My First Anthropomorphic Character with Reallusion's Character Creator 3 (Pipeline) & Reviving My TETAnimations YouTube Channel

Skateboarding Cage Monster - Heelflip.

Reallusion's Character Creator 3 is a pretty incredible application for creating any kind of human digital 3D character quickly. Its power comes from the way it can totally deform a standard human base template character into a seemingly infinite number of body types and shapes.

While I wouldn't recommended it as a your only 3D character sculpting tool, it is very powerful with just how much you can edit a character's form at the vertex/mesh level.

I've experimented a little with CC3's Edit mesh functions, mostly using it to hide areas of an object I don't want seen. Bat Storm's cape is a good example where I used the ability to hide vertices to completely remove the assassin's hood from the neckline up.

Just on a whim I wondered if I could create my Cage Monster character entirely in CC3 (with exception to his skin textures which I edited in Krita). The character is basically a stylised human body with a monster head. Anthropomorphic, if you consider the monster to be some kind of animal creature.

Reviving My TET Animations Channel & Creating a Monster

Cage Monster, Cartoon Animator 4 Version.

My TET Animations YouTube Channel is where I post my completed animations, which is very infrequent these days. It's a channel that I would like to make more content for, in particular to support some of the articles I write for this blog, such as my software reviews, tutorials, hints and tips, as well as my finished animations.

In the video below I discuss my ideas for the channel and ask you, the viewer (and you the reader of this blog), what kind of animation and video related topics you'd like me to focus on. 

At the same time, from about the 5:03 minute mark, you can watch me talk about, and work on, my Cage Monster Character in CC3.

I won't go on too much about my thoughts on reviving the channel but if you do have any suggestions of topics you'd like me to cover both on the channel and in this blog (especially if you decided to subscribe to this blog) please let me know in the comments below.

The sculpt for my Cage Monster started with a character morph called Jimmy, from Cgartifex, which I dressed in some appropriate clothes from various iClone packs (I think the shoes, hat, and fringe are also by Cgartifex).

Most of the head sculpt was done simply by adjusting various face sliders, and baking the mesh a couple of times so I could exaggerate the features more.

The nose was the only part that I literally edited the mesh directly since the character's nose isn't anything you would see on a human.

I did scale the head smaller than I initially made it. I also made the hands, legs, and feet slightly larger. I didn't go for the oversize feet of the 2D version because it would make it harder to animate the character doing complex skateboard tricks with bigger feet.

As previously mentioned the face texture was created in Krita, with a bit of trial and error to get all the features placed right. Though it helped greatly that I simply drew on top of the original human face texture.

Finally the character's fringe is an existing toon fringe prop that I used the edit mesh feature to hide strands that I didn't want, and to resize and move the three that I did. The fringe texture I also recolored and added white highlights.

The various stages of developing my Cage Monster as a 3D character.
Top left: Original Base. Middle Left: Head Sculpt.
Bottom Left: Editing the Mesh. Right: Finished character.

The last thing I did was to use the Edit Mesh feature to edit the proportions of the skateboard prop. For some reason no one ever seems to draw or model a skateboard correctly if they're not a skater themselves.

The existing skateboard prop I used was excellently modelled for the trucks and wheels but then it all fell apart with the deck being too long and wide, completely flat, and had these tiny little nose and tail kicks.

My revised Skateboard.

I shortened it, lined up the deck edges with the wheels, added some concave, and lined up the trucks more accurately with the nose and kick tails. I didn't adjust the kicks themselves though. They weren't great but I could live with it. I finished it off with a texture graphic of one of my own skateboards.

Overall I'm happy with the final character's likeness to the original 2D design. There is definitely room to refine the character but as a first attempt it does show just how far away from a human face you can get with CC3.

If you are interested in Reallusion's Character Creator 3, the Pipeline version is a standalone software that can be used to develop characters for other platforms such as game engines and more. But you can also use it to create characters for illustration, animation, whatever you can think of really, as well.