One of the great things about Character Creator 4 is its ability to reuse assets from previously built characters to make new characters. Since CC4 clothing is interchangeable with other CC4 characters it allows us to mix and match previously made or purchased assets for an entirely different character. This is a boon for filling scenes with extras and works for leading characters as well.

An example would be a Jack Lantern character I recently made while experimenting with ZBrush and the new CC4 head mesh wrapper in Headshot 2. This incredibly powerful plug-in now allows us to use either an image or a head mesh to create a compatible CC4 character and I took advantage of that to create the pumpkin head.

It became apparent after this that I could also make a Headless Horseman type of character for Halloween using two characters. One character for the body and one for the head. This has long been an experimental way to combine character parts when iClone was less powerful. As you can imagine, it requires the Head to be attached to the Neck of the second character. A proper attachment point is important for motion if you are mimicking one character.

THE FIRST CHARACTER – JACK LANTERN

The Jack Lantern character is one of my experimental characters that has evolved over the years. I use it for experimentation since it’s kind of a benchmark as the clothing and accessories are low poly, so they don’t tax the engine and will work for stylized or cartoon-type characters. It’s my go-to model for this sort of thing.

I used ZBrush to make the pumpkin head, but you can use a head mesh of your choice. ZBrush was easy because it let me use GoZ to jump back and forth between Character Creator 4 and ZBrush with no importing or exporting.

Hiding the Body

I removed the clothing from the character except for the Tie which was originally an accessory but I skinned it with the Transfer Skin Weights tool so I could use it as a cloth to hide the rest of the body. As an accessory, the Hide Body Mesh tool is not available.

Why the tie? Because it looks good and can be used with the head if needed. It became a convenient cloth to use for hiding the mesh that is available should the need arise.

Leave the upper part of the neck. Do not hide this or you will have to deal with the big slit in the bottom of the head mesh this leaves.  It is much easier to scale it down and radically shorten the neck (with sliders).  Manually input the negative numbers to go past the 100 percent stop if needed.

Now all I had to do was turn the opacity of the bowtie down to zero or use a black texture in the opacity channel to make the tie disappear. Out of sight, out of mind… until you need it.

Working with the Head only:

Scale the neck to very thin and very short to pull it up into the head mesh. Otherwise, you will have a large open spot where the neck attaches that goes across the bottom of the head or a neck sticking out from the head mesh.

Character Creator 4

Scaling Down the Remaining Neck

Scale down the circumference of the neck to very thin and short with the CC4 sliders. Input the numbers manually in the box to go past the one hundred percent limit. If done properly the neck should be up inside the head mesh leaving a small hole. You could use the Mesh tool to select the neck at the vertices level then scale down and/or push it up into the head mesh but this risks topology distortion in the mesh if you aren’t careful.  

OPTIONAL: Reshape the Back of the Head

If you have a 3D program capable of sculpting, then you can alter the skull-like pumpkin head mesh to look more like a pumpkin. If no other tool is available, then the original mesh will work just fine. You can always hide the skull shape with lighting, props, camera angle, or a cloth if it bothers you. I used the original skull shape in the final image render.

How to make the eyes black:

• Select eye parts with Digital Human Skin and change their shaders to PBR.
• Select all eye properties and load a solid black image in the diffuse channel (note: you will not see the final all-black result until you set the shader to PBR.

Character Creator 4

The Headless Body Character

My favorite and easiest part is making up the body of the character. I already had a premade character in mind. My budget character set, the Masked Swordsman. The clothing could fit the period in question, and it was already black. From reference pictures, it ticked off a lot of the important parts like boots, bell sleeves, tucked-in pants, and many other aspects of those times.

Plus, it had a mask that I could use just like I used the bowtie earlier. The mask would be my on/off switch for the body and lower neck. This was convenient just like the Jack Lantern bowtie.

I was going to use a muffler or scarf to cover the top of the character’s neck so the big hole wouldn’t show where the head is supposed to be.  While there are neck mufflers and scarves available, I decided to jump into Marvelous Designer and just throw a single piece of cloth over it and see how it draped. I was lucky as it did just what I needed it to do on the first attempt.

HIDING THE HEAD

Using the same method as I did earlier with the Pumpkinhead, I used the mask as the cloth that hides the head and upper neck. After this, I hid the mask with opacity which can be one with the slider or using a black image in the opacity channel.

Next, I added, skinned, and textured the shoulder wrap I made in Marvelous Designer to cover the open neck. If you don’t have any kind of wrap that works, then alter a muffler with the mesh tool as all I was trying to do was cover the bare flesh of the original character’s chest. You could also resort to texturing the character’s chest black since it wouldn’t affect the character any further.

Headless Horseman Pesade Image

I was working with two characters for the Horseman and another for the horse. To do the Pesade with the horse I loaded the Pesade motion from the Horse and Tack Theme Pack into the horse while using the corresponding Rider Pesade for the headless body. In this case, I can go a step further and add the Rider Pesade to the head, or I can use another motion, keyframing, or puppetry.

