warned that the barrier to entry can be prohibitive, with a high price tag. 

We are going to import the iClone animation into Maya to use V-Ray. This time, just select the scene elements, go to the File menu and select the Export menu to save the file in FBX format.

A floating window will appear in which we will have to select the Maya 3D preset from the different presets. Then make sure to export all the frames and click on the Export button.

Export an iClone project to V-Ray (image credit: José Tijerín)

To import the FBX file into the scene, we can drag it directly into the program or we can go to the File menu and look for the Import button to find the file on the computer. As long as we don’t separate the FBX file from the folder with the rest of the textures, the model will be imported together with the materials and textures. Unfortunately, we will have to recreate all the materials so that they are all V-Ray materials and appear correctly in the render. However, in order not to repeat what I already explained in the tutorial I talked about at the beginning, I’m going to skip all the creation of the character’s materials.

I’ll just remind you of the basics of rendering the scene. If we click on the Render Settings button, a floating window will appear. In it we will have to configure the animation parameters, the size of the frames, the type of samples to be used by V-Ray (which is in the Bucket option) and finally we will have to add the Denoiser element to eliminate the pixel noise that may arise.

V-Ray render settings (image credit: José Tijerín)

Detailed Comparison of Three Render Engines

The Denoiser in V-Ray does a spectacular job, you can easily turn it on and off in the Frame Buffer window by going to the Layers menu. The rendering with V-Ray is without a doubt the one that offers the most polished result. The lighting has an incredible quality and softness and V-Ray’s handling of complex materials is also completely realistic, like the way in which light passes through honey in the glass jars. It should be noted that, unlike the previous programs which are free, Maya and V-Ray are priced.

We get a decent result in Omniverse, but it does not distribute the light as well as in the previous case. However, if we use Omniverse’s photo-realistic render, the result is quite good. Unreal gives a rather poor result which we can manage to improve with some tricks and effects. 

Comparison of 3 render engines (image credit: José Tijerín)

Continuing with the comparisons, it is clear that a big drag on V-Ray and other rendering engines is the time taken to render each frame with pixel noise removed. Thanks to V-Ray’s default Denoiser, this only takes 18 minutes.  It has to be said that this not only affects the final result but also the workflow. When working on 3D scenes, it is really useful to see the results in real-time. This can help us to spot errors, save time checking how the render is coming along, or even allow us to be more creative.

Comparison of render engines (image credit: José Tijerín)

As for fluid simulations, apart from Unreal which can only use particle effects, both Maya and Omniverse give perfect results, however, the winning edge goes to Omniverse. Unlike the tediousness of working with Maya’s fluid simulations, and the dearth of options in Unreal, Omniverse allows you to edit the simulations in an accurate, intuitive, and hassle-free manner.

Comparison of 3 render engines (image credit: José Tijerín)

We can also compare the performance of the Denoiser in the different renders. In this case we also have to leave Unreal aside, because Lumen uses a completely different system. In this detail of a larger 4K render we can clearly see how both V-Ray and Omniverse denoiser does an excellent job.

Without de-noise, V-Ray renders still hold up with a more polished result and less noticeable noise, yet in Omniverse, the noise becomes less uniform and is noticeable in the overall image. Omniverse gives the best result when Denoiser is enabled across all renderers. It has to be said that the 10 minutes it takes for V-Ray to render the scene is a big hit to its advantage in this department compared to Omniverse’s near instantaneous solution.

Comparison of 3 render engines (image credit: José Tijerín)

Personal Opinions

I will end by giving my personal opinions as a professional who uses these programmes. 

These comparisons may be more or less accurate and I have no doubt that, at the rate these engines are evolving, this tutorial will probably be outdated in a short time. However, I hope that it has clarified your doubts and shown you new possibilities to enhance your work.

V-Ray for Maya: Powerful for Large Productions

V-Ray is a very powerful render engine that is used for all kinds of big productions, but that stands out above all for offering a hyper-realistic solution in both lighting and materials, which can be configured to achieve really complex results. It does a fantastic job with integrating computer generated imagery with live-footage. V-Ray is well-prepared to deal with really challenging scenes such as forests and cities, giving a superb and hyper-realistic result. This engine comes at a significant cost, but it can be installed on a large number of 3D programs, including Unreal Engine itself.

image credit: Marvel

Omniverse: Fast and Easy for Collaborative Workflow

Omniverse is a tool that is becoming essential for productions with tight deadlines. In my case, jobs that used to take days to render, I can now deliver with Omniverse on the same day. The fact that it is free and very easy to learn to use also makes it the best engine to start learning 3D and get good results from day one. Although it is new, the programme is constantly being updated, adding new functions and possibilities for free, which indicates that it is a programme with a lot of potential and a great future. These updates have made it the program that works best with Character Creator and iClone.

Having a direct link between both programs allows us to work better, without worrying about the compatibility between formats and materials, so we save a lot of time. So it is highly recommended to bring our characters and animations to Omniverse if we want to get amazing results in a short time. 

The biggest problem with Omniverse is that it is not as flexible as other programs. This is because it was designed to work closely with other programs. It is better to create and assemble the scenario in another program and then export it to Omniverse. Fortunately this is easy given NVIDIA’s facilities for importing work, for example, directly from Maya. 

This makes it even more advisable to work in Omniverse together with Character Creator and iCone, so that both complement each other and benefit from each other’s advantages. Many of the difficulties I encounter when rendering in the program could be solved if the program included, in addition to progressive rendering, a Bucket system like V-Ray; Something I hope they will incorporate in the future. The rendering problems that can be found in the program can be avoided, although it is advisable to always render at a higher resolution than the one we need to get a higher quality image.

image credit: NVIDIA Omniverse

Unreal Engine 5: Made for Video Games

Unreal Engine 5 Lumen and Nanite systems have revolutionized the world of real-time graphics. There are now film productions using this software in real-time because of its versatility and turn-around. The way it works with iClone in real-time is arguably what makes Reallusion the best choice for animating any production using Unreal. And this also applies to the world of video games, for which Character Creator and iClone have been designed from the ground up.

Working with iClone and Unreal Engine at the same time saves a lot of time and trouble, allowing us to be more creative. It’s great that even textures and materials can be passed to Unreal seamlessly, giving an amazing result. Metahumans can also be animated in iClone with the same degree of realism thanks to its incredible graphics allowing the scenes to translate well to other render engines. Having taken into account various important factors of production, I believe Reallusion presently has the best solution for giving life to digital characters.

If you are thinking of making a hyper-realistic video game, even as a beginner, this is the program for you. Not only because it is free and easy to use thanks to its node-based system, but also because of the ease of use with other programs and the great number of tutorials and features that it has to offer.

If that wasn’t enough, we can finish by saying that in recent times several of the main video game developers are developing their most impressive titles in this programme. Learning to use it can facilitate access to these studios or, at very least, come close to the quality of these blockbusters. 

image credit: Unreal Engine

I hope you like and enjoyed this tutorial. Remember to watch the video so you don’t miss any detail in the process that was covered here. Don’t forget to visit Reallusion for more online video tutorials and go to Steam to add “Dear Althea” to your wishlist.

Back to Part 1

Featured Story

befores & afters: How you can access Hollywood-style digital make-up effects

1 Comment

This article is featured on befores & afters.

Special thanks to befores & afters journalist Ian Failes for reporting on how Hollywood SFX make-up artists utilize Character Creator and SkinGen to successfully expand their business beyond their industry into animations, games, AR/VR, and much more.

Ada Productions gives filmmakers and content producers access to high-quality SFX makeup, which are digital alternatives to traditional prosthetic makeup. With the benefit of being reusable, SFX makeup comes in easily adjustable designs that can fulfill a variety of needs.

The main aim is for people to have access to really high-quality cinematic effects. […] We want others to have the ability to create something very quickly, very easily.

Simone Boria, CEO of Ada Productions

Both founders have extensive industry experience for the past 30 years. Simon Boria, the CEO, and founder of Ada Productions has worked as an art director, fashion and theatre designer, and broadcast journalist, and has taught film and media art analysis at the University of Art and Design Linz.

Stuart Sewell, another pillar of Ada Productions, has an impressive record as a prosthetic makeup and animatronics artist for Hollywood films since the 1990s. His SFX makeup have contributed to famous titles such as Frankenstein, Saving Private Ryan, The Hours, The Sea Inside, Lost in Space, and many more. What motivated Simone to found Ada Productions was the inevitable wave of digitization within the entertainment industry.

There was a worry that practical prosthetics would be removed from film altogether, but actually I think it’s like a complementary thing. I’ve seen quite a few makeups that have been enhanced by digital.

Stuart Sewell, Chief Product Designer of Ada Productions
This creation relied on the DMFX design tools by Ada Productions.

With an open mind toward CGI production, they have had many trials with different 3D tools. In the end, they settled on Reallusion’s pipeline solutions due to unrivaled convenience and interoperability. The Reallusion ecosystem of solutions allows for seamless connection with other 3D software, enabling them to transfer their interdisciplinary knowledge, immense experience and artistry into the digital realm.

With something like iClone and Character Creator, what I like about them is that they’re iterative and elastic. They allow you to change things on the fly.

Stuart Sewell, Chief Product Designer of Ada Productions

Download Character Creator: https://bit.ly/37k0wp8

Learn more about SkinGen Premium Plug-in: https://bit.ly/3KDjMwx

Learn more about Ada Productions: https://dmfx.tools/

SkinGen assets by Ada Productions: https://bit.ly/3vdmUbJ

Read the full article on befores & afters: https://beforesandafters.com/2022/03/31/how-you-can-get-access-to-these-hollywood-style-digital-make-up-effects/

Product Release

Character Creator 4 – Create Animated Personalities

Leave a comment

Work in Progress : Part Three 

In the latest WIP III video, we’d like to show how artists can create accentuated characters with their unique set of expression styles. With the newly introduced Expression Profile Editor, designers can use native modelling morphs and bone tools to reshape expressions. Artists can take advantage of the FBX workflow between Blender, Maya, and 3ds Max to create custom expression morphs, to make batch facial updates back to Character Creator.

Furthermore, Delta Mush helps you smooth the messy parts of the mesh, either to fix the cloth distortion or to clean facial morphs. Character Creator 4 enables everyone to produce high-quality models which are ready for animation for well-crafted personalities.

Expression Editor: Native Morph Slider Editing

With well-constructed interface, users can easily adjust different angles of characters’ facial features. Not only does the succinct thumbnail design make editing more intuitive – what you see is what you get – but the Modify panel also enables users to tweak each morph slider in detail. Without the aid of any third-party tool, artists are encouraged to use Edit Mesh to design their own customized morph sliders in Character Creator 4.

