Nagy Tamás Zsolt started out with the intention of creating fun and engaging animations for children, and ended up finding success when he told the stories of three animal friends travelling across Africa and encountering a series of unusual beasts. Nagy sat down with Reallusion to talk about his projects and how the process of creating a polished 2D animated series has been made easier thanks to implementing Cartoon Animator.
“Cartoon Animator has an easy to use user interface, so if you have the props, actors, motions and the effects for your project you will really enjoy the work. You do not need to spend hours or days with frame by frame animation. If you know what you want you can work fast with Cartoon Animator.”
We are an interactive software and entertainment development studio, located in the sunny Southeast Florida. Founded in 2005, we have been utilizing the Unreal Engine since its first generation in multiple projects and industries, ranging from video games, VR and interactive entertainment to business, aerospace and digital conference applications. Our work has been featured on international mainstream online and print press, we have received award nominations and recognition for various projects of ours throughout the years. We are passionate about our work, and fully dedicated to creating ground-breaking and innovative applications.
3D Character Modeling is one of these aspects in a game, in which you need to dedicate all your craft and attention to detail. Characters, especially playable or protagonists being featured in cut-scenes and close-ups, will inevitably be the center of attention for the player. And to make matters more complicated, characters (especially main ones) are displayed in multiple different settings, with different environmental conditions, such as lighting, VFX, etc. Add to that the fact that they are animated, and therefore any skinning errors or awkward deformations will instantly take away any levels of immersion or realism achieved in the game.
Whether you are an indie developer or a AAA developer, character modeling is something you will need to invest serious amounts of time and effort into. And in both cases, more often than not, you will find yourself facing milestone deadlines approaching faster than you wished for, therefore feeling pressed to deliver optimal results within a tight production timeline.
A character attracts the eye as the center of our attention, no matter how intricate and detailed the rest of the setting is.
That’s where I find Reallusion’s product lineup to be the best ally a developer can have.
At HELM Systems we have been using Character Creator and iClone for so many years, and they have been a critical component of our production pipeline. Our work is mainly consisted of projects with a photorealistic art direction, requiring us to give an extra attention to detail whether we are modelling and sculpting an environment mesh, a prop or a character model.
We like using a lot of dramatic lighting with high contrasts, and real-time, in-game cinematic cutscenes with plenty of close-up shots, just to give an extra bit of dramatic flair to our characters. We work exclusively with the Unreal Engine, and now with Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite & Lumen capabilities, realism and detail are more obtainable (and possibly required) than ever!
Screenshot from an upcoming, unannounced dark fantasy title of ours. High contrast, photorealistic artistic direction, and in the middle of it all, a character created with the Reallusion toolset.
As an indie development studio, we need to be more resourceful if we are to achieve quality that can compete with both AAA and indie gaming products in today’s oversaturated market. With Reallusion’s Character Creator 4 and iClone 8, combined with their plugins such as Unreal Live Link, LIVE FACEand more, we can put together, high quality, rigged, optimized and game-ready characters in times that are unthinkable of with traditional character modeling pipelines.
We typically start with a base mesh model, modify the plethora of anatomical variables and features Character Creator 4 offers, then we transfer the resulting base mesh over to ZBrush, from which point on, a frequent back-and-forth exchange between the two applications takes place, until we feel completely satisfied with the resulting character. With Character Creator having GoZ fully integrated within the app, these transfers are both easy and quick, eliminating the requirement of time-consuming exporting and importing, as well as eliminating any import/export settings and any possible incompatibilities these could produce.
Showcasing some anatomical finetuning for one of our characters.
Highlighting the symbiotic nature of Character Creator 4 with ZBrush.
In the meantime, Character Creator 4’s rendering capabilities are extremely qualitative, and the different lighting and atmosphere presets available within the application, in combination with the available character animations and poses, allow us to constantly test the character mesh under different lighting conditions, different poses that can show us any skinning issues early on, way before we get to the stage where we transfer the character mesh into a project.
