How To Animate Character Unreal Engine 4

Senior graphic symbol modeler, Crystal Bretz, shares her experience in creating an animated game character for Unreal Engine by using Character Creator and iClone.

Crystal Bretz is a Senior Character/Creature Modeler working in Canada. She has worked for many companies over the years such as Method Studios, DNEG, Artifex Studios, Redpill VR, TLM Partners Inc and BRON.

Crystal is currently working every bit a Senior Modeler at Digital Domain. She has a background as a generalist and has worked on many different types of media such as; TV episodic, Brusque films, Feature films, VR, and blithe features.

In this tutorial, Crystal will be showing how easy it can exist to create a character from a concept with Character Creator and transport it into the Unreal Engine using the LiveLink from iClone.

Part 1: Creating Character Model in Character Creator and Sculpting in ZBrush

The starting time step of this project is to match the torso proportions to the wonderful concept by Jue Li and it is made very uncomplicated with the utilise of Grapheme Creator 3 (CC3).

The graphic symbol base (CC3+) mesh utilizes UDIM workflows as well as has optimized geometry and UVs to allow for a better last character every bit well as opens more doors and opportunities in terms of texturing methods.

I utilized the morph sliders to fine tune all the muscles and proportions, and so used GoZ to transport the graphic symbol into ZBrush for a final sculpt laissez passer on the body. While I'thou in ZBrush, I endeavour to exist conscientious to not move the positions of whatever geometry affected by a bone, such as elbows or centre locations. It's best to modify these things within Character Creator and sculpt details inside ZBrush. I then sent the trunk mesh back to Character Creator and transferred all of the newly sculpted details back to the base mesh simply by updating the mesh.

Part 2: Modeling Wearing apparel and Accessories in ZBrush, Maya and Marvelous Designer

The side by side thing is to model the costume. I began by blocking out base forms in ZBrush past masking sections of the model, extracting the mask, zremeshing to refine the edges, and then panel looping to add together thickness, if needed. I practise this as a first step to proxy out the proportions of the costume and establish the forms and silhouette. My next steps were to use Maya for any difficult surface modeling, besides as finalizing the proxy meshes I made in ZBrush. I besides used Marvelous Designer quickly to create the flowy skirt.

After completing the last models in Maya, I brought the entire outfit into ZBrush for a final sculpting pass, created low poly meshes from the terminal sculpt and used GoZ to send the geometry back into Character Creator. Upon the geometry returning to Graphic symbol Creator, I was making sure to establish if the geometry is article of clothing or an accompaniment as this establishes how it is skinned to the body. Accessories will follow the bones and clothing objects volition skin to the body and current skin weights.

Part three: Texturing the Torso and Outfits with Substance UDIM Workflow

Afterwards I have modeled the torso and the outfit, I brainstorm texturing. I started this past baking my high poly sculpted geo to my low poly model that has the ideal UV layout. I will bake a normal, AO, curvature, ID, world space normal, and position maps. Once this is done I can save these for importing and using inside Substance Painter later.

The new CC3+ base mesh has a UDIM tile UV layout which allows for a seamless workflow within Substance Painter utilizing its new UV tile workflow options. I chose to work with the clothes using texture carve up texture sets to demonstrate the versatility of the new base and the different ways you lot tin can work with your characters going frontwards. On this specific character, I take textured the vesture in a split up Substance scene than the trunk, because I had a lot of texture sets and was worried that the amount of large maps could create besides big of a file size to work with if the body was included.

The start step for texturing the torso is to brand certain the character is in A pose in Character Creator and and then click the "Export Character to Substance Painter" button on the pinnacle bar to export the model. This will export the model and the maps in neat folders for me to set up inside Substance Painter and begin the texturing process.

Once the texturing is completed, I exported the maps using the Character Creator to export the appropriate maps to apply to my model inside CC3.

Applying the new textures to the model in CC3 is very unproblematic, you only need to click the "Update Textures from Substance Painter" button on the elevation bar and navigate to the exported maps and it volition all load into their respective spots.

Part four: Utilizing the Content Library inside Character Creator to Create Original Designs

The next thing I want to talk about was the importance of utilizing the content library for the creation or this grapheme. Character Creator has an astonishing content library full of many useful tools; annihilation from poses to lighting rigs.

During the grade of this project I used many of these tools to help along the style. I used congenital-in eyebrows with color customizations, SkinGen for tattoo and makeup, Facial and Pose Editor for posing, and many lighting setups to finalize my character.

Part 5: Animative with iClone and Alive Link to Unreal Engine

The final phase of this projection was to animate in iClone and employ the Live Link to send the model directly into the Unreal Engine. iClone has and so many useful tools for animation, just utilizing the Live Link helped me to adjust camera angles and blitheness choices in real fourth dimension instead of making the iterations and reimporting the new grapheme animation every fourth dimension. I utilized the mocap animations already inside iClone and the purchased content assets, and blended them together with others to create a seamless animation that still felt very real.

Once the character was within Unreal Engine, I ran the Car Setup tool to set upwards the materials properly. There were some physics tweaks with the skirt and cloth tweaks on the hair that were needed as they don't transfer at the exact same values, simply polishing this within Unreal Engine is very simple. Overall utilizing the iClone Unreal Live Link was actually quick and well worth it to present my final character.