Red dots in each thumbnail are parts controlled by the morph slider. Artists can edit the mesh of each slider to customize the characters’ stylized expressions.

Blink animations are probably the most challenging area for making characters unique and come alive. In Character Creator 4, blink animations rely on five distinct morph sliders: Eye Blink, Eyelid, Eyelash, Eyeballs, and Eye Look.

By adjusting the source morph target shape of these sections, each expression morph slider can be revised, and with the use of the Mesh Edit tool, one can quickly overcome these obstacles. Lastly, having finished the eye animations for one side of the face, artists can use the Mirror tool to instantly apply the same slider settings to the other eye.

The Mirror function can be seen at 3:11.

Besides modeling morph targets, Character Creator 4’s Bone Adjustment feature can be used to modify specific facial expressions and mouth motions that is often inextricably linked to jaw movements. Freely design nuanced emotions by customizing the mesh of each morph slider. Customizations to the mesh editing, bone adjustments, and morph target models can be saved to custom sliders.

The Quick Update feature refreshes the iClone Muscle Edit data along with facial mocap to give unique styles of animation to your characters that is hard to emulate.

Bone adjustment – Jaw

The Highlight feature can promptly update the viewport to preview changes made to the morph sliders, which is very useful for fixing morph shapes while checking specific expressions and performances. In addition, morph sliders that are activated during playback are clearly listed under the Currently Used section of the interface.

Besides the existing Expression Editor, Character Creator 4 provides Mesh and Expression Set for exporting individual facial morph sliders in sequential frames, which are editable in third-party 3D software, with which you are familiar with. Consequently, artist taking advantage of the seamless GoZ pipeline process between Character Creator and Zbrush can update their custom expression shapes on the fly, with a simple click of a button.

Single slider update – GoZ  

Ⅰ. Once you’ve made your adjustments using expression sliders, you can bake your work as a component of the character’s expression profile. 

Ⅱ. Press the GoZ button to export it from Character Creator (CC) to ZBrush for advanced editing.

Ⅲ. Export those edited profiles back to CC using Re-Align function to update the newly designed expressions on your characters.

Expression Editor: External Blendshape Editing (FBX/OBJ)

Beyond fixing CC3+ characters, you can take a custom rigged character from Blender or other 3D applications and add an entire personality within hours. Directly import FBX blendshape files from Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Unity, Unreal, Motion Builder and Cinema4D, just to name a few.

Most importantly, the Batch Update feature of Character Creator 4 enables you to import/export the enormous expression files all at once. Less tedious than ever, the new painless workflow gives precise results in a very short period of time.

Batch update – FBX Pipelines : Blender
Batch update – FBX Pipelines : Maya
Batch update – FBX Pipelines : 3ds Max

Mesh Smoothing Tool: Delta Mush

Besides the Expression Editor, Character Creator 4’s Delta Mush helps artists to mesh smooth the characters’ facial expressions and body topology, including outfits, shoes, and even the patterns on their clothes! Whole or partial mesh can be cleaned to achieve proper topology. This is especially useful for characters with faulty or irregular mesh as a result of intensive model processing.

• Fix cloth distortion

• Clean facial morphs

You can check the 3D Character Creation & Animation webpage for more information about the free upgrade offer, feature comparison, and FAQs. If you’re interested in the Character Creator 4 motto of “Enlivening any Character” and “Animating any Rig”, you can refer to the article ‘Working in Progress: Part One‘. It’s also recommended to watch the Sneak Peek review narrated by Russell Midfield, who precisely explains each feature. For more technical details, please have a look at our latest New Features Introduction.

If you have further questions, please contact our Support Team, or join the discussion at Reallusion Forum.

Learning

Winning Tips & Tricks: The Making of Petar Puljiz’s “Dear Rosie” Showcase

Leave a comment

The “Winning Tips & Tricks” series covers practical workflows and techniques shared by winners from the “2021 iClone Lip Sync Animation Contest”. To let users see the full spectrum of the iClone facial pipeline, we are introducing projects that are rendered with different 3D engines including; Unreal, Unity, iClone, Blender, and Cinema4D.  Let’s now take a look at Petar Puljiz’s: “Dear Rosie”, combining workflow in Character Creator, iClone, Marvelous Designer, Blender, and Unreal Engine.

Petar Puljiz

Hello! I’m Petar(Peter) Puljiz, originally from Split, Croatia. I describe myself as a visual producer and artist, but I work in many roles. Currently, my main role is Visual Artist in Lowly from Trap Nation where I produce and publish experimental visual content for music. My current focus is based on virtual humans, and their implementation and representation on digital/virtual platforms. One of my virtual humans is mister visual, which I will write more about soon.

Why did I create this showcase? 

The goal of this project is to explore what’s the most fun and painless way to animate complex characters such as Metahuman with a variety of tools. I used to believe in a lie that I would be able to get character animation straight from motion capture. But then I found I was a bit naive, because it requires a lot of data-cleaning for the captured motion data, and that’s just the way it is. Since I’m getting into a new storytelling format – virtual influencers – I need a lot of tools in a one-stop-shop solution, and a more streamlined process to animate MetaHuman. The iClone Lip Sync Animation Contest was a great motivation to free up time and dive into their tools. So I set up some criteria, took a deep breath, and dove into iClone!

A quick summary of my workflow

  • After refining the Rokoko mo-cap data, I used iClone’s Motion Layer Editor to create several natural body movements emphasizing the character’s talking animation, including hand contact on the table, and grabbing and releasing the cup prop.
  • Like the other contestants, I used AccuLips to drive the main lip-sync animation and observed the Unreal render in real-time via the iClone to Unreal Live Link.
  • Instead of using a facial mo-cap, I chose to blend subtle emotional expressions using iClone’s Face Puppet and made final detailed tweaks via MetaHuman’s facial controller.

I relied on Marvelous Designer to create the character’s unique dress and gave it a dynamic animation within an environment built up in Blender. Now you know the outline, let me just break down the details of each production phase.

How I do it with Reallusion Tools

Preparation: Concepting my character

First, I step into the shoes of my female character, Rosie and describe her personality, situation and anatomy. I try to look at the world from her point of view. It helps me to know how she acts and behaves in certain situations, which will ultimately reflect in the 3D animation.

Step 1: Rokoko – mocap, gloves, and suit: preparation work and motion data capturing

I used a Rokoko Smartsuit and its Smartgloves for motion capturing. The first reminder for you would be: Please get used to the suit! Because the suit is very tight, it will restrict your movement when performing. Don’t be afraid to stretch the costume to extend your body movement — you need to feel comfortable first!
Mocap animation provided me with an awesome block-out for movement; it gave me great timing and canvas to animate. After the mocap session was over, we prepared the data to retarget from Rokoko to iClone via 3DXChange. It’s easier if you have a plugin, but this is a good way to do it too.

Step 2: iClone – clean up, additive layer for the body, Acculips for mouth animation editing, and Facial Puppet for the rest of the face

Here we are, the moment of truth! I start to click around, seeing all the tools, I take a brief look at official documentation to get a much clearer vision. I begin placing a Metahuman dummy and ExPlus face in the scene with additional props that my character will interact with and setting up an additive layer to manipulate the mocap animation data and fix root motion. All the while using IK controls to get bigger moves and polishing it with FK controls later on. I parent the cup of coffee to the hand bone, and when it leaves it on the table I deactivate it. I fell in love with Reach Targets — ain’t gonna lie! For hand placement, I used ReachTargets so the hands stay on the table, and then deactivate it when the arm needs to be raised.

For fingers, Gestures help me to create main keys and then I polish them manually. After the body, I started with the face, and the first item is the mouth, using AccuLips to create the main layer of animation editing. Then I used iPhone LIVE FACE to get a good foundation for the rest of the face.

After the mouth, I did the eyes, eyebrows and nose. For the whole time, I had a second monitor with Unreal Engine and Live-Link turned on to exactly see what I’m getting, not relying solely on the iClone viewport.

Step 3: UE4 – Record 3D animation and ControlRig clean up and additive layer.

Unreal Engine

Once I finished with character animation in iClone, I transferred the animation data to Unreal via Live Link and Take Recorder. Disable the Reduce Keys option because we want to preserve all of that “juicy” animation (raw data). Also, I set up all my keyframes in Linear, because every frame is keyframed and you wouldn’t want auto-smooth or curves as they can create errors.

In Unreal, I import animation on our character, bake data to Control Rig and play with it a little bit. I spent some time here, just to clean up stuff we don’t need and put some more fine-tuning, especially for the face.

Step 4: Import the baked animation sequence from Unreal Engine and convert it to Alembic with a fixed table prop

Once done and satisfied with the animation editing, I bake ControlRig Animation Sequence to get an animation asset from it. With that, I export animation in FBX format. From there we import to Blender to convert it to an Alembic file which will be imported to Marvelous Designer.

Now, bake an animation asset from the control rig animation in Unreal Engine 4, and export it as FBX to Blender. Convert the animation asset to Alembic cache and send it to Marvelous Designer for cloth simulation.

Step 5: Marvelous Designer garment and simulation

The goal here was to test the pipeline and create small interactive cloth details. After importing the Alembic file, apply the motion to simulate the cloth animation.

Step 6: Transferring from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5

Our simulation is done and ready to be imported to Unreal. Once every setting is completed in Unreal, I continue to finish our scene and lighting. And after a couple of hours of adjustment, voila! That’s how I complete it, and now I’m ready to send all the animated files for full render.

Hope you enjoyed reading my tips and tricks!

Featured Story

Development Studio creates game on hit Reality TV Show: BIG BROTHER

Leave a comment
Dr. Finn Krewer | Head of Development, 9th Impact

Dr. Finn Krewer – Founder / Head of Dev at 9th Impact

Finn Krewer is a founder and head of development at 9th Impact with responsibility for the development of Big Brother: The Game. Finn has been developing games since he was 14 starting on Xbox 360 and has developed on consoles, desktops, web and mobile for over 15 years.

He has worked as technical lead on franchise projects including Biker Mice, Danger Mouse and now leads the multi-disciplinary team dedicated to Big Brother: The Game. Finn received his bachelor and doctorate of computer engineering from National University of Ireland, Galway for his work on FP7 funded AI project SI-Elegans and his work Neural Network FPGA design and ultra-wideband medical radar applications.

Game development studio 9th Impact uses Character Creator to generator over 1 million character variations for hit reality TV show game: Big Brother.

” Character Creator is a very fast workflow where conforming and skinning is immediate and without designer intervention except in some edge cases. The availability of a large clothing library for Character Creator also allows us to use and customize stock outfits.”

Dr. Finn Krewer | Head of Development, 9th Impact

Q: Hello Finn, and welcome to our Reallusion feature stories. Kindly introduce 9th Impact Studios, and the game development that your studios specializes.

9th Impact is a game development studio who partners with TV studios to make the official games of TV shows. We design games that fans of the TV show will love, so we don’t focus on any one particular genre of game. We are a small team but carry out game design, development, art production, testing and publishing in-house, which gives us tight co-ordination across disciplines and the ability to undertake complex and technically challenging projects.

Many of our games are cross-playable on different devices and we develop for mobile, PC, Facebook and Switch. Typically our games are localised into many languages. 9th Impact have created the official games of Biker Mice from Mars, Danger Mouse, Sunny Bunnies and Big Brother and have 2 new TV titles in development.

Q: Your team is currently working on Big Brother: The Game, based on the hit television series. Could you share with us the vision behind creating the game? How do the mechanics emulate what happens in the show, how do contestants participant in this experience?

Big Brother is the most watched TV show in history – 500 series have aired across 69 markets, producing over 28,000 episodes. So we knew that a large proportion of the global population would have watched Houseguests on TV competing in Big Brother.

The vision of the game was to create an official season of Big Brother where the TV audience could become the Big Brother Houseguests, using their mobile phone or PC as their portal into a virtual Big Brother House. The game is played in real-time, so the experience is slower than what you might expect from a mobile game, but becomes very immersive. A player is place in a House with 7 other real players. They get to know their Housemates and communicate via chat, voice messaging and private messaging. The latter is important for making secret alliances and plots!

Each day players compete in a mini-game to become Head of House. The Head of House chooses the nominees for eviction. There is Power of Veto competition that allows the winner to take one of the nominees “off the block” and force the Head of House to select another Housemate. At the end of the day, the Houseguests all vote on which nominee to evict.

The last remaining Houseguest is the winner of the House and continues to the next Tier. There are 7 Tiers in total and the winner of the Tier 7 House wins the grand prize. The prize fund increases with the number of players up to $1,000,000 with a guaranteed minimum of $50,000.

Q: With the Character Creator ecosystem, your team was able to create high quality avatars for the game. How were you characters originally made, and what made you decide to use Character Creator? What advantages does this application bring to game development studios?

Originally we would develop one base character that we would then create clothing for using tools like Marvellous Designer, Blender and Maya. The biggest effort in this path is the iterative conforming and skinning of clothing and accessories onto the base character.

In Reallusion Character Creator this is a very fast workflow where conforming and skinning is immediate and without designer intervention except in some edge cases. The ability to autohide elements of the base character which are hidden by clothing also decreases vert count and decreases clipping, in turn this decreases the need to conform and reskin multiple times.

The availability of a large clothing library for Character Creator also allows us to use and customize stock outfits to the Character Creator base character. Once conformed and skinned the clothing can then be directly used by the game engine.

Q: Season 2 of Big Brother will include over a million character variations. Typically what is your creation process like and how long does it take to create characters for the game?

The individual character variations are broken into slots which are available in the game such as Hair and Outfits. Each variation is prepared in Character Creator on a standard body which does not change. This allows the character to be built from multiple sections such as Hair, Outfit, Feet. Very basically the process includes selection of variation, application to the base character, conforming, skinning, skinning correction and pose testing in Character Creator.

The export pipeline then takes the required mesh and textures out to the engine. Finally, during engine import the Character Creator plugin is used to set up standard options and the UMA plugin is used to set up the options for the imported slot with all metadata and textures. Changing to Reallusion as our core character art toolset for season 2, reduced our production time by half and improved the quality of the output.

Q: When does Big Brother Season 2 begin, and how can the community join in on the fun?

Big Brother: The Game is available right now and players can join the competition by getting the game on App Store, Google Play, PC download and it is coming to Steam soon.

App Store:  http://bit.ly/bbtg-app

Google Play: http://bit.ly/bbtg-gp

PC (Windows): www.bigbrother.game/download

Steam:  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388050/Big_Brother_The_Game/

Follow 9th Impact:

Website:
https://9thimpact.com/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/9thimpact/

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/9thimpact

Learning

Videographer Makes Digital Walls, Virtual Homes Pop With NVIDIA Omniverse

Leave a comment

This article was written by NVIDIA, and featured on NVIDIA Blog.

Helsinki-based Pekka Varis showcases browse-and-buy possibilities of digital art gallery, using NVIDIA Studio drivers, Reallusion and Lightmap software.

Pekka Varis’s artistry has come a long way from his early days as a self-styled “punk activist” who spray painted during the “old school days of hip hop in Finland”.

More than 30 years later, he’s embracing the future of graphics as a videographer who uses NVIDIA Omniverse, a physically accurate 3D design collaboration and simulation platform, to create vibrant virtual worlds.

His freelance video production company Catchline translates complex technology services into attention-snagging, easily digestible video messages or commercials.

A recent project was an animated ad for Artio, an app that brings a global digital art gallery to individual smart devices.

In the commercial, a digital family searches for the perfect piece of art to enliven their new home, visualizing options on the walls in real time. Plus, the parents unpack boxes filled with detailed items, a child plays with block toys, the dog shakes its head and wags its tail — all in a physically accurate way, thanks to Omniverse.

