CrazyTalk Animator 3 (CTA3) demystifies animation for anyone with new character design, scene building, and character motion tools to create studio-level 2D animation results on PC and Mac. Open the door to 2D animation for beginners and quicken the process for pros with innovative character templates, valuable motion libraries, a powerful 2D bone rig editor, face puppeteering, and audio lip-syncing tools to give users unparalleled control when animating 2D talking characters for videos, web, games, apps, and presentations.
VIDEO:CrazyTalk Animator 3 – The One-for-All 2D Animation Software
In the world of animation, there are dozens of sources to choose from when looking to acquire professional, high-poly 3D characters to render stills and animation.
One source is Daz 3D, a 3D content and software company that specializes in providing rigged 3D human models, associated accessory content, and software. Of course, the real power behind Daz 3D is their online 3D content marketplace that has over 16,000 items. These include their Daz Genesis characters, which are the first generation of Daz 3D’s technology for creating human 3D figures.
Jason is a 3D artist who produces digital content such as animated graphics for television and video projections for musical theater companies. He also produces workshops for kids specializing in shooting, editing, and greenscreen.
Software used: Reallusion iClone 6.5 for Windows, Cyberlink PowerDirector for Windows, Fulldive VR player for Android, GoPro VR player for Windows
INTRODUCTION
After 100 years of cinema, we are transitioning from watching a film to being present inside one. Very exciting times indeed! This cognitive leap from 2D to 360VR is so drastic that we must now start calling these new films “experiences” and we must also consider the viewer’s role early in the production process.
Creating immersive 360-degree videos requires a different sense of timing and spatial positioning. This tutorial will focus only on the challenges of creating content for viewing with VR goggles, such as those based on the Google Cardboard standard. (Note: When this tutorial refers to the “viewer”, it means the person who is wearing the goggles and watching your content.)
Reallusion is back after attending this year’s Comic Con event at the Javits Center in New York city. The convention projected to have over 167,000 guests, making it the largest Comic Con event up to date!
New York Comic Con is the East Coast’s biggest and most exciting popular culture convention. The show hosted the latest and greatest in comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys, movies, and television. Along with Panels and Autograph Sessions that gave Fans a chance to interact with their favorite Creators. The event’s screening rooms featured sneak peeks at films and television shows months before they hit big and small screens.
After two months of intensive work and sharing, Reallusion and Polycount announce that the iClone 2016 3D Character Design Contest has finally come to an end with dozens of incredible character entries that have helped rewrite the 3D character design rules.
3D character design has proven to be one of the most challenging tasks for 3D artists, as creating fully animatable 3D characters often requires a multidisciplinary team. To address this Reallusion provided contestants with the iClone Character Creator tool, one of the most versatile 3D character solutions that has changed the character design workflow through a creation system that includes fast avatar slider morphing, free-to-dress capabilities, fully rigged face and body animation, along with multiple accessory usage for unlimited possibilities in one free, easy to use application.
Through great efforts Reallusion is honored to have joined forces with some of the best partners in the industry, allowing us to put forward amazing 3D design synergies to all would-be participants through generous prizes offered by an all-star list of contest sponsors. So let’s give a round of applause to all the winners and contestants, of the iClone 2016 3D Character Design Contest!
Hosted by real-time animation industry pioneer – Reallusion, the 2016 3D Character Design Contest encourages 3D artists from the world to discover and exploit one of the most versatile 3D character creation solutions that the industry has ever seen. Best of all is that Reallusion is currently giving away this character creation system to all would-be participants for the reminder of the event. At the moment, the contest is in its last call as there are only a couple of weeks to win over $10,000 in prizes.
New iClone 6.5 Adds Real-time 3D Animation for VR Experiences
New VR-ready content creation comes to iClone 6.5 with 360 video for 3D animation. Go beyond standard video rendering and transform any camera inside iClone 3D scenes into a full 360 camera. iClone 6.5 static or animated cameras have 360 Panoramic mode enabling video renders that upload and share online via YouTube or Facebook. VR headset owners from HTC Vive, Google Cardboard, Gear VR, Oculus Rift and more can create VR-ready content for 360 Video using iClone and their head-mounted display of choice to create and view content quickly and with no coding required. The iClone 6.5 VR-ready features include the ability to import custom 3D content or use one of the thousands of available 3D content packs from the Reallusion content store. iClone 6.5 is a complete real-time environment to create and animate 3D characters, props, cameras, visual effects and now fully immersive 360 videos.
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User-Generated VR Content and Experiences
iClone VR-Ready 3D Characters and Animation for Unity and Unreal VR
The iClone 6.5 animation pipeline, 3DXchange 6.5 and Character Creator 1.5 all combine for a trio of tools for VR content creators. Quick character creation and animation with iClone will provide fast content creation for the people or characters needed to inhabit VR environments as main characters with lip sync and animation or simply as extras to fill the 3D scene with an ambient crowd. The iClone content is VR-ready for game engines like Unity and Unreal. Create characters in iClone Character Creator to morph a custom character for a game or movie and animate the characters in iClone to add voice, mocap or animation. The iClone pipeline delivers an FBX file with character and animation ready for use in a 3D VR game or simulation.
Professional 3D Artist Julian Santiago shows how to create a stylized character using Reallusion’s Character Creator and iClone
Introduction
With the release of Character Creator 1.5, artists will now have the ability to create custom clothing for their characters that will automatically conform to any custom-made character inside Character Creator. Characters with custom clothes can then be brought into iClone to be posed or animated. This tutorial will show you the process of creating a stylized character with custom clothing. We will be using Reallusion’s Character Creator, 3DXchange Pro, and iClone as well as some external 3D programs to model, texture, and bind our character and clothes. In this case, we will be using Blender, ZBrush, and Substance painter, though most 3D applications will work. All that is required is that the main 3D program can rig export to FBX.
My name is Garry Pye and since 2014 I’ve been a content developer for Reallusion. In that time my main focus has been on the creation of 2D assets for CrazyTalk Animator 2, including hand drawn cartoon characters, props, and scenes. Then I started to wonder if my 2D cartoons would work in Reallusion’s 3D software like CrazyTalk 8(CT8) and iClone 6. And so began the idea behind “Garry Pye’s Comic Face Pack”. Ten original hands sketched cartoon faces , fully rigged as 3D head models for use in CrazyTalk 8.
The limitless possibilities for these faces really become apparent when you apply them to the base models in Character Creator, where you can use the morph sliders to create an infinite number of characters from each face. Your custom characters can then be exported to iClone 6 for lighting, posing and rendering and are also ready for animation. In this tutorial, however, I’ll take you through the process and show you how I use the comic faces to create 3D characters for finished artwork stills.
This article is not so much a technical guide as a behind the scenes look at the way I create my art. As this is a creative process, there are certainly other ways to do this, this is just my way. It works for me. Take the tips and advice you can from this tutorial and apply your own ideas and ways of doing things.