Hi Everyone!

Thank you for accompanying us to witness the transformation of Character Creator since its inception in September 2015.  Our vision was to create a platform for generating 3D characters with unlimited possibilities that are fit for real-time animation. Today, we are proud to announce the achievement of that milestone -- From version 3.0, Character Creator becomes a full character creation solution for designers to easily create, import and customize character assets. It connects industry leading pipelines into one system for 3D character generation, animation, rendering, and interactive design.



*To keep our promise to deliver software to you in September, we decided to do the soft launch today (Sept 27th).
*There will be more tutorials coming up, and more information will be available on the webpage. Stay tuned


New Features

Character Base

• New topology is 100% quad mesh, ready for subdivisioning and mesh editing. Enhanced mesh and enhanced high-res texture detail for hands and feet.
• Conversion of old characters to new generation characters is supported.

Daz Studio Transformer - Importing Daz 3D Assets to CC

• Importing DAZ character morph, outfit, shoes, skin presets, hair and morphable assets into Character Creator.
  *Compatible figures: Daz Genesis, Michael 4, Victoria 4, HiveWire Dawn & Dusk
  >> Know more

Content Creation Pipeline 

[Streamline Pipeline to Other Tools]

• GoZ: Roundtrip sculpting and painting process with ZBrush.

[Cloth Creation]

• Auto-Skin Weighting for Clothes: Import OBJ mesh as Cloth Assets, and apply Skin Weight Transfer from cloth templates or custom imported skin mesh. >> Know more
• Skin Weight Editor: Refine the auto-skinned cloth with a spectrum of weight editing tools.
• Partial Conforming: Ability to define sub-mesh elements (or selected vertices) as hard mesh items, such like buckles, ammo pouches, or armor plates.
• Advanced Mesh Editor: Ability to edit mesh in vertex, face, element mode, and use new brush sculpturing tools to push, pull and smooth mesh.
• Edit Normals: Adjust object normals for hard and soft edge surface.
• Polygon Reduction (Powered by InstaLOD): Reduce the polygon count on clothes & accessory while retaining its original shape and UV data. >> Know more

[Morph Creation]

• Enhanced Morph Slider Creation Procedure for Characters with Different Proportions 
• Automatically adjust bone to fit morph when creating morph sliders Character auto-skinning that works regardless of differences in proportions.
• Utilize Edit Bone tool to fix it manually.

Game Character Pipeline

• Game Character Base can be derived from any Standard CC Character, features
• Retain visual quality after mesh simplification.
• Compatible with CC Morphs, Skin Presets, and Outfit System.
• Simplified bone structure for facial and body Animation.
• Merge materials for game performance.
• Built-in Mesh Optimization Technology Powered by InstaLOD
• Remesher: Reduce the whole character and all wearable content into one-mesh character, and generate character models in multiple LOD.
• Merge Materials: Group and merge selected materials to target UV maps to ensure minimal draw call with no noticeable loss in visual quality.
  >> Know more

Environment & Character Settings

• New Content Manager with Stage setup related new formats: iProp, iAtmosphere, iEffect, ccLightRoom, ccCam.
• Global Illumination (GI)
• Pose editing and saving
• Face expression editing and saving
  

Image Render

• Real-time smooth - Open Subdiv can subdivide and smooth a quad-based mesh.
• Image output with render options.
• Compatible with Iray Render Plug-in for photorealistic rendering.
  For more information about Iray Render Plug-in, please visit HERE.

Enhancements

• File Format Update
• All the data such as character morph, skin, clothes, prop, atmosphere, lighting will be saved in project file (.ccProject)
• All the data of character will be saved in avatar file (.ccAvatar)
• Content Manager
  >> Know more

New Content Packs 

• Light Studio - Professional Light Presets for Iray
• Supermodels - Pose & Expression
• HiveWire Starter Combo - Cloth, Morphs, Expressions, and Pose Extension
• CC Essential (morphs and materials optimized for CC3)
  *Users who have purchased CC Essential Complete Bundle or Morphs & Skin can get a free download.
  *Since there is no changes on the Clothing & Fabric pack, so no need to download again.

Learning Resource

• [Index] Training Center
• Online Manual
• Tips & Tricks

Special Notice & Known Issues

• How to convert CC1 character to CC3 character to continue your projects?
• How to adjust character skin textures with Appearance Editor?
• How to load Realistic Human 100 & CT8PP (.RLHead) to Character Creator 3?
  >> Know more

*You can refer to Special Notice & Known Issues for more information.

• [For Content Developer] If the CC morph sliders made in CC1 & CC2 doesn't fit well on CC3 character after conversion, how to repack it for users? >> Know more

FAQ

• How to get my CC3.0 Pipeline & Iray Plug-in license? (Pre-order Users)
• How to get my free CC3.0 license? (iClone 7 Users)
  >> Know more
• What's the difference of the CC edition iClone 7 users get compared to CC3 Pipeline? >> Know more
• Hardware Requirements of Character Creator 3 >> Know more
• What software or resource should I download to have full experience? >> Know more
• How to import previous version content into Character Creator 3? >> Know more

Showcase Yourself 

If you have created something cool, don't forget to share it through the forum.
Reallusion Team will also browse this forum, and randomly pick up good artworks to share through our media with your name credit. >> Share now

[Cloth Creation] Polygon Reduction (Powered by InstaLOD)

Reduce the polygon count on clothes & accessory while retaining its original shape and UV data.

1. Optimizing Character Wearables
Learn about how to reduce the poly-count for all of the wearables on your character at once, including hair, accessories, and clothing. 


2. Optimizing Object Elements
Character Creator has the ability to distinguish between different elements of the same accessory or clothing item, such as two separate shoes, or the leather/metal parts of a belt.  In this video, you'll learn about how to optimize the poly-count for particular element individually for further enhanced performance.


3. Baking Textures to Retain Surface Detail
Baking textures is an important part of reducing the resources that your character consumes in any game engine.  By baking the textures and merging them into a single map, you can save tons of system resources and therefore make your game run more smoothly.  This tutorial outlines the process of how to do that in Character Creator 3.

[Cloth Creation] Creating Clothing from SketchFab OBJ Files

The ability to import in your own clothing in OBJ format to Character Creator is a groundbreaking new feature that opens the door for content developers everywhere to bring their collections of clothing and accessories into the world of iClone with a couple of simple clicks.  This tutorial will walk you through the process of bringing in a couple of simple clothing items, skinning it to the CC3 character mesh, and setting the cloth layers as well.

[Enhancement] Content Manager

For better categorization and space saving purposes, we have added some new items and changed the way the user interface is displayed.

• Project - Avatar ( *.ccAvatar )
• Motion - MotionPlus ( *.iMotionplus )
• Motion - Pose ( *.imotion / *.rlMotion )
• Motion - Expression ( *.iTalk / *.rlTalk )
• Stage - Atmosphere ( *.iAtm )
• Stage - IBL ( *.hdr )
• Stage - Light ( *.iLight )
• Stage - Camera ( *.ccCam )
• Stage - Post Effect ( *.iEffect )
• Stage - Prop ( *.iProp )
• Stage - Iray ( *.iMDL )