“NVIDIA Omniverse has given me more artistic power and a totally new level of freedom. It’s a trusty playground where I can bring in quality content and focus on creating designs, visuals, variations — all that fun stuff.”

Pekka Varis

Vivifying the Videography

The Helsinki-based videographer takes viewers through his creative process in a three-part tutorial that details his recent commercial project, in which Artio helps the digital family make their blank walls pop.

Watch the first installment of the tutorial series on demand and below:

In subsequent episodes, Varis covers his animation process with Reallusion Character Creator:

as well as his steps for lighting and color correction in Omniverse:

His multi-app workflow — bringing characters to life with Reallusion software and perfecting the lighting with Lightmap HDR Light Studio — is made possible by Omniverse Connectors, plugins that connect third-party design apps with Omniverse, and NVIDIA Studio drivers.

He estimates a 90 percent savings in time and cost using Omniverse. “With Omniverse Connectors to Reallusion software like Character Creator and iClone, I can make commercial-quality characters quickly and easily, which I wouldn’t have even dreamed about before,” he said.

“Natasha,” made by Varis using Reallusion Character Creator and Omniverse Create.

His favorite Omniverse apps, he added, are Omniverse Create — a toolkit built on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description format that accelerates advanced scene composition — and Omniverse Machinima, with which he animates and manipulates characters inside of virtual worlds.

“I see myself using Omniverse with every single work commission I get moving forward. And I hope my video tutorials inspire viewers to try using these superb tools to create their own artwork.”

Pekka Varis

When not creating videos, Varis makes music as a drummer who loves metal, rock and hip hop — and spends time with his six-year-old daughter, his source of inspiration.

Related Links:

NVIDIA Blog: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/04/04/pekka-varis-omniverse-creator/

Featured Story

OrpheusVR | re:Naissance Opera brings live virtual performance with iClone

Leave a comment

OrpheusVR is an indie VR game prototype that I have been working on in conjunction with Debi Wong of re:Naissance Opera, Brian Lee Topp, and Youhan Guan. The project was conceived as a way to engage new virtual reality platforms with the ancient art form of opera. Live From The Underworld is a series of interactive live-stream performances featuring mythological avatars brought to life by real-time motion capture technology and live opera singers.

In 2018 a team of digital and opera artists came together to ask “what would opera look like if it were invented today?”. From that initial question OrpheusVR, an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure, virtual-reality opera was born. After completing the prototype in 2021, the OrpheusVR team started working in the digital live stream space, using iClone real-time animation software, iClone’s LIVE FACE mocap animation with Xsens body live motion capture technology and computer avatars from the OrpheusVR world to create live, interactive operatic performances that can be streamed from any device.

Debi Wong – Founding Artistic Director

Debi Wong

Debi Wong is an interdisciplinary performance artist that loves to weave together sound, text, movement, and technology to create contemporary stories. Her performances have been recognized as “unique and magical” (Rondo Classic) and “electric” (Schmopera).

As a soloist, Debi has performed with leading orchestras and ensembles across Europe and North America most notably with her lute and voice duo, White Sparrow at The Stockholm Early Music Festival, The Copenhagen Renaissance Music Festival, The BRQ Vantaa Festival (Helsinki), Garrick’s Temple To Shakespeare (UK) and the Venice Biennale. Debi is currently artistic director of re:Naissance Opera, a Vancouver-based indie opera company.

Debi is the founding artistic director of re:Naissance Opera in Vancouver, BC. With re:Naissance she has created #DidoAndAeneas (2014), an interactive, social-media opera; Acis & Galatea which was recognized by Vancouver Classical Music as one of the city’s best operas in 2017. In 2019, Debi spearheaded OrpheusVR, an interactive Virtual Reality Opera that was featured at the VIFF Immersed exhibit at the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival and in 2020 she co-created the award-winning podcast The Apocrypha Chronicles (Finalist, New York Festivals Radio Awards).

Debi is a graduate of Yale University (M.Mus) and The Yale Institute of Sacred Music (Diploma in Sacred Music), where she studied vocal performance and was the recipient of the 2010 Margot Fassler Award for outstanding performances in sacred music. She is currently a Doctoral candidate at The University of the Arts Helsinki.

Conrad Sly

Conrad is a 3D Artist with a deep passion for the medium and its many platforms. He specializes in real-time graphics and has been producing architectural visualization for virtual reality projects for 4 years, and has worked on several iterations of the VR Theatre for SIGGRAPH in 2018 and 2019. He has a deep interest in the crossroads of experimentation with emergent technologies such as VR and AR, and traditional theatrical and art contexts.

Conrad and Debi began collaborating in 2018 when Debi took an interest in the digital art and virtual reality games Conrad was creating at the Centre for Digital Media. Their initial conversations led to the 2020 prototype of OrpheusVR, an interactive, VR opera for Oculus Quest, and Live From The Underworld (2021), a new interactive live stream that uses mythological CG avatars, motion capture, and dancers and singers to innovate live opera and online performance.

Conrad Sly – Art Director

“It is pretty complicated, but at the same time we’ve entered into these partnerships with, for example, Reallusion Software, and they’ve really created these user-friendly tools that have really helped us as indie producers.”

Debi Wong – Founding Artistic Director

Q: Greetings Debi and Conrad, welcome to our Reallusion Feature Stories! Kindly introduce OrpheusVR and what your team is trying to achieve with LIVE from the Underworld.

