Reallusion’s Character Creator 3, the company’s full character creation solution for designers to easily create, import and customize stylized or realistic looking character assets for use with iClone, Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine 4, Unity or any other 3D tools is about to get even more sophisticated with the addition of SkinGen, the new Dynamic Skin Effect Editor plug-in for Character Creator 3.3, a tool now revealed in a short video from Reallusion.
ProVideo Coalition readers discovered here, recently, the new Headshot from Reallusion. Headshot is the AI-powered Character Creator plugin that generates 3D realtime digital humans from one photo, in less than 10 minutes. The plugin allows game developers and virtual production teams to immediately funnel a cast of digital doubles into iClone, Unreal, Unity, Maya, ZBrush and more. The idea is to allow the digital humans to go anywhere they like and give creators a solution to rapidly develop, iterate and collaborate in real-time.
Right on the heels of Headshot, Reallusion released Digital Human Shader for realtime human rendering, which features a complete set of shaders for skin, eyes, teeth, and hair, allowing artists to create realistic digital humans for real-time 3D animation. Compatible with industry character design pipeline, the Digital Human Shader benefits artists who wish to quickly animate realistic CG humans made from custom models.
Now Reallusion follows up the success of Headshot, the game changer for rapid digital double character creation AI, with a look at the forthcoming release of SkinGen. The Digital Human workflow evolves in this sneak peek of SkinGen, a new plugin for Character Creator and the next key component of the Reallusion digital human creation system.
With the pandemic reshaping the way productions are made, the need for avatars and virtual characters will grow, as some scenes will be created in computer, reducing the need for physical contact between actors. We’re, in fact, entering a new phase in movie production, one in which the tools developed and perfected in recent years will become invaluable.
One example that they are already are comes from filmmaker Jon Finger, a Cinema 4D veteran who uses Reallusion tools for animations. He says that “Character Creator gave me the ability to create rigged characters with detailled textures that I could easily integrate into my pipeline.” The author created a short, Battle City, in three weeks with help from the Character Creator, iClone, Rokoko and Cinema 4D pipeline.
Creating animations can be an extremely time-consuming and a costly task, but with the software now available it is much easier for animators and filmmakers to create quality projects in record time. The evolution of game engines, from Unreal Engine to Unity, to tools as Cinema 4D or the catalog from Reallusion demonstrate how far and how fast the industry has moved.
SkinGen expands on that, offering a whole new tool that, in fact, is a brand new Appearance Editor for skin and makeup generation. The original Appearance Editor from Reallusion is now renamed SkinGen and it comes with a series of options. The SkinGen Dynamic Skin Effects Layer Stack and effects library adds more skin realism and detail customization, allowing to rapidly build complex multi-layer skin with ultrafine definition.
Here are some of the key features of the new SkinGen plugin:
- Dynamic Skin Effects Layer Stack – sliders to adjust effect layers, blend modes, and ability to reorder layers in the stack
- Industry-Leading Skin Textures – supports Substance Engine and features content from Texturing.xyz
- Skin Effects for Age, Gender, and Ethnicity
- Comprehensive Face and Body Customization – complete appearance design for the entire character including skin, hair, eyelashes, fingers, nails, even makeup.
- Real-time Editing for Each Body Material – Efficiently edit with 1K-2K textures for optimal performance and switch to 4K textures for final renders.
Other than direct compatibility with iClone, the SkinGen textures, shaders and parameters will be transferred to Unreal Engine with the Character Creator Auto Setup plugin when the SkinGen launches. It should be noted that the SkinGen is both a feature extension and plug-in for Character Creator 3.3. To display the capability of SkinGen, the First Look video uses both embedded content and paid assets. Reallusion says that full feature details will be revealed along with the official product launch in July 2020.