Reallusion has announced Unreal integration for Reallusion Game Tools, a free tool that establishes a seamless ecosystem for character creation and animation for the Unreal engine.

From the moment it was discovered that they could be used for much more than video and computer games,  game engines as Unreal and Unity have been adopted by developers and producers to be used in a variety of workflows associated with video and film production. With the expanded use of Augmented Reality in live broadcast, they’ve also been a key element to consider when producers need to create and animate characters for real-time production.

Reallusion has been at the forefront of some of these developments, and the company now announces Unreal integration for Reallusion Game Tools, a plug-in for Unreal Engine for digital human design. With this free tool, Unreal developers and producers have a solution for creating, customizing, animating, optimizing and importing characters from Character Creator 3, iClone 7 and Motion LIVE, establishing a seamless ecosystem for character creation and animation for the Unreal engine.

Characters ready to animate

“This is an exciting milestone for us,” said John Martin, VP, Product Marketing, Reallusion. “Reallusion Game Tools is a total and fully integrated solution. Thanks to Unreal’s support, UE4 developers can seamlessly use the dedicated Unreal game character creation tools in Character Creator, animate with iClone, and even connect the iPhone X and mocap gear to Unreal via iClone Motion Live and the Unreal Live Link. The result is a real-time character creation and animation workflow directly to Unreal. Developers can also import game characters with automated shader assignment and animation setup directly for Unreal so that characters import ready to play, act and animate.”

https://youtu.be/oK9tU3pT0YM

Despite its name, Reallusion Game Tools, the plug-in is usable in more than games. The plug-in offers a a complete solution to create and deploy characters and animation with a suite of features to assist in motion capture, motion blending, curve editing, facial puppet, and audio lip sync. iClone offers developers an established, and extensive marketplace with thousands of high quality mocap data files across a spectrum of motion themes.  Beyond creating characters for Unreal, Reallusion Game Tools now prepare characters for the best in-engine visuals with autoshader assignment and animation setup.

Ideal for cinematic filmmaking

Auto character setup for live performance with RTX realtime raytracing is just part of what the plug-in can do. With Unreal iClone Live Link, characters are ready for live animation. Reallusion says that “Instead of sending character motions to Unreal via FBX, now users can directly stream facial and body animation directly from iClone. Reallusion’s realtime virtual production empowers users to easily create animation from previz, game development, to cinematic filmmaking.”

The iClone Motion Live plugin aggregates the industry’s best mocap hardware with profiles to animate CC3 characters with Xsens, Noitom, Faceware, iPhone, Rokoko, Optitrack, Leap Motion, Qualisys and more. The iClone Motion Live system connects to Unreal Live Link for real-time production, or records motion and sends it along with characters to Unreal Engine via FBX. With this option users “take the guesswork out of animation and motion capture with the dedicated Reallusion character and motion system.”

Using Reallusion with Cine Tracer

Reallusion offers, says the company, “the most compatible and speed-to-game characters with automatic digital human shader assignments and characterization for Unreal UE4.  Once characters and animation are complete, task still remain for game developers as they will need to potentially spend hours setting up their character shader and animations.  Reallusion alleviates this time-consuming problem by automating the shader assignment and animation setup so your characters import ready to play.”

Matt Workman, a cinematographer and app developer who uses Reallusion Tools says this: “Cine Tracer is a real time cinematography simulator created in Unreal Engine 4 and I use Character Creator 3 Pipeline to create realistic digital humans. The workflow between CC3 and UE4 is seamless and getting better with every update.”

Try Reallusion Game Tools for Unreal  now

“We’re a small game studio making a big, ambitious game called – The Forgotten City”, says Nick Pearce, managing director-founder of Modern Storyteller, adding that “Character Creator 3 and iClone 7 have allowed us to punch well above our weight and make a great looking game, with high-quality character models, and motion capture animations, on an indie budget. One of the coolest things about Character Creator 3 is the in-built tools for optimization; as we can effortlessly improve the performance of our game by reducing character polygons, creating LODs, and merging materials, so our game runs smoothly while still looking great.”

The Reallusion Game Tools for Unreal is available now. Get the Unreal Plugin to convert CC characters for Unreal Engine 4 with shader options designed for Photorealistic Characters (LW) and Advanced Digital Humans (HQ).