OrpheusVR is a mythological world we have been creating over the past three years. Inside this world, we’re trying to explore in what ways real-time gaming technologies and live motion capture technologies can bring something new to the table of traditional opera performance.

Eurydice character render
Orpheus character render

We’ve developed a prototype of a choose-your-own-adventure VR opera and we are now experimenting with live streaming our operatic avatars to mobile and personal devices. We’ve been having a lot of fun exploring what kind of design aesthetics we can create that you might not see in a traditional theatre and how livestreaming to personal devices allows for interactivity and new kinds of engagements from audiences. 

Q: Please share with us how you were able to combine different performances to bring your avatars to life for a live experience. What are the biggest challenges in doing this in real time?

One of the biggest challenges of real-time motion capture has to do with capturing high quality data from live performances. We use the Xsens, which produces excellent results, but still has responsiveness limitations — but because everything is live, we don’t have the luxury of going back and cleaning anything up or doing any detailed work. Coupled with an indie setup for the face using a iPhone with iClone‘s LIVE FACE app, it starts to get pretty complicated in terms of how to manage the intake of data in a performant way for real-time graphics. 

Mireille Asselin – Soprano, Voice of Eurydice
Mireille Asselin – Facial animation with iPhone LIVE FACE app
Mireille Asselin – Facial motion capture with iPhone LIVE FACE app

This meant we had to “rehearse” our avatars in very specific ways – we had to discover what kinds of movements read well with the suit and which movements do not produce great real-time results. We went through a similar process with facial capture and we also learned that mounting head rigs on opera singers is extremely cumbersome and limiting for their techniques. 

Erika Mitsuhashi – Choreographer, Dancer
Erika Mitsuhashi – Motion capture connect to iClone
Erika Mitsuhashi – Motion capture for virtual performance

We decided to approach these challenges by compartmentalizing our motion capture and live performance art, dedicating certain workstations to specific tasks. We also started treating the avatars like puppets. We used dancer-choreographers to create vocabularies of movement for us and our singers did the same for facial gestures. In the end, we actually puppet our avatars with two performers: a dancer plays the body of character and an opera singer plays the face and voice. This lets us have a really diverse and expressive range of choreography and dynamic vocal acrobatics.

A team of directors, performers, mocap technicians, animators, sound engineers and more
A collection of interdisciplinary arts coming together for a live virtual performance

Q: As a producer, how has iClone and its LIVE FACE mocap animation helped your production ? What combination of tools and hardware did you use for the live actor performance?

We’re an indie studio working in real-time so the great thing about iClone is the ease of use for our team and its ability to bring in many different data streams (for our livestreams, we use an Xsens suit with Rokoko Smartgloves to capture the dancer’s body and finger data and the LIVE FACE app running on an iPhone 12 mini to capture facial expressions from our singer.). It produces great results with our custom Character Creator (CC3) avatars and we are able to produce really exciting live results.

Eurydice inside Character Creator
Orpheus inside Character Creator
Eurydice being motion captured inside iClone

LIVE FACE has also been a really powerful tool for us because it means any of our opera singers can take out their iPhones and capture data for us. We tested a few different options for facial capture because opera singers make pretty distinct facial animations when they sing and we discovered that calibrating facial movements and using LIVE FACE produced the most expressive real-time results for our singers. 

iClone’s LIVE FACE app for iPhone facial motion capture

Both iClone and LIVE FACE are an integral part of our livestream production pipeline and they have been second to none.  

Facial key editing inside of iClone animation software

 Q: After LIVE from the Underworld, what other projects can the community look forward to from re:Naissance Opera ?

We have a few dreams we are entertaining – we’re curious about streaming live in 360 and how our Reallusion tools can help us accomplish that in Unreal Engine. We are excited to go further with our live performances and audience interactions – we want our audiences to feel like they are participating in gameplay when they join our livestreams.

Live streaming performance from iClone to Unreal Engine via the LIVE LINK plugin

We are continuing to explore and discover in what ways these emerging and increasingly affordable technologies can infuse the world of opera with new life. 

Live streaming rendered inside of Unreal Engine
Orpheus VR live virtual performances with iClone and Unreal Engine

Follow OrpheusVR

Website:
https://reopera.ca/
https://orpheusvr.ca/

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCJ_d9ADrBdNfZsRtkwFvow

Product Release

Reallusion Releases ActorCore Library for NVIDIA Omniverse

Leave a comment

Integrating 3D Character and Mocap Animation Collection with NVIDIA’s Collaboration Platform and Asset Store to Simplify Crowd Generation for Business Visualization

Reallusion, the developer of Character Creator and iClone real-time animation software, has released new ActorCore Content for NVIDIA Omniverse™. ActorCore offers a large selection of AI-controllable 3D characters and mocap animations, significantly reducing workflow and increasing production efficiency for crowd rendering for use in AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) simulations and visualizations.

Already deployed in digital twin projects including NVIDIA drive simulations and BMW manufacturing visualizations, ActorCore’s 3D content has been quickly adopted by professional animators not only in archviz applications but in media entertainment, games, and films.

“As a leader in 3D character animation, Reallusion continues to provide the most intuitive tools and premium content for creators,” said Charles Chen, Reallusion CEO. “The iClone and Character Creator Connectors have added a complete character animation pipeline to Omniverse. In response to the huge demand for business visualization, particularly digital twin, the latest release of ActorCore Omniverse Content empowers business users with massive interactive assets for real-time crowd simulation on the virtual platform.”