Showcasing different poses and lighting conditions, allowing us an accurate and qualitative visualization, prior to transferring the character to Unreal Engine.
While having the completed mesh and the desired anatomical features in Character Creator 4, we keep working on clothing, armor and any other accessories or equipment we want to include in the character’s appearance. Importing said accessories and equipment in Character Creator 4, not only is easy, but we can also quickly attach it to the character, give it the correct parent bone, properly skin it by transferring the appropriate weights, adjust its scaling and conform its collision as to naturally fit with the character mesh.
Showcasing material customization within Character Creator 4, allowing us to easily experiment with different visual combinations for our characters.
While within Character Creator 4, we can also modify the imported accessory’s appearance, both in terms of geometry and material shaders, while once we have properly categorized it, we can store it in our custom library asset for future use on new characters. Good examples of such an accessory would be a pair of boots, a pair of gloves, a shirt, a helmet, or anything else really. In addition to all that, you can also apply different physics settings, if you are working on a cloth item for example.
Highlighting different clothing, armor and gear combination for our characters, allowing us to quickly experiment and expand our creativity.
Reallusion and Character Creator 4, also offer excellent tools to easily add and groom different hair, facial hair and eyebrows to your characters. You can control a number of variables, such as length, highlight color, base color and much more, as to achieve high quality, realistic and natural looking hair.
If you want to go the extra mile and add even more detail, Reallusion gives you full control of your character’s skin details, such as how strong you want the skin’s micronormals to be, whether you want to add important details such as veins, scars, dirt, sweat, wounds or freckles to your character, position them where you want them, have them be as pronounced or as subtle as you want them, scale them up or down, adjust their opacity values and so much more.
Showcasing different hair and facial setups for the same character. This content was rendered inside Unreal Engine.
And while it is easy to think Character Creator 4 is great for producing human models only, the truth is you can produce so much more than that. We rely on Character Creator 4 to build non-human NPCs and enemies, such as undead with corroded and asymmetrical anatomy, monsters with odd anatomical ratios, such as extra long, oversized arms, oddly shaped head features, and so much more.
Showcasing some wild, monstrous creations, created in Character Creator 4 for our upcoming game.
Lastly, but certainly not least, with Character Creator 4 we can quickly optimize our characters by utilizing optimization tools that offer a large array of optimization options, such as polygon reduction, multiple LODs, each with different settings, texture map sizes etc. bone hierarchy optimization and so much more. This not only saves us production time, but most important it provides us with the much-needed reassurance that the character models will not be the cause for framerate reductions or bad overall performance, while maintaining the highest possible quality.
The finished character rigged, animated and transferred into the game, in Unreal Engine 5.
Once we have completed our work in Character Creator 4, we use the program’s built-in functionality to transfer the character mesh over to iClone 8, where we will conduct some character animation work, as well as use the Unreal LiveLink plugin to transfer the character over to our projects.
In iClone 8 we can either use animations from our extensive animation library, which can also be enriched with excellent, high quality, mocap animations, available directly from Reallusion’s huge animation library, modify existing ones, or capture new ones. Especially when it comes to cinematic cutscenes with dialog scenes, we prefer capturing the performance within iClone 8, as it has several plugins that ensure compatibility with virtually every mainstream mocap animation toolset, be it Rokoko, Xsens, Faceware or Perception Neuron.
We have also incorporated Reallusion’s LIVE FACE app, which we have installed on an iPhone, which connects with iClone 8, and allows us to capture high quality, realistic, natural and convincing facial performances. Prior to capturing any facial movements, we can test, calibrate and finetune the sensitivity of capturing different facial features, such as eye movement, lip movement, head rotation and movement and more.