This makes three distinct characters that can be animated in a scene. The horse is the Farm Horse from the Horse and Tack Theme Pack and is actually an avatar instead of a prop. There is a lot more going on in this scene than it looks like at first glance.

The background is AI-generated so there are only the three characters and the background image plus the camera and a blue image overlay to cut down on the contrast between the background image and the 3D characters.

Versatile Setup

If you are using something like this for a video, then the head will talk, and it also has dynamic expressions since I activated the wrinkle system so it can have a fiery conversation or tell a Halloween tale with enthusiasm and passion.

As I mentioned earlier you can also link the two characters together but be careful to link to the proper neck bone on the body character for motions to work properly if you are mimicking the actual full character. In this scene the head is linked to the hand.

Also, keep in mind that the linked “character” is in reality two characters that will require two different actions for loading or creating motions. If you want the head to use the same motion as the body, then you will have to load that motion into each character.

It can and does get a bit confusing when you first work with a combined character like which character am I on, wait… I loaded that… oh, not for this character but it also creates a character with a lot of possibilities.

Using AccuRIG to Mask Unused Bones

On a closing note, and I tested this, you can run the characterized head character through AccuRIG, being sure to preserve the existing facial bone structure when asked, and then use the masking tool to completely mask out the body or head so no motion will be accepted. This does replace the characterized skeleton and I haven’t tested it enough to know of any pros and cons. It seems to work fine and completely immobilize the unused, hidden parts of the character.

Keep an Open Mind

One thing about this animation journey is to always think outside the box when it comes to problem-solving or innovation in animation. While this sounds like corporate speak it is true because as easy as animation is getting there is still not an easy button for everything. Don’t let the lack of a documented method keep you from experimenting to see what can be done.

MD McCallum – WarLord

Digital Artist MD “Mike” McCallum, aka WarLord, is a longtime iClone user. Having authored free tutorials for iClone in its early years and selected to write the iClone Beginners Guide from Packt Publishing in 2011, he was fortunate enough to meet and exchange tricks and tips with users from all over the world and loves to share this information with other users. He has authored hundreds of articles on iClone and digital art in general while reviewing some of the most popular software and hardware in the world. He has been published in many of the leading 3D online and print magazines while staying true to his biggest passion, 3D animation. For more information click here.

WarLord’s Workshop

BACKGROUND 

Kitbashing, putting something unique together from a kit or parts, has been around in various forms in movies and television for a long time. The current, digital version of kitbashing includes free and commercial kits of parts that look like something out of a Popular Mechanics magazine, or an industrial warehouse or garage. This depends on the type of kit you are looking for, but general science fiction-based kits are clamps, frames, pulleys, hydraulic cylinders, and similar industrial-style parts. 

Some people can just look at a pile of parts and see a robotic character or tool. This type of asset creation is usually done with apps like Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, and Cinema 4D but it can also be kitbashed together in Character Creator and then rigged for animation in iClone. 

BREAKING OUT THE KITBASH PARTS

A video tutorial that explains this written overview in detail is located at the bottom of this article. It is broken down into several parts with timestamps available in the description. There is also a 4X speed clip of the kitbashing process towards the end of the video.

One of the biggest problems facing a new kitbasher is the fact that a lot of these assets come placed in one FBX or OBJ file and at times one combined object. Some must be broken out at the vertex level while others, as in this case, just have to be detached to be used. They are also usually high poly and that is the case with the kit I’ll be using in today’s example of kitbashing a simple robot together. We’ll lower that count in CC4 later in the tutorial so as to not make the body-building segment any longer than it needs to be.  

Kitbashing might be a very misunderstood approach by those new to the nuts and bolts of character creation. In this example I build an entire robot body and rig it, also showing how to mask unused bones, but most of you will catch on quickly. There is also a 4X clip of the body build towards the end of the animation for those who just want to see the process. 

I try not to create video tutorials over twenty minutes which is about five minutes longer than my attention span when I’m looking for tutorials, but I shaped it in such a way that you don’t have to watch all of it. Once you see a few body parts put together you can skip around or view the 4X Speed Clip to get an idea of what is going on. If the concept baffles don’t be worried, you are not alone. 

TUTORIAL BREAKDOWN 

The tutorial is broken down into the following parts: 

Part 1 – Kitbashing the Body 

Part 2 – Optimizing the Body Parts 

Part 3 – Rigging with Character Creator 4 

Part 4 – Optional – 4X Speed Clip of Body Build  

GETTING STARTED 

I will drag and drop the kitbash assets, FBX in this case, into the CC4 workspace. Next will be to detach the actual meshes from the dummies and delete them to clean things up a bit. After that, I’ll jump right and start with the leg and how to alter it a bit if it does not fit your needs. 

ALTERING MESH AT VERTEX LEVEL 

With the Mesh tool, we can alter one particular piece to make it the lower leg. At the vertex level, I will grab all the mesh I can get sticking out from the flat surface of what we will use as a lower leg and foot. I push the pogo stick-looking bottom piece up into the “foot” mesh and scale it back, so it won’t poke through the outer mesh. 

After this, still at the vertex level, I will carefully grab what looks like the front of the lower foot and stretch it out to resemble a foot. Character Creator 4 gives us a good Mesh tool so let’s not just relegate it to minor shaping and flaw fixing.  

For this character, we won’t be altering any more mesh, but this demonstrates what can be done with the Mesh tool when needed. You control the scene assets, don’t let the scene assets control you or your vision of what you are producing unless it just can’t be helped otherwise.  

BUILDING THE LEG(S) AND PELVIS 

As you can see, I’m starting with one leg, mainly because I could easily visualize that leg from the pile of parts. I built the leg up with a “knee” and an “upper leg” attached the Upper Leg and Knee to the Lower leg, then scaled them to suit my needs. 

From there I added a simple, one-piece pelvis and scaled it. I then duplicated the “leg” and moved it into place. Later, when we optimize, I’ll delete that duplicated leg and an arm, so we don’t have to optimize them twice. I then will duplicate the optimized leg and arm and move it into position just as I did when I was building the body.  

This is where you will notice that when you duplicate the leg, the dial on the ankle will be on the same side of both legs. You might be able to push the dial into the mesh and scale it back with the mesh tool at the vertex level if you want to hide it but I just left it like it was.  

The LOWER, UPPER TORSO & ARMS 

The lower torso and upper torso are one-piece objects each making that a quick and easy attachment that only needed to be tweaked in scale to your personal preference. 

The arms were built out and duplicated then moved into place just as the legs were. They were attached to each other as one unit just like the legs. 

CENTERING AND SCALING UP 

This was a ZBrush-based kit, as many are, so it was at a much smaller scale than we work at in Character Creator or iClone. With this in mind, I built the body first and scaled up later when needed. You may choose to scale up the parts to start but I found this to be a simpler method as I can just scale the kitbashed body to match an iClone character which you can add to the scene then delete after scaling up. 

AccuRIG – THE EASIEST PART 

Since we will be using AccuRIG to skin the robot body, I decided to experiment a bit and try not to change any markers from their initial placement by the plug-in unless I had to. In the video, you will notice that I had to lower the top of the leg markers as they had settled on the pelvis which would make the pelvis twist with movement. I lowered these markers to just below the pelvis on the top of each leg. Everything else stayed in its original location. 

I then set the rig up for zero fingers and let it create the skeleton. After this I let Character Creator 4 AccuRIG do the skinning and had a very usable kitbashed animated robot body. 

WHY JUST THE BODY? 

To give you as the user an opportunity to finish out the character with a head and hands that you can make, kitbash, or get from SketchFab. A quick search for “robot head” and “robot hands” will yield some nice results. Take the finished character into AccuRIG again to rig the new parts.  

We can also rig partial robot characters like a walking set of legs or a functional upper body complete with a head. You could then link and unlink those characters for some unusual results. The same should hold true for a “Headless Horseman” type character.  

Now I want to stop working on this article and make a Headless Horseman but that is just how a good piece of software can creatively inspire you so I will push on to finish this up. 

SUMMARY 

There was a lot to pack into this tutorial, but kitbashing is something almost anyone should be able to do. At this level, it is not advanced by any means. The body could have been rigged better or shaped better in the shoulders for a more squared-off result, but the tutorial was already going to run long so I just moved on. Besides, that can be tweaked with Character Creator 4’s Proportion or Pose Offset tools. 

Kitbashing is like gluing together a model in your bedroom as a kid like some of us did back in the old pre-digital days. Except without the screaming, cursing, and general throwing of tantrums when things didn’t fit or look as good as the box did! For the rest of you who have no clue what “gluing together a model is” then you might consider kitbashing to be the equivalent for your generation. 

And of course, I would never suggest, over a 3D model, that any of us would scream, curse, or throw a tantrum today…  

…unless… maybe… we knew no one was around. 

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you next time! 

Kitbash Kit used in this tutorial: 

Hard Surface Kitbash Demo Kit: 

https://cubebrush.co/enriquebono/products/vgtqq/kitbash-hard-surface-demo-v1

MD McCallum – WarLord

Digital Artist MD “Mike” McCallum, aka WarLord, is a longtime iClone user. Having authored free tutorials for iClone in its early years and selected to write the iClone Beginners Guide from Packt Publishing in 2011, he was fortunate enough to meet and exchange tricks and tips with users from all over the world and loves to share this information with other users. He has authored hundreds of articles on iClone and digital art in general while reviewing some of the most popular software and hardware in the world. He has been published in many of the leading 3D online and print magazines while staying true to his biggest passion, 3D animation. For more information click here.

WARLORD’S WORKSHOP