Easily create 3D Characters for Blender FAST

today I'm going to be taking you through a very  simple Pipeline on how to create Frey characters   that you can use in unreal and blender with rigs  morph targets for animating the facial and body   animation and beginner friendly and on top of  that being blender compatible I've also decided   to challenge myself because life isn't challenging  enough and do this within under an hour do I   achieve that well keep watching to see I just  want to say a massive thank you to our sponsor   today which is Patron which is me it's here I  can centralize all my live streams question and   answers and all my learning resources that I can  share with you I'm also going to be doing a live   stream of this entire process so you can watch me  mess up in real time with all that said let's get   on with the show my muse for today is Chan Lee  from the Fantastic Street Fighters series I want   to take Chan Lee and mix her in with a pixstar  Disney twist first stop darly free at this point   I'm having an exponential crisis because Dary free  has created some fantastic imagery that conveys   her power and strength really well next step is to  whiz over to Pinterest and put in the same prompt   as you can see from The Prompt it will give you  more of a diverse reference images from fan art 3d   characters to AI images with my reference images  downloaded from human and AI I'm ready to plunk   them into pure ref which is a great free tool for  collecting reference images the reason why I love   pure ref so much is because it floats on top of  all your applications which means you don't have   to switch screen you can change the opacity you  can move it around while you work and it's free   but in a real life scenario you actually want to  spend your most time on concept and freshing out   the overall idea of your character because that's  where a lot of people go wrong so don't do as I   do here take some time step two creating the basic  forms with the clock ticking I head into character   creator I'm going to have to use some kit bashing  techniques to get this done so I'm going to be   taking advantage of the fact that character  creator has three base models in their program   and my Victim today will be Camila I'm going to  be taking full advantage or probably abusing the   fact that I don't have to do a complete face  rig as well as all the morph targets for the   character it's actually in the base model itself  already not only that she has bones and weights   and clean topology as well ultimately this gives  me way more time to be creative with a character   rather than get caught in the technical stuff  remember I've got 1 hour to do this character and   time is a ticking we need to move in and sculpt  this character so first I need to Fresh Out the   overall proportion of the character's autonomy  I'm going to be using characters creators more   sliders just to get a quick basic shape that I  can then take into Z brush and sculpt this is   really quick and easy to do that took less than 5  minutes to get to this point she's now all set to   go into zbrush for further sculpting I'm going  to use the the integrated gozy button that will   transfer all my layers nicely into Ze brush ready  for sculpting at the beginning of the sculpt I   primarily rely on three brushes the move brush the  standard brush and the smooth brush I'm trying to   steer clear from the realism and embrace a more  stylized aesthetic it's all about exaggerating   the personality and bringing our character to  life with each stroke as I scul this character   I'm constantly moving it around into different  perspectives and position this is just to ensure   that the character doesn't have a flat face  and that I'm sculpting from all angles remember   perspective is everything and don't forget the  body as well you can come in and use the same   techniques on the body to refine the shape we are  now ready to go Z back into Character Creator and   check our progress because we now changed the  base shape of our character we just need to go   into the morph sliders and really quickly adjust  those so our eyes fit our face we're now going to   stylize the eyelashes I'm just going to drag and  drop a pre-created stylized eyelash flash onto my   character you can see how quick it is to change  different styles next is the eyeballs and as you   can see I'm just dragging and dropping pre-created  assets onto our character and it fits perfectly at   this point I'm getting serious uncanny valley  Vibes that is mainly because this is using a   realistic characters texture we're going to reuse  those uvw maps and quickly paint them in Photoshop   to be more bold and bright and cartoony with  less intricate detail I repeat this process for   the other uvw Maps so far I've got head body legs  and arm and that completes my character's uvw Maps   it's now time to give her some more cartoony teeth  so I just click this mouth open button on the   modifier panel and go to my content catalog and  grab some stylized teeth if you want to customize   these teeth you just go Z them straight back into  SE brush and do whatever you want with them I'm   just making use of the morph sliders again just to  reposition the teeth for a better sitting at this   point I turn off the auxiliary lights and turn  turn on the scene lighting but this gives me a   preview to see if I'm going in the right direction  I'm going to head over to the Motions panel at the   bottom of the screen and switch between different  facial animation profiles this is super helpful   to spot any potential issues in animating the  character's face early on now you might notice   that these animations are based on realistic human  Expressions but the thing is I'm not aiming for   realism I want our character to have a Charming  cartoony Pixar Vibe I also notied at this point   because I've made the eyes loads more bigger than  the original model the expression shapes aren't   fitting the eye blink correctly so I can go in  and fix that now so we just hit f8 to open up the   facial profile editor from here I select I blink  parameter when I push the parameter up to 100% on   the left side you can see the problem here all I  need to do is reduce the parameter down until the   eyelash is not going through the mesh and then  I'm going to click save which is this little   Thunderbolt icon and it's going to save those  parameters for both of the eyes swiftly moving   on to the hair for our character now you can  make your own hair and i' would like to do some   tutorials on how to do that but we are going for  speed you can jump into the real illusion content   store and pick up high quality hair card assets  a lot of these assets actually have morph sliders   so you can change the look and feel of them you  can also take them apart and use bits and pieces   to make a different asset of your own and that's  exactly what I've done with this character I can   also take it into zbrush for further sculpting  with that now completed we move move on to making   a custom outfit you can make clothes really  quickly by masking your character and then   extracting that mask I just quickly recorded the  process of doing this so you can see what it looks   like this method is free quite quick and you can  create any outfit you want however I know a lot   of people get stuck at this point and don't like  extracting from masks so I have a different option   for you here behold the ultimate kit bashing  in clothing this is the esset preset clothing   pack from Slava and I've been a massive fan of his  work on on the blender market for a while so he's   an independent developer he has created this huge  asset pack here these are all pre-made assets you   can just drag and drop them into blender I'm going  to take one of these clothing of item and show you   how quickly and easily you can kit bash it onto  your 3D model simply just export the file as an   fbx back in character creator we just go to create  and go to accessories and we just import that   dress fbx we just saved click on open and there  she is we just need to position it roughly on the   character now the positioning of the dress doesn't  have to be perfect I'm just roughly positioning   it here doesn't matter if the mesh penetrates the  character whatsoever we're going to be fixing that   in Z brush in a second so let's click on go Z from  here I just make sure that the dress is selected   in the sub tool and that I've got the move tool  essentially I then just push and pull the dress   so it's not going through any of the mesh so what  we going to spend hours sculpting this dress to   this body no we're going to use Dynamics you will  find the Dynamics up here if you go to this little   dock symbol over here just left click and drag  it over to the left side so ensure gravity is   turned off and then come over to contract and  just turn that on turn on collision volume and   then run simulation and then use the smooth rof to  smooth all your sins out I then use the move tool   to shape the dress to how I want it to be I then  figure out how I'm going to lower the topology and   I do this by going to the Zed re measure so I make  sure adap is switched on and I click on half this   essentially means every time I Z remesh it it's  going to half the amount of polygons that I have   high poly bad low poly kind of good I just keep  Zed re meshing until I got down to a level that   I'm happy with the topology and it's retaining the  shape of the dress as well the Z Rim mesh has gone   a little bit mad and gone through my mesh so  I just used the move tool without X symmetry   on and just push those bits out we're now going  to go in and add some trim detail to this dress   if you go to the the brush and select curv tube  snap and just simply drag and draw it around your   Edge okay so let's quickly create a belt for our  character so go to sub tools and underneath sub   tools there's an option saying append so click  on that and we're going to select cylinder 3D   from the list and that will pop the cylinder  3D into our scene use the move transform tool   to scale up and position your cylinder 3D around  your character kind of where you want the belt to   be I'm just going to switch the polyframe mode  on so I can see how many poy there are to this   mesh and holding down shift and control I'm just  going to mask out an area of the belt that I want   to keep if you then come down to the display  properties and click on the double button this   will make the object double-sided if you go to  your geometry Tab and then to modified topology   and delete Hidden and this will delete any of the  Hidden mesh that we masked off earlier we're going   to open up the Dynamics panel once again and just  drag it over wherever you want to see it and make   sure gravity is is off and contact is on and then  Collision volume is on and then run simulation and   it should shink back to your character like this  if it doesn't just to change the inflate and the   contact amount I now want to add some thickness  to the geometry so if we come to the geometry   Tab and come to Dynamic subdiv and then increase  the thickness you then click apply and then it   just makes it thicker then if you want to make it  smooth just increase the smooth subdivision I do   it by one and once again click apply so now I'm  going to quickly create some accessories for my   character I'm going to create those sort of spiky  cuffs that are inspired by CH Lee I simply take a   cylinder and then give it some thickness and then  bevel it around the crease edges with the move   tool selected I then just press the unlock icon  to reposition the Gizmo so it's in the center of   the cuff and then I append a cone and just really  rudiment just position it around the cuff itself   in the sub tools I just ensure that all the cones  are sitting underneath the cylinder layer I then   select the merge tool and then merge everything  down into one object with the cuff accessory   completed I just duplicate it and position  it on the other side of the character okay   so let's transfer all these new items of clothing  and accessories back to character creator so just   click the all button I'm going to uncheck the  base mesh and only update the clothing items on   the accessory as well or change it to accessory  rather than update to cloth important I now need   to add some skin weight to the clothing this  ensures that the clothing sits on the character   correctly especially when animating this used  to be a laborious task but now it's a click   of a button and it's pretty much done so I'm  just going to go over to the modifier panel and   click on transfer skin weights I'm going to just  select the default weight setting and click apply   and baby it works like a charm I just repeat this  process for every accessory and piece of clothing   on my character to check the skin weights I just  put a default spin motion on her I'm not worried   about the the flap on her skirt here because  we're going to add physics to that to make it   move more naturally next we need to uvw unwrap  the clothing and the accessories the quickest   and best way to explain what uvw unwrap is it's  a bit like unfolding a cardboard box onto a flat   sheet to be able to paint it the quickest way I  can think about unwrapping these clothes is using   the UV Master plugin in zbrush so back to zbrush  we go here so make sure the dress is selected to   go to zed plugins here and just going to drag  this entire panel over here to the right so I   can see what I'm doing come down to UV master  and then click on unwrap and then if you want   to check what it's actually done click on flatten  and you can see what it's done here if you don't   like those uvw maps you can use control painting  if you click on unflatten and go to enable control   painting got protect attract an array so if you  click on protect you literally just draw on where   you want the seam to be attracted to on the dress  which will help zbrush determine where you want   it to be unwrapped switching over to protect will  indicate to zbrush where you've painted you do not   want any seams and lastly you have a raise which  will remove the paint for attract and protect if   you've gone wrong once you're happy with the areas  you've attracted and protected you can click on   unwrap and then go to flatten and it's that easy  click on unflatten and we then go down to texture   map and click on that and we're going to create  a texture map from the uvw map go to create and   new from uvw map and as you can see we've got our  uvw map onto our character now the next step is to   paint this uvw map you can either shoot it off  into Photoshop and paint it by hand I actually   prefer that method or you can use poly paint  looking at her body shape it's still too realistic   so I'm going to go in and change the morph sliders  to give her a bit more of a cartoonish body shape   our character still has some super realistic feet  but nevertheless we are going to put some boots on   that so to complete this character I'm just going  to grab some boots I purchased from real Illusions   content store however I'll probably go and make  these boots myself later on down the line it just   kind of speeds things up and allows me to get  into the animation process a lot quicker I also   just came into the base color and just changed the  boots to White to suit the theme I was just about   to pose a character and realized she doesn't have  any pants on so we're going to save her dignity   and grab some pants and pop them on I didn't  complete the challenge it's gone over an hour now   I'm going to continue with the tutorial and get us  into blender and ready to animate I will however   do this tutorial again with another character and  do it in an under an hour on my live stream on my   Patron and I'm going to complete this tutorial  for you even if it takes be 20 minutes more   because we're not far off so we move next I went  to the edit pose dialogue to get the character   into a pose before I bring her into blender simply  click on the circles that correspond to the bones   and the body and then it's all about rotating  and moving each part to where I need it I'm   going to put her in some sort of kind of playful  pose maybe she's about to kick but with her fist   together it's not the most dynamic pose but it's  a quick and effective alternative to just the T   pose for importing into blender now I'm going to  put an expression on my character's face via the   edit facial dialogue this is where the magic  happens for the character's Expressions I can   tweak the Expressions part by part or start with a  default expression and then modify it the control   is all in the sliders this feature is especially  valuable for animations and fine tuming vims   and expressions but for now I'm going to keep it  simple and just give her a smile on her face and   that's it we're all set to go into blender we're  going to quickly install a plugin which will allow   us to import our character creator characters into  blender with complete control and ease and it also   will convert our rig to a rigify rig this is an  absolutely free plugin and the developer I believe   his name is Victor soup day and the link to his  GitHub is in the description below all you need   to do is go and find the source file over here and  click the zip file and download the zip file do   not under any circumstance unzip the zip file you  just want to keep it as it is go back to blender   go to edit preferences add-ons from the left  toolbar and then install on the top toolbar and   simply navigate to that CC blender tools. zip that  we just downloaded and click on install add-on   just type c in the search box and just and just  check the box if it's not checked already with the   Character Creator blender pipeline plugin ready to  go we'll hit the end key or just click the little   arrow up here this opens up the CC pipeline panel  it's basically the control center for everything   we're about to do Under the import section click  on lighting physics and rify and then click on   import character a couple of cool things that have  happened is that your rig has been converted into   a rigify rig as you know that is is compatible  with blender and all the skin weights have been   transferred across perfectly as you can see here  with all the morph Blends as well which is very   nice but this gift has not finished giving I'm  just going to put in a quick backdrop here and   plop in the camera I'm