How Reallusion’s iClone and Character Creator helped Previs” Dark Resurrection – Keepers of the Force”
Special thanks to Ian Failes – visual effects / animation journalist / owner of vfx publication Befores & Afters for wrapping up the story!
Star Wars-inspired Dark Resurrection fan film – a series that has been watched over a million times on YouTube, that used Reallusion’s iClone and Character Creator for previs.
Director Angelo Licata’s Dark Resurrection – Keepers of the Force:
With a reduced budget, but high ambitions for this project – Angelo decided to use iClone to build a CG version of the characters which were made both in Daz3D and Character Creator.
“Working with iClone allowed us to discard all unnecessary shots, thus defining a much smaller list of shots than the initial shooting list. It also made communication with all departments extremely simple and made actors understand the necessary actions during filming. The crew was also excited to watch the animatic, and this motivated every element of the team enormously.”
— Angelo Licata
The iClone previs:
“In one morning I understood the basics of animation in iClone and in the evening I had an approximate but extremely functional animatic. Although the environment was done with simple volumes, the movements and action mirrored exactly what I had in mind. Since then I always have a preview of the filming with iClone, especially if there were special effects or elaborate camera movements. It is an exceptional tool that allows me to solve many problems before going on set.”
Experienced Video Director/Animator – Benny Dee shares a detailed tutorial on how to customize characters for realtime animation in iClone 7.
Hello in this iClone tutorial I will show you how to create
your custom characters for real time animation. This tutorial is part of the Master
Class series to help iClone users improve and level up their creative skills.
The Headshot plug-in for Reallusion’s Character Creator allows users to generate 3d animated digital humans from one photo. You can download a free trial here, and learn how to create a classic movie character like Gollum without any 3d skills.
To find out more about the process, we invited Peter Alexander to walk us through it. Alexander is a digital freelancer specialized in illustration, graphic design, and 3d modeling. He develops content assets for various digital marketplaces.
Peter Alexander
In this video and text below, Alexander explains how to create a fantasy movie character by using Headshot for Character Creator 3. He touches on how to choose a quality reference, overcome an open-mouthed reference image, choose appropriate masking features, and block proportions for the head and body using the “bake” feature. Alexander also covers the Mesh Editor tool, which can be used for a variety of purposes, and in this article will be used to customize a hair asset.
Discover how to use iClone for compositing, mixing real footage, lights, particles and CGI.
In addition to making animations, iClone can be used to facilitate the compositing process by enabling you to add backgrounds or billboards, textured with real footage, to your 3D models. The tool reduces the number of meshes needed to create complex sets, while at the same time ensuring the scene is highly realistic.
See how the process works in the video below, or read on for a full explanation and some expert tips for taking advantage of this feature in your own projects. All these methods are surprisingly straightforward and flexible, allowing you to make adjustments on the fly.
November 20th in Brisbane – Six teams gathered in Australia to compete in SIGGRAPH Asia’s Real-Time Live! Reallusion was invited as a guest to showcase its latest Headshot technology for Character Creator 3.
The show featured the host and Real-Time Live! chair; Mike Seymour – editor of FXguide, introducing each team in the competition from Australia, Japan, China and the USA. Reallusion’s John Martin presented Character Creator Headshot with a demo that created a digital human from a photo and added the character to a virtual production previs shot in iClone.
Cartoon Animator 4 connects PSD tools with Wacom tablets for a roundtrip workflow.
Cartoon Animator (CTA) is recognised among the easiest 2D animation software to use. Version 4 connects the tool with users of all the mainstream PSD tools, from Adobe Photoshop to Krita, Affinity, Clip Studio and Photopea. Creatives who use these PSD tools can now swiftly turn their creative concepts into animations, using their original processes, via Cartoon Animator.
Create, animate and automate Unreal Engine characters with the Reallusion Digital Human pipeline. See how master character artist Hossein Diba uses Character Creator to generate a real-time animatable digital human for live performance.
iClone makes it easy to create HUD animation for realistic digital humans.
(Image credit: Leo Lucien-Bay)
iClone is a powerful real-time animation tool that aims to remove the painful and repetitive aspects from the animation process, and simplify the difficult job of creating realistic digital humans. Like the game engines that gave rise to Machinima, iClone has always focused on being real-time, making it less complex than the more conventional animation tools.
The recent 7.7 update saw the introduction of the Digital Human Shader, which added sub surface scattering, as well as improving the materials on offer, to give skin, teeth, eyes, and hair a much more realistic appearance. It also brought with it Headshot, an AI-based generator that enables users to create character heads from photos of real people.
With more realistic looking characters comes the need for more convincing animation. There are few things more off-putting than a 3D character model that looks realistic, only to become awkward and unnatural when it comes to open its mouth.
For that reason, this article will focus on facial animation. We’ll take a look at some of the tools and techniques that you can use in iClone to help you not only get your animations looking good, but do so relatively quickly. Follow along in the video below, or read on for a written version.
If you’d like to render this video in Unreal Engine make sure you check out the bonus tip at the end, which shows you how to use the Live Link plugin.
Transfer, Animate & Auto-setup Digital Humans for Unreal
Reallusion announced that the iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in (previously $1,490) is now free for developers with an annual revenue of $100K USD or less. Originally created as a premium extension, the iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in enables studios and indies to streamline workflows by allowing virtual production and game development professionals the freedom to focus on rapid creativity, collaboration, and iteration.
“We are thrilled to provide emerging creators access to powerful tools for digital human creation and animation by making the iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in available for free,” said Charles Chen, Reallusion CEO. “Reallusion is proud to connect our technology to Unreal Engine to deliver an unrivaled real-time solution for indie studios and creators everywhere.”
iClone Unreal Live Link Free for indies video:
Providing a simplified path for content to enter Unreal Engine, the iClone Unreal Live Link plug-in allows for the direct transfer of assets between iClone and Unreal Engine without the need for FBX export. iClone characters, lights, and camera controls can be directly operated to quickly preview and animate scenes in Unreal RTX. Additionally, the Character Auto Setup automatically arranges digital human shaders, Blueprints, and everything necessary for real-time production inside Unreal Engine.
The iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in bridges iClone’s fully-rigged characters, motion files, and vast content libraries, with motion editing and retargeting tools into Unreal Engine for seamless interoperability with skeleton meshes and Marketplace animations.
Pricing and Availability
The iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in will be available free of charge for developers with annual revenue of less than $100,000 USD.
The new indie pricing policy for the iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in will take effect on January 17th, 2020
Qualifying users who previously purchased the iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in will receive an equivalent reimbursement in DA points for the Reallusion Software Stores, Content Stores, and Marketplace.
The Indie program for the iClone Unreal Live Link plug-in requires indies to own iClone 7 and 3DXchange 7 Pipeline.
See preferred pricing options for iClone 7 and 3DXchange 7 Pipeline
iClone’s digital human pipeline fully supports industry mocap hardware like; Xsens, Perception Neuron, Faceware, iPhone, Rokoko, OptiTrack, Leap Motion, Qualisys, and more.
Unreal Live Link, 4.24 and further updates
Reallusion simultaneously launched the free plugin and updated the iClone Unreal Live Link Plug-in for UE 4.24, and will continue development to match all future Unreal Engine updates.
The roadmap will include transferring its digital human shader, iClone props, non-human skin-bone characters, and soft cloth physics (based on the same NVIDIA PhysX architecture).
About iClone
iClone is a real-time 3D animation and rendering software with a production environment that blends character animation, scene design and cinematic storytelling by fast tracking traditional industry pipelines in the spirit of WYSIWYG.
About Reallusion
Reallusion Inc. is a 2D and 3D animation software and content developer that specializes in the development of real time cinematic animation, virtual production, and motion capture tools that connect professional 3D animation technologies with pro character animation, facial and body mocap, and voice lip sync solutions for real-time filmmaking and previsualization and production.
About Unreal Engine
Epic Games’ Unreal Engine technology brings high-quality games to PC, console, mobile, AR, and VR platforms. Creators also use Unreal for photorealistic visualization, interactive product design, film, virtual production, mixed reality TV broadcast and animated entertainment. Follow @UnrealEngine and download Unreal for free at unrealengine.com.
