Simulating realistic crowds has long been a challenge in game design and character animation. Fortunately, Reallusion has created iClone Crowd Sim, an advanced tool that can handle these complex simulations in a way that is intelligent and consistent with the environment.  Adding to this great new development are advances in generative artificial intelligence technology, resulting in a truly dynamic solution that, until now, has involved purchasing several additional programs at a very high cost. This tutorial takes you step by step through the creation of crowds using AI to generate tex ..read more

Intro What if you have an old project that you want to bring to life using Character Creator, but it’s on legacy topology, or even just a sculpted dynamesh sketch in ZBrush. In this workflow, we’ll take an old ZBrush bust sculpt with arbitrary, non-CC topology, use Headshot v2 to update it to CC topology, which you can then decide if you want to go the body refine GoZ route (see the body workflow article) or the Face Tools route (see the Face Tools workflow article) to fine tune and finish out your character. GoZ Neutral Base for Scale and Positioning Our old projects might be in a weird lo ..read more

Intro- Continue the “Goblin” Project with ZBrush Face Tools This article is a continuation of our “CC Topology GoZ Goblin Body” article. We’ve already sculpted and baked the body and head textures for our goblin, but we only have default face shapes and neutral default expression wrinkles. In this article, we’ll use the powerful ZBrush Face Tools plugin to update our face shapes, eyes, teeth, and tongue, and of course create custom expression wrinkles that match our unique character perfectly. However, all of these articles have relied on CC topology projects in order to fully utilize the Rea ..read more

Gone are the painstaking days of piecemeal 3D building assembly. The iClone BuildingGen plugin empowers architects, professional designers, and hobbyists alike to effortlessly create diverse 3D buildings using procedural Blueprints. This plugin streamlines the entire process by allowing the organization of 3D module collections into effective and cohesive packages. Watch Tutorial > Construction styles can be defined using interchangeable components and materials to enjoy maximum design flexibility. Best of all, BuildingGen’s nondestructive workflow ensures that design iterations can be ma ..read more

Creating Ultra Realistic Digital Humans for the 3D Fashion Industry . At its core, Unexplored Fields is a collective of 3D artists who intricately blend art, fashion, and CGI. Specializing in art direction and the production of digital campaigns for the fashion industry, the studio boasts a diverse team skilled in various areas such as art direction, 3D modeling, avatar and environment creation, cloth simulations, material generation, realistic renderings, and sound design. Through collaborative efforts, they infuse the essence of partnered brands into their visuals like Calvin Klein ..read more

I admit it. I had a deep-rooted, long-embedded phobia of 2D work. This was due to its complexity early on in my freelance career. Motion Graphics were great, but character-driven 2D animation was time-consuming and tedious. This was long before Adobe bought After Effects. Cell shading was making a retreat as digital art had taken root. Being as I was a grunt at the bottom of the animation chain, I generally got the jobs that no one else wanted, and that somewhat tainted my view of 2D work.  As strange as this sounds today, back then my experience was that 3D was easier and less stressful ..read more

A Step-by-Step Guide from ZBrush Master Pablo Munoz Gomez The Facial Profile Editor Alright, to wrap up this in-depth guide to the Face Tools plugin, I want to give you an overview of one of the most powerful features in CC4 when it comes to expressions: The Facial Profile Editor. With the workflow we’ve been following in this guide, we manage to create an original custom character with its unique set of expressions and of course unique wrinkles. However, all of the custom tweaks we’ve created are being applied to the generic rig in CC4, this means we can definitely generate some really cool ..read more

A Step-by-Step Guide from ZBrush Master Pablo Munoz Gomez Adjusting Expressions with Face Editor in CC Alright! Time to get into the custom expressions; this is what all the fuss is about! Up to this point, we’ve refined the base mesh, incorporated basic high-frequency details, and adjusted the textures, resulting in a visually appealing ‘static’ character. However, our goal extends beyond mere aesthetics; we aim to create a character capable of dynamic animation and conveying natural expressions. Hence, the forthcoming stage is dedicated to achieving precisely that. In CC4, I used the Face ..read more

A Step-by-Step Guide from ZBrush Master Pablo Munoz Gomez Detailing the Skin One of the biggest advantages of the connection between CC4 and ZBrush is, of course, that you can leverage the ZBrush capabilities and features to sculpt intricate sets of details into your characters. Gather the Reference of Skin Details In this next stage, we are going to concentrate on the skin details. One of my favourite resources to study the intricacies of skin patterns is a website by photographer Daniel Boschung: https://www.danielboschung.com/. This website has a bunch of portraits in incredibly high reso ..read more

A Step-by-Step Guide from ZBrush Master Pablo Munoz Gomez Concept and introduction of ZBrush Face Tools This comprehensive tutorial dives into the world of expression creation and dynamic wrinkles using Character Creator 4, ZBrush, and the Face Tools plugin. Learn how to leverage this powerful combination to create facial rig and breathe life into your characters. Before we get started with the step-by-step process of how you can create custom expressions for your characters, let’s take a look at an important stage of the process that is sometimes overlooked: The planning stage. The planning ..read more