Thanks. Very useful.



"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Thank you guys. I really appreciate the help:)

Sw0000p, I use Blender mostly for re-rigging to Armatures so I am not so familiar with all the features...Does Blender have a poly reduction algorithm/function? Or are you suggesting manual reduction?



Not off the top of my head but when I was playing with poly reduction, I just did a web search for free solutions. If I am not mistaken then MeshLab was one but I don't recall it it was free or Trial. But I am sure there are others.


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Is that why they call you Lord?? Thank you. I have Pipeline and I am going to give it a go. Thank you so much!!

Could you recommend a polygon reducing software. From freeware to low cost to really good?

The work flow would depend on if you have 3DXChange Standard/Pro or Pipeline. Basically with Pipeline you can export as FBX so, if you can find a poly count reducing program that supports FBX, the process is much simpler. If you only have Standard or Pro version then you cannot export FBX, so you export the OBJ mesh, reduce the poly count but then have to re-attach the mesh to the iClone armature.
(Please note that I did not try this process so there might be some slight variations needed but the general process should be correct)

[Standard/Pro]
1. Create your desired character in CC.
2. Export the CC character into OBJ. If you can't do this directly from CC then push to 3DXChange (save/load or push to iClone and then push to 3DXChange). Then use the Export Mesh in Replace Mesh tab of 3DXChange to export the character to OBJ file.
3. Open the OBJ file (character mesh) in a program that will decrease the poly count. There are a few free or trial software that will do this. Use the program to reduce the poly count and save the reduced OBJ character mesh.
4. Using free software like Blender, re-attach the reduced character mesh to the CC armature (bone structure). This is a similar process as used for making CCloth (form which there is a tutorial on the forum). You can get the Armature (FBX file) from the CC Templates which are provided for making CC Cloth.
5. Import the FBX character file into 3DXChange and it should recognize it as a character.
6. Save as an iAvatar

[Pipeline]
1. Create your desired character in CC.
2. Export character as an FBX file.
3. Open the FBX file (character mesh) in a program that will decrease the poly count. Ensure that the selected program supports FBX files and preserves the FBX armature during the ploy count reduction process.
4. Import the FBX character file into 3DXChange and it should recognize it as a character.
5. Save as an iAvatar

It is doable but a lot of work. How low poly do you want to go? It might be easier to just use G3 characters (which should be lower poly count than CC characters) but then you lose the CC customization functionality. Obviously once you create a lower poly character you can save it and reuse it but each time you want to create a different CC character you will need to repeat the process. However, there is a way that you can get somewhat around that. It the the basis of my G6 Plus Morphs (available in my store) but you can do a similar process for your reduced poly CC character...

Basically you can export your base CC character, reduce it and then edit the character to make some variations (saving each variation). For example, fatten up the reduced poly character and save that. Build up the muscles and save that. Make the character more pear shaped and save that. The problem is that you have to do this manually from the reduced poly count character because if you do this using in CC (i.e. export a bunch of different versions) it probably won't work because the poly reducing software will affect each version differently. Anyway, once you have these variations, import the character into 3DXChange. The go to the Face Setup tab and load all your variations into the Morph List. You can then click on the Expression Editor and add the morphs to the 3DXChange profile. I believe there are 6 different slots with 4 directions each (meaning a total of 24 different morphs that can be accessed). This will allow you to access the morphs, within iClone, using the Face Puppet. The bonus is that you can even apply these in real time in your iClone animation (e.g. using a big nose morph you can make your character nose grow). This way you gain access to your limited number of morphs directly in iClone and thus can produce slight character variations directly in iClone (sort of a mini-CC).

I hurried over the last part (i.e. making the mini-CC in iClone) because I am not sure if you are interested in that at all. If you are and need more details, please ask in he post and I will try to provide some more details.

"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

I am wondering if it is possible to create low poly characters from regular CC characters. I know there are packages out there but I wanted to create my own. Any thoughts??