CC3 to Blender and back. Round trip editing.

CC/iC Blender Pipeline Plugin 2.1.7

Github:

Online Documentation:

Blender Auto Setup Add-on:

CC/iC Blender Pipeline Plug-in:

Product Page
Documentation
Release Version
CC4 / iC8 Version
CC3 Version

Release Notes

Changelog:

2.1.7

Normal map fix for imported characters.
Sync lights includes scene IBL from visual settings.

2.1.6

Export supports selection of multiple objects.

When exporting multiple objects, the exporter will create a folder and export each individual object to that folder.
When importing into Blender, all the FBX objects should be selected and imported all at once.

2.1.5

Go-B Morph will use existing connection if there is one.
Re-importing GameBase/ActorCore/AccuRig morph crash fix.
GameBase and AccuRig characters will always export from CC4 with facial expression profile and data.

2.1.4

Send Update / Replace function, for sending additions or replacements to selected meshes or whole characters.
Settings detect and find button.
Scrollable datalink window.

2.1.3

Expression rotation corrections check for existence of expression, as sometimes (ActorCore) they aren't really there.

2.1.2

Replace mesh searches sub-object names as well as mesh names for object / mesh name matching.

Note: Replace mesh does not currently work for conformed facial hair meshes (Beard / Brows).

2.1.0

Motion set prefix and use fake user option for datalink animation transfer.
Datalink pose/sequence twist bone translation fix.

Original Post

I think I have hung on to this for long enough. There's only so much I can test myself, so here goes.

Something I have wanted to try and achieve since the very first auto-setup, was to get the character back into CC3 from Blender with all of it's textures intact, and without having to put it all together by hand. And, for the most part, I think it's almost there:

Version 1.3.8 of the Blender auto-setup: https://github.com/soupday/cc3_blender_tools
Version 1.0.5 of the Python Plugin for CC3: https://github.com/soupday/CC3-Blender-Tools-Plugin
Version 1.0.10 of the Python Plugin for CC4: https://github.com/soupday/CC4-Blender-Tools-Plugin

1st Demo Video:
(Mesh editing and material parameters)

2nd Demo Video: (Using material nodes to modify textures during export)

CC4 Pipeline Test:

Installation

Clone or download the CC3 Blender Tools Plugin GitHub.
Create the folder OpenPlugin in the Character Creator 3 install directory \Bin64\OpenPlugin

e.g: C:\Program Files\Reallusion\Character Creator 3\Bin64\OpenPlugin

Load the script into the project from the Plugins > Blender Auto-setup > Import From Blender menu.

Alternatively the main.py script can run as a standalone script from the Script > Load Python menu.

Known Issues

By default the FBX export settings have embed textures switched on, but this makes the export incompatible with re-importing the character back into CC3 as the textures are hidden in the original fbx and are not accessible to the file system.

*Always turn off embed textures*

Information lost on re-importing

Hidden faces information for clothing and accessories is lost upon re-importing into CC3.
Currently Subsurface scattering settings (Falloff color and Scattering Radius) for skin, eyes teeth and tongue cannot be re-applied as there is no Python interface to do so, so these settings will be reset to their defaults.
Likewise Displacement map tessellation settings also cannot be re-applied and are reset to defaults.
The PhysX weight map texture and physics settings information is also lost on re-import. The weightmap textures are in the texture files exported from CC3 so they can be restored by hand in PhysX material settings.

Possible Issues

Some older characters import with the upper and lower teeth at odd angles. Replacing the teeth in CC3 will fix the issue. Alternatively there is an export option to reset the bone roll to zero on the upper and lower teeth bones. This appears to fix the problem but it is unknown if these changes to the teeth bones will cause further problems later.
There is a very strange problem where if the object has a very small number of vertices and faces (< 100) then the import into CC3 becomes very unstable and can cause a crash to desktop, even if that object was originally exported with the character from CC3.

This represents a whole lot of time and effort. Not just by me, but all the people at Reallusion, who have put in a huge effort to bring forward code and features and investigating ways to improve the process, so that I could make this work in CC3. They deserve much of the credit.

This is very much in it's early stages and there is still a lot of work to do. It is my hope that eventually we will be able to edit and reconstruct the character fully, in a round trip or as many round trips as it takes, with no missing data. I don't know if we'll get everything working for CC3, it may take until CC4, but I think it's more than possible to get there.

Edited
Last Week by Victor.Soupday

CC3 to Blender and back. Round trip editing.

CC3 to Blender and back. Round trip editing.

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