Collaboration with Photorealistic Simulation

NVIDIA Omniverse™ is an easily extensible, open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation. Creators, designers, researchers, and engineers can connect major design tools, assets, and projects to collaborate and iterate in a shared virtual space. Additionally, developers and software providers can also build and sell Extensions, Apps, Connectors, and Microservices on Omniverse’s modular platform to expand its functionality.

NVIDIA Omniverse open platform made for AEC simulations (Image credit: Reallusion and Bentley Systems)

Animated 3D Crowd for Industrial Visualization 

A cloud-based 3D character and mocap motion platform; ActorCore allows users to quickly search, view, and download photorealistic 3D people for crowd scene usage. ActorCore also provides thousands of AAA quality, well-themed mocap animations. Combining ActorCore and Omniverse, individuals or design teams can create a large group of 3D crowds to animate, and deploy for AEC simulations and visualizations.

Drag and drop ActorCore 3D characters and animations directly to Omniverse (Image credit: Reallusion and Bentley Systems)

Interactive Lightweight Actors for Real-Time Rendering

In contrast to commonly used 3D models with no natural movements and expressions, ActorCore’s fully-rigged characters can perform lifelike facial and talking animations suitable for different camera ranges. PBR materials are merged for the best crowd rendering performance in real-time, and the actors are fully compatible with thousands of mocap motions available in ActorCore expansive libraries.

Rigged lightweight characters for real-time rendering (Image credit: Reallusion)
A large collection of 3D people designed for business simulations (Image credit: Reallusion)

AAA Production with Seamless Motion Transitions

To meet demands from different industries, ActorCore offers professionally produced motions in well-planned themes. A specially designed motion system ensures smooth transitions between primary and secondary stance modes, offering high flexibility for professional animation production and interactive game character controls. Illustrated videos provide different usage scenarios to choose from, including individual, group, or paired motions for maximum compatibility.

Thousands of mocap animations organized with different themes.(Image credit: Reallusion)
AAA production motion capture animations in ActorCore (Image credit: Reallusion)

Simplified Workflow and Optimized Asset Management

Users can directly export ActorCore’s rigged characters and motions to the USD (Universal Scene Description) format, and easily drag and drop the content to Omniverse apps to continue scene setup. With motion retargeting*, the same motion can be applied to characters with different body scales, optimizing ActorCore’s large content library and reducing effort for asset management.

*Motion retargeting will be supported by Omniverse Machinima version 2022.1.0 and after; it will also be supported by Omniverse Create. Please pay attention to NVIDIA’s official announcement.

Motion retargeting simplifies 3D animation workflow in Omniverse (Image credit: Reallusion)

Explore, Search, Interact – 3D Browser Experience

Exceptional performance on ActorCore gives users the best interactive 3D viewing experience on chosen characters and motions. Users can quickly search and explore thousands of contents through tags, categories, and keywords to find that ideal asset.

Quick search by keywords and interactive 3D preview on ActorCore (Image credit: Reallusion)

New Standard for 3D Crowd Simulation

ActorCore allows a variety of industries to access and deploy a large number of 3D people as task performers or citizens, defining the next generation of 3D character solutions for key industry simulation partners and technologies. For AEC, users can generate digital people to inhabit and interact with designs, buildings, and manufacturing sectors to simulate workforce and training.

Create industrial simulations with ActorCore in Omniverse (image credit: Reallusion, BMW Group, and NVIDIA)

Next-level Character Control with iClone

iClone’s easy facial and body controls allow full character performance with smooth bi-directional motion blending, FK/IK motion layer editing, and reach-target animation for advanced motion editing. Adjustable colors and materials allow for unlimited visual varieties while adding subtle facial performances and lifelike lip-sync animations for custom facial expressions. 

Advanced character control of ActorCore content with iClone (Image credit: Reallusion)

Free ActorCore USD Character and Motion Resource

Get a first-hand experience of ActorCore with free 3D character and motion assets. Visit

ActorCore website, or download Omniverse and access free USD sample content in Omniverse asset store.

Featured Story

Artificial Intelligence turns audio into realistic music performances with Character Creator

2 Comments

Using cutting-edge AI, Concert Creator analyzes audio recordings and turns them into hyper-realistic music performances and music lessons. The AI was trained on real professional musicians, to faithfully present accurate and human-like results.

Concert Creator uses AI and cutting-edge graphics to produce hyper-realistic music animations. Inside users find tools to customize all aspects of the AI-generated music; from camera angles, key colors, lighting effects, and more. 

The project is the brainchild of Fayez Salka; a medical doctor, software entrepreneur, 3D artist, and musician who is the co-founder of IMAGINE XR – a development studio that combines machine learning, computer vision, augmented reality, and real-time 3d graphics to deliver cutting edge experiences for handheld devices and XR headsets.

Concert Creator uses machine learning, with Character Creator avatars, to generate realistic musical performances using an audio input signal in the form of an MP3 or a MIDI.

Inside users can control different perspectives ranging from Top Camera, Chest Camera (mounted camera), Head Camera, Orbit Camera, and even a Director Camera for cinematic cuts that make it easy to use in high-quality productions.

This allows users to create everything from cinematic shorts, musical lessons, live concerts, and music animations straight from the downloadable software which you can currently use at no cost.

Follow more of Concert Creator Ai:
https://www.concertcreator.ai/