After capturing or applying an existing character animation (body or face) to our character, iClone 8 allows us to finetune it, both through a frame-by-frame timeline as well as through a multitude of tools that allow us to successfully perform numerous changes, such as bone rotations and movements, speeding up or slowing down a selected number of keyframes, and much much more.
An in-game cinematic cutscene that was rendered in Unreal Engine 4. We are currently working on a newer version in Unreal Engine 5, but still relying on Reallusion’s toolsets just as much.
At this point we either connect iClone 8 and our Unreal Engine 5 project through Unreal Live Link, which not only allow us to painlessly transfer our character from iClone to Unreal, but also with the correct material shader settings, thanks to Reallusion’s Auto Setup for Unreal. Once within Unreal, we can also use Unreal LIVE LINK plugin to play animations in iClone 8, which however are replicated within Unreal, allowing us to visualize each animation within the project, with different lighting conditions, prior to transferring these animations in the game.
If necessary, we can still fine-tune different elements within Unreal as well, such as any physics weights for different parts of the character, collision geometry and settings, material shader fine-tuning, etc, as well as use Unreal Engine’s built-in optimization tools.
An in-depth cutscene that was rendered in Unreal Engine 5.
Showcasing different characters in action, captured both in Unreal Engine 4 & 5. All characters were created and imported in-game with Character Creator 4 and iClone 8.
We have nothing but praise for Reallusion and its products. Thanks to Character Creator 4 and iClone 8, we have significantly reduced the time and effort it takes to create high quality, believable and detailed looking, fully animated character models. Our production pipeline has become significantly more efficient and effortless, allowing us to focus on the creative aspects of character creation, while still having complete control over the technical aspects of it, such as optimization and more. Most importantly this great suit of tools, is backed by an equally great and dedicated team, with top notch developer support, provided by a knowledgeable, professional yet caring team.
Renders of characters we built for a project. Built and rendered with Character Creator 4.
Reallusion’s latest release of iClone 8.2 and Character Creator 4.2 represents a significant breakthrough for 3D character artists everywhere. With a focus on providing a comprehensive solution, this release introduces an advanced Look-At Mechanism that lets your digital actors express realistic awareness of their surroundings in real-time simulations.
But that’s not all. The new Dynamic Wrinkle System takes character animation to new heights, injecting photo-realistic facial features and expressions into your CC characters. This system breathes life into lip-syncs and emotive performances, adding a level of detail that will set your characters apart.
iClone 8.2 is more than just a visual upgrade; it takes software performance to the next level with Progressive Texture Loading. Animators can now begin editing animations immediately, without having to wait for all the heavy textures and materials to load. This innovative feature not only accelerates the LiveLink pipeline between iClone and Unreal or Omniverse but also sets the stage for concurrent GPU rendering, delivering faster, smoother results than ever before.
As if that weren’t enough, the Auto Setup plugin for Unreal, Blender, and Unity can now import and utilize realistic wrinkle animations from iClone, giving your characters an unprecedented level of detail and realism.
Whether you’re working on a big-budget project or just starting out, iClone 8.2 provides a powerful suite of tools that will take your animations to the next level. With cutting-edge features like progressive texture loading and Auto Setup for wrinkle animations, you’ll be able to work faster and more efficiently than ever before.
Simulate natural awareness of an object, or maintain eye contact with the camera.
Eyelids and eyebrows naturally move with the eyeballs when the character is looking around. Automatic asymmetry helps to overcome the uncanny valley.
Subtle wrinkles are triggered around the eyes and forehead for all types of facial expressions like frowns and smirks.
Eye-Neck-Torso Weight
Adjustable look-at constraint ratio between the eyes, neck, and torso can alter the actor’s mannerism.
Enhanced morph shapes for head up and down movements.
Keyable Engagement Levels
Choose between different engagement levels from quick glances to intense gazes.
Recruit the correct body parts to sell the motion, from isolated eye movements to coordination with the rest of the body.
Set keys to alternate the eye, neck, and torso engagement ranges.
2. Exquisite Expressions with Dynamic Wrinkles – Know More
The Wrinkle System is highly customizable and can simulate exceptional facial expression details in real-time. It can upgrade your CC characters and redefine the realism of their talking facial features by triggering dynamic wrinkles through any facial movement.
Custom Wrinkle Settings
Expression Wrinkles are divided into 13 common facial regions that govern the wrinkle lines, crow’s feet, smile lines, and more.
Intensify or neutralize any target region of the face, down to the individual channel map like Normals, AO, and Redness.
Alter the Rate of Appearance to delay or preempt the micro-movements of the fasciae while the expression-driven muscles are flexed.
Reactive Expression Wrinkles
Upon activation, the expression wrinkles are synchronized with the facial movements that are triggered by a range of animation tools in iClone, including Face Key Editor, Face Puppet, Look-at Constraints, as well as features such as Lip-sync and Facial Mocap.
Works with Any CC Character
General Wrinkles are compatible with SkinGen and can be applied to any CC3+ character to naturally blend with different skin tones.
The CC Wrinkle shader supports high-res multi-texture blending without compromising real-time performance.
Unreal LiveLink – Dynamic Wrinkles
Look-at constraints can be driven by a camera or animated objects, simulating different levels of alertness and engagement.
Dynamic Wrinkles add emotive details to digital human performances and enrich the expressions of stylized characters.
iClone 8.2 takes software performance to the next level with progressive texture loading. Animators can now begin editing animations immediately, without having to wait for all the heavy textures and materials to load. This innovative feature not only accelerates the LiveLink pipeline between iClone and Unreal or Omniverse, but also sets the stage for concurrent GPU rendering, delivering faster, smoother results than ever before.
Instant Asset Loading
Get to work right away without waiting. Textures can make up more than 80% of the asset file size. With an adjustable CPU ratio, users can load textures in the background while getting started on scene arrangement and animation. Watch Video >
On-Demand Texture Loading
When “Manual Loading” is enabled, users can press the Load Textures icon overlaid on the viewport to stream in the texture files. The loading speed is determined by your preference settings for the GPU ratio. Watch Video >
Save Untextured Scenes
Enjoy faster performance by working texture-less — and since the textures are never discarded, choose to load them at anytime. Keep the scene untextured when you save and have the texture references stored with the file. Watch Video >
Faster Live Link & Rendering
Reserve GPU Memory for Renderer & Live Link
iClone is commonly used by studios in tandem with Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, or Omniverse for final rendering. Progressive and deferred texture loading can keep the iClone scene light-weight while freeing precious system resources for GPU-intensive rendering.
Our unique Progressive/Deferred Texture Loading technology allows users to Live Link animations from iClone without taxing the system resources. Keeping the scene texture-less in iClone frees up graphics memory that can be dedicated to rendering in Unreal Engine.
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.
▪ 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.
>> 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.
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.
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
It’s Easier to Understand
It’s Fun to Watch
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?
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.
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 BackI 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 Viconoptical 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.
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 TextureSettings. (Fig 3.0)
Fig 3.0
Here, you see the Shader Type is already on PBR. We want to change it to ReflectionSurface as shown in Fig 4.0 below.
Fig 4.0
So once you click on ReflectionSurface, 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 Diffusecolor, Reflectionstrength, Reflectionblur 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 ReflectionSurface. Once you click on it you should see a ReflectionSurface in the scene right there. (Fig 10.0)
Fig 10.0
Next, resize the ReflectionSurface 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 reflectivesurface 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 ShaderType under texturesetting.Click on PBR then go to reflectionsurface 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 ModifyPanel and under Shadersettings I played with the ReflectionStrength. (Fig 17.0)
Fig 17.0
Just as mentioned, you can increase or reduce the ReflectionStrength 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 Reflectionblur 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 DiffuseColor 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.
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 AnimatorFacebook 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.
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!
