Reallusion's Character Creator 3

Development Character & Animation
1

Hi guys, i want to share my experience with the community about Reallusion’s Character Creator tool. Most people probably know iClone from RL, but their character creator tool got a major push with AAA content packs last summer, and since then RL plans to publish Character Creator 3 as a standalone tool. You can download the trial to test out CC2 Character Creator - Fast Create Realistic and Stylized Characters

The tool is very simple, but does it’s job. The problem, you need to buy those extra content packs, and on top of it yet another tool just for exporting in FBX. Though for this tool (3DExchange) there is also a trial.

Currently the trial versions allows for exporting basic modern styled humans. I do not give a straight buy recommendation, since so much money is involved, but in my opinion this is the next big alternative after Mixamo failed. The question is if Character Creator 3 comes without the FBX export limitation, hence is priced more reasonable. Thus, I would suggest to wait until they release CC3, likely in the next three months, second quarter is the targeted release window.

Recently I bought a content pack which is listed at $299, but before this I bought iClone 7 for $129. Once you buy something and register you get a slight discount on all subsequent software purchases (does not count for content packs) purchases. Also if you sign-up for the newsletter as a new customer you get a one time 40% discount code. If you then buy as a registered member 3DExchange, to export FBX, it costs still $349.

Eventually you want extra hair content packs, extra human models and so on. The quality content is still marginal, but okay. For me this seems to work so far, I’ve exported a character with a cloak attached, then used Unreal’s build in NVCloth painting tool to make the cloak react to physics. This is pretty straight forward once you know what kind of values you need to setup. Additional you have to edit all the materials, which are mostly not pretty well imported. Next thing I want to test is exporting characters with morph targets and connect them with an Unreal character creator.

My impression is that they will release more AAA content in the future, since they actively seek quality creators, offering $10k-20 or more. Incubation Program

Reallusion seems to attempt to position itself as a new market leader for character creation.

If my post made you curious, try the trial out, and maybe wait for CC3.

2

Will the Characters you export from Character Creator 3 be able to be imported into UE4 and be compatible with the Epic Skeleton is the big question, being able to use any animation packs from the marketplace out of the box would be awesome

3

Yes they will be compatible, they are compatible now. Issues are, materials are not perfect, colors are off, had to set two-sided for cloak to make it not invisible from the inside. But UE animation retargeting works smooth here.

If I compare those characters with the one I made with Mixamo, those have much cooler gear/cloths, and look more unique, more human like. Problem, it’s not free, but if you for instance are in need of some people to fill the main street in your game, then even the current trial software is a good choice.

Also if you export with the trial 3DExchange version, disable exporting “Motion”, since that counts toward your trial export limitations.

4

Downloading the trial now :smiley:

5

Sucks, no referral link, haha. Feeling a little bit like a Reallusion representative (if that is a thing) … :smiley:

6

So I just exported a character from the trial version but the third person animations are not showing up, also I got a huge error on importing, are you sure it is compatible with the Epic Skeleton?

@unit23

7

Hey thanks for the info @unit23

Looking forward to Character Creator 3

8

Animation Blueprints are not automatically created, you need to set this up yourself. To test animations just retarget any UE skeleton animation to it, after you imported the model to an existing UE skeleton. You can use the same skeleton for all your CC imports, and the same animation blueprint too.

9

I did set up an Anim blueprint but it didn’t work

10

Did you retarget an animation? Did you retargeted with a T-Pose?

11

Could you walk me through the steps needed to get animations working and how to do it, it would help a lot, Include pictures if possible?

12

i would appreciate this as well as i am tempted to buy the products

13

Without knowing what exactly the issue is I cannot help you, and I have no time to prepare a pictured tutorial. If you are new to this part of Unreal start with google, ie. Importing characters into Unreal tutorial video etc.

14

I might release a step by step video guide this month, which will cover all aspects of preparing CC2 characters, importing them, as well as covering morph targets and clothing.

15

Awesome :slight_smile: Looking forward to it :slight_smile:

16

Any News about Version 3 of it?

17

It’s now online here http://legendsofepica.com/2018/04/08/howto-character-creator-2-unreal-engine/

18

Version 3 is available now, went live a few days ago.

19

When I import character in Unreal. The only morph targets that show up are for the head. Can you bring over body morph targets also straight from CC3 or does it require other software still? If so how is it done?

20

Are you sure the CC3 exports body morphs at all?