Reallusion Releases 2D Motion LIVE for Cartoon Animator
Reallusion announces the release of Cartoon Animator 4.2 and 2D Motion LIVE, the first complete 2D animation system for live performance and motion capture. 2D Motion Live, a new plugin for Cartoon Animator is a unique 2D mocap solution that connects industry-leading motion capture devices to control characters and puppets inside Cartoon Animator for a total face, body and hand solution. 2D Motion Live brings characters to the stage as live performances with a fast production workflow for character setup, motion capture and editing.
Abhi has always been driven by the desire to create cutting edge visual stories. He has experience writing for the stage and television and has also written and directed multiple short films. After trying his first virtual reality experience Abhi dedicated himself to creating VR content that would instil the same feeling of awe and wonder in audiences that he felt when he first tried VR. His latest project is The PhoenIX.
The PhoenIX is a CG cutting edge VR series with a complex narrative, truly cinematic 360 directing and innovative storytelling methods that fully leverage the medium of narrative VR. Like all good science fiction it not only entertains but holds up a mirror to society and asks deeper questions such as who we are as a race and where are we headed. Ultimately, the series is about unity, about how we need to come together to survive rather than stand apart.
The small and passionate team at Warrior9 VR created the series in VR, where they employed tools like Character Creator 3, iClone, Perception Neuron and Unreal Engine to not only provide the most visceral experience audiences could ever have but to also showcase the narrative potential of this brand new medium. This is science fiction like you have never seen before.
“With a team of 6 we were able to create high quality animated VR content and part of this is thanks to tools like Character Creator. “
Wired Magazine recently published a story where writer, Tristan Cross explored how he could recreate his local pub in VR to break away from the confines of quarantine. The big challenge was to create 3D characters for his VR project that resembled his friends in order to create a virtual evening out at the pub together. Here is a brief recap of the article. For the full article: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/i-made-my-local-pub-in-vr
The journey into reproducing Tristan’s local London pub – SKEHAN’S, begins with a discussion about the nature of social experiences in virtual reality and goes directly into the creation of the 3D model using Blender. Tristan’s 3D model of Skehan’s is generated using blueprints provided by the owner of the bar. The project was developed for Unreal Engine and makes use of the Quixel Megascan library for the texturing of Skehans.
During this period of quarantine and lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, parents need fun and educational activities to keep their kids engaged and entertained more than ever.
Sowl Studios, a startup art and animation studio based in Alexandria, Virginia, is harnessing the power of Reallusion’s iClone software to create animated app content for African parents in the diaspora. The aim is to help their kids learn more about their cultural heritage and languages, through animation and storytelling. The studio is run by a husband and wife team, Solomon W. Jagwe and Kim Jagwe (COO), who are currently working from home.
They are combining motion capture and hand-keyed animation to bring their stories to life, relying on powerful and seamless plugins in iClone, like Motion Live, Live Face, Perception Neuron, Faceware, and the iPhone X profile.
Garry Pye has been drawing cartoons all his life. Despite no formal artistic education, he went from hobbyist to full-time animator after discovering Reallusion and their 2D animation software six years ago.
I have been drawing cartoons ever since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I am a self-taught artist, illustrator and animator who specialises in creating characters, backgrounds and prop content. I started working as a content developer in my spare time, and this has turned into a full-time business. I now have over 1,400 assets available online, which I sell to animators around the world.
From the age of 17, I worked with my father in our family trophy store – for 31 years, in fact. But my true passion was drawing cartoons. And I dreamed of one day being able to do that as my full time job.
In this article, I’m going to share with you how Cartoon Animator (formally CrazyTalk Animator) helped me to jump from working in that trophy store to creating a profit-making, successful full-time online business.
Reallusion follows up the success of Headshot, the game changer for rapid digital double character creation AI, with a look at the forthcoming release of SkinGen. The Digital Human workflow evolves in this sneak peek of SkinGen, a new plugin for Character Creator and the next component of the Reallusion digital human creation system.
We’re Lucas and Carol-Anne. We’re voice actors, musicians, and visual artists, with a passion for compelling narrative video games.
Our claim to 15 minutes of fame was doing voice work for anime like Gundam cartoons, some versions of Dragonball and Lucas was Zero in the Mega Man X franchise in the early 2000’s.
Our powers combined, we’re the Hermit Collective! And we’re making Lampblack. Lampblack is a third person narrative adventure with behavioural, cerebral, and philosophical puzzles. It’s a game that demands mindful exploration, attention to details, and an astute understanding of behavior. All of this is packaged in a beautiful and surreal world.
And that’s where Reallusion came in. The characters are very important in a story and game such as this, and we needed to have stunning characters brought to life in a believable way that could elicit an emotional response from our audience. And that’s what we’ve got! So that’s us! Thanks for being here! We love you.
With Character Creator 3 we cannot only flesh out our core cast, but we can create dozens if not hundreds of iterated characters for an entire village or city. This enables us to make an entire world in an attractive amount of time. Before, we’ve spent over a year making one three minute hand drawn animation. Now, we can accomplish in days what previously took years.
Indies Rise with Real-time Digital Human Revolution
Reallusion, developers of Character Creator and iClone, proudly announce the honor of an Epic MegaGrant award from Epic Games. Reallusion iClone is used by independent developers and Unreal Engine users to create, animate and deploy characters for games, films and virtual production. The prestigious MegaGrant is a massive accolade for iClone as it demonstrates the shared interest Reallusion and Epic have with the independent development community. Thanks to Epic MegaGrants, Reallusion now provides a complete character creation and animation pipeline to Unreal Engine for indies and studios of every size to realize digital humans.
The fusion of iClone with Unreal Engine produces a unique combination of features that extend the power of iClone tools directly into UE4. Indie developers, game studios and all users of Unreal Engine can now experience the power of these essential iClone features; character generation with Character Creator and Headshot, a massive motion library with UE4 – compatible motions, mocap full-body, face and hands with a myriad of devices, Face/Body animation editing, all of which can be sent to Unreal Engine with One-click transfer and Auto Setup.
A CG generalist, specializing in character animation from Vancouver film school, Uzair has 20 years of experience setting up unique pipelines. He has worked on a range of prominent projects like Discovery next world, Toyota Scion Deviants, UPS Cardboard World and Eidos Tomb Raider Legends. Uzair setup Unicorn Black Studios to produce the Emmy nominated Series – Burka Avenger, and as the Series Director and Head of Production.
Uzair is the founder of 3rd World Studios, a 3D animation studio in Islamabad, Pakistan makers of ‘Allahyar and the Legend of Markhor‘, the first animated film made using Unreal Engine. His work has received multiple international awards like the Peabody award for broadcast excellence, Gender Equality award, Monolith award for technology, Rising Star for Animation, amongst others.
3rd World Studios created a COVID-19 public service announcement in record time by using iClone 7 (animation/editing/face mocap), Unreal Engine 4 (rendering), Xsens (body mocap), and Manus (hand mocap).
“With keyframing, an artist can produce anywhere from three to six seconds of finished animation per day. This iClone Unreal setup took 3rd World Studios approximately 3 to 4 hours to produce the entire 45 seconds of PSA animation”
