Hi, I was hoping that with the release of CC4 the workflow between Blender and CC4 would become a lot easier and less confusing. Please let me explain the problems I'm facing: To be honest, I'm quite new to CC4, iClone and Blender. However, I do have a lot of experience with software like Maya and Character Creator. I have a rigged character created with Blender. I would like to use CC4 - but actually iClone - to use the fantastic animation possibilities of these tools. In Blender I still have the addOn CC3 active (no idea if there is a CC4 version available) to export my Blender character to CC. Unfortunately the 'export to CC' button keeps 'greyed out'. No matter what I try. I already got some assistance from the forum when it comes to export a CC character to Blender and back again. This workflow works. This however is a complete different situation: My character is created and rigged in Blender. What am I doing wrong? Exporting it as a .obj doesn't export the rigging. When I try to export it as FBX CC4 complains about a missing FBX key. Hopefully someone can help me out here and tell me what the workflow should be. Or maybe someone can point me the right way to the right forum for a solution? Thanks in advance. Really appreciate it!

Hi,
In CC4 have you tried the create character button, click this and select Humanoid Non Standard and run through the creation process from there.

Bluey Creative in the Marketplace

Did you use auto rig pro to create the meta rig? Also, ic7/8 only uses the metal rig as I recall, not the final rig with all of the controls.

- Jeff
The Adventures of Capt Sanchez
Cybernautic Studios

Hi, Thanks for your reply. Starting from CC4 would be the other way around. I find it hard to create a character from scratch in CC4. I would prefer to create it in  Blender because of the great modeling tools that CC4 doesn't have. I'm not really focussed on  creating realistic characters but more cartoon/fantasy characters. Don't know If that is possible with the workflow you suggest?

Hi, I didn't use the auto rig tool. Maybe the rigged character will work fine in iClone. But I think that when it's not working in CC4, it wouldn't work in iClone8 either? The best way to export from Blender to CC4/iClone would be the CC(3) add-on, but as I mentioned before: the export button keeps 'greyed out'. I have absolutely no idea why that is... Thanks for your help sofar !

Re: StudioMM

I have the same situation as yours. After exploring the CC4 within these several days, I find :
1) There is a new Plugins of Blender Auto for CC4 : Blender Auto Setup (reallusion.com)
2) CC4 > Blender > CC4 ... is the most convenient method to create character. For Cartoon, consider to purchase "Cartoon Design Content ... etc" and modify the characters with CC4 and Blender.
3) Blender > CC4 : you can import your character as Humanoid. But it is horrible if we use ARP(auto rip pro). The bones becomes mess and time consuming to re-match in CC4.
Instead, we should use meta rig - Rigify in Blender but you know the weights ...... and we have to refine the character again .....
4) "Greyed out" problem occurred due to missing .fbxkey file which CC4 produces after exporting .fbx file. Thus, CC4 > Blender > CC4 ... / Humanoid ... up to you ..

Hi arthurmobi, this is really helpful information. Thanks a lot!

Previously yes the add-on and plugin was basically only for CC > Blender > CC, which required the FBX key.

But since the non-standard humanoids don't need an Fbx key I've expanded on it and made a system that can (try to) export any character with an armature to CC4 and set up the materials with the Plugin. (Provided the materials are PBR based on the Principled BSDF shader).

But the comment about Auto Rig Pro got me thinking, as ARP has an export function that cleans up the rig and exports just the relevant deform bones. Since ARP can rig and skin characters quickly and easily it could be a useful method of getting custom non-standard characters into CC4.

So I've add a feature that if the add-on detects an ARP rig it will try to use ARP's export function to generate a clean FBX output: