Serving you the best real-time Digital Human character system is one of the core values of Character Creator 3.  From v3.3, we will introduce the newest character base called CC3 Base+ to fulfill the requirements of detailed sculpting and realistic animation.  This improvement covers the character's mesh, UV, and skeletal rig. 




This introduction includes: 

• Comparison Table of CC3 Base+ and CC3 Base
• Enhanced Skin Rigging
• A-Pose as Bind Pose
• Animation and Pose Refinement
• Sculpting Characters Bound at A-Pose
• Tear Line, Eye Occlusion and the Corresponding Settings (Shader, Morph, Export)
• Optimized UV
• Convert Existing Characters to CC3 Base+

Related webpage: https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/character-base.html

Comparison Table of CC3 Base+ and CC3 Base 

CC3 Base+ Mesh

Evenly-distributed quad face and perfect edge-loops allows for smooth deformations during animation.  Sculptors can also rejoice, as the mesh is easier to subdivide and smooth without defects.








Specification Comparison



Feature Comparison

Enhanced Skin Rigging

Different from previous character base generations, the bind pose of CC3 Base+ is A pose for enhanced skin rigging.
The benefits include: 

• Enhanced skin-weights for animation and pose refinement, especially on  joint positions. This enhancement can also benefit the Transformer utility. (Know More)
•  A-Pose also facilitates sculpting.
  

What is Bind Pose?

Enhanced Skin Rigging - Animation and Pose Refinement

CC3 Base+ uses the A-Pose to bind the mesh to the skeleton which gives a more natural look when the arm joints move. This enhancement can also benefit the Transformer utility, you may check THIS POST for more details.  

The illustrations below show the differences between the CC3 Base+ and CC3 Base when the same motions are applied. 

CC3 Base+ shoulders and armpits are quite a bit lower than those of CC3 Base, alleviating the tight shoulders plaguing CC3 Base.


When the arms are raised, the armpits no longer bulge outward with CC3 Base+ characters.


The knees no longer collapse when the legs are bent with CC3+ Base characters.




When viewed from the side, the buttocks retain its robust round shape a sitting CC3+ Base.


When viewed from the font, the raised thigh retains its round contour shape on the CC3+ Base.

Enhanced Skin Rigging - Sculpting Characters Bound at A-Pose

Tear Line, Eye Occlusion and the Corresponding Settings (Shader, Morph, Export)

Eyes now come with additional meshes for the tear-line and occlusion overlay.  

• CC3.3 embed characters are all equipped with new eye elements. These meshes can be turned on and off, deleted and recreated at any time.
• Characters imported via Transformer are not defaulted with new eye elements. You can create the elements inside Character Creator.

There are plenty of features you can utilize with the eye elements. 

1. Eye Elements Creation: create eye elements via Modify > Enhance Eyes
2. Synchronized Movement of Eye Occlusion, Tearline and Eye Sockets When Morphing and Animating: eye occlusion and tearline will be changed along with the movement of eye sockets when morphing and performing facial animation.
3. Adjustable Morph Sliders: if the default eye occlusion and tear-line don't fit to character eyes, you can simply readjust the morph sliders.
4. Adjust in Symmetry Mode
5. Digital Human Shaders for Eye Occlusion: there are many parameters you can use to tweak the blur, shadow and vertex offset of Eye Occlusion to your desired result. 
   *This settings can be saved in Character file or AvatarPreset (Head).
   
   
   
6. Digital Human Shaders for Tearline: Depth offset, roughness and other details of tearline are also adjustable.
   *This settings can be saved in Character file or AvatarPreset (Head).
   
   
   
7. Behavior when Exporting in FBX format: According to the current behavior, eye elements will be exported along with the character.  Since the shader settings can't be carried to 3rd party tools except UE4, CC will automatically add a transparent PBR texture on eye elements when exporting to avoid visual flaws. If you manually delete eye elements in 3rd party tools, you are unable to import the character back to CC.
8. Behavior of GoZ round-trip editing:  According to the current behavior, only "selected" objects in the Scene Manager will be exported. Check THIS POST for ZBrush and Substance Painter Workflow.
   
   

Optimized UV

The UV optimization can be categorized into 4 parts.


Benefitial UV Design: Cross material ZBrush texture baking (Multi Map Exporter)


Effective Texture Blending Animation (Coming)


Enlarged UV Space to Achieve Greater Detail

Convert Existing Characters to CC3 Base+ 

Convert Character Base 

Go to the Modify Panel > Attribute > Avatar > Convert CC3 to CC3+


You can determine the final texture size after conversion.


The converted characters will not be equipped with Tear Line and Eye Occlusion. You can add them on manually.

Fix Cloth Surface Penetration Issue 


Batch Convert

The batch conversion utility can be used to convert a large number of legacy characters to CC3 Base+.

Click on the Modify Menu > Batch Convert to CC3 Base+


Read the conversion notification carefully to ensure a smooth CC3+ base conversion process.


The number of characters that can be processed in one go depends largely on the quality of hardware in use and the current state of the desktop's working environment.
RAM plays the most important role with batch conversion. Here are some data we that may be pertinent to the performance of your system:

Well done!  This new feature set is amazing.  I'm very impressed.  Thanks for all the hard work!

Everything looks awesome! great job! but to complete the base+ character UV seams need to follow curvature of the model for proper displacement & avoid texture stretching & holes. The multi UV OBJ export needs to support Current pose because currently it doesn't.  Also when sending over to Zbrush I would be good if you can export A-Pose or t-pose option with eyes closed, mouth open and fingers wide.. this is to see and be able to paint in all areas that are normally not accessible.. but even using advanced painting techniques with displacement it's ideal to see the displacement on eyelid, inside the mouth, between the fingers when stretched wide etc.
Anyways here is the issue about UV  - you can't have UV seams with hard corners -sawtooth/staircase effect would be really bad. The UV has an abrupt change that is extremely difficult for displacement and causes tears and stretching. 


Displacement is on in low polymode below


Displacement in high poly mode:



The problem visible in iClone below shows that it's a consistent problem between programs



I have more examples of problem areas here: https://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/Request-to-join-Character-Creator-beta-for-Character-Development-for-the-Marketplace

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