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Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit
created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3.
I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996.

It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it.

But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs.

Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures, and Toon Hair, designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker.



The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that works as both a male or female pre teen), eleven hair style bases, with thirteen hair additions for further variation.

There are five head shapes with several variations for eyes, nose, and lip treatments and two different PBR skin textures too (one plain and one with some detail such as makeup).

Detailed breakdown of the various
character head/face options.

Those of you with a sharp eye for detail may notice a severe lack of cultural diversity in this line up. Which doesn't mean you're stuck with white characters only, it'll just take a bit more effort to change skin tones and other features to what you need.

My attempt at a non-white toon character. This hair
is not included in the Toon hair pack.

That's the beauty of Reallusion's Character Creator. Even though you may start with these body morphs you're not limited to what they have to offer. Mix it up with other body morphs and settings inside CC itself.

There's no actual character outfits included in the pack (like I said it's a bare bones starter pack for toon characters) but you can dress your characters in whatever outfits you have in your CC content library. Unfortunately that does mean you may have to work at toning down the realistic textures and styles. Hopefully Reallusion will release some additional Toon packs in the future with outfits and accessories designed in similar style.

A sample of hairstyles from
the Toon Hairs pack.
I also hope they'll release additional hairs for toon characters too. Whilst this first pack is a really good start it leans heavily toward more feminine styles once you include all the hair additions. As well, the male hairs are all quite modern styles. It would be nice to see a few more classic, timeless styles for men. Not all men fill their hair with 'product' (just sayin').

Overall, Reallusion's Cartoon Character Designer Bundle for Character Creator 3 is a welcome addition to my own CC3/iClone7 library. It makes it very quick to whip up a variety of toon style characters in a short time and they blend well with other body morphs and settings in CC3 for even more variety of design.

I certainly hope they'll prove popular for Reallusion because it would be great to see the range extended with more body morphs, outfits, and even scenes and props in the toon style.

Comments

  1. What hair did you use for the black character you created. I did figure out that just turning the brightness to -50 gets you a nice brown tone. Curious of the settings you used and any other recommendation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The hair comes from the stylized 'Slacker' character that comes with CC3 as part of the learning resources. It's just called 'Slacker_Hair'. If you have it it'll be in the top menu of the Hair folder.

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. All I did was select the Materials tab, select the skin material you want to change from the list, right click on the base color, and select 'Adjust Color' from the menu that comes up. From there adjust the brightness and contrast sliders to whatever shade you need.

      Delete
  3. Wow. Amazing! Who doesn't love the Pixar look, right? It's so dreamy. Probably the best animation to feed your eyes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just like it because it's kind of midway between 2D drawings and film. You still get that cartoon style but you can picture the characters walking around in the real world too - sort like your action figures coming to life.

      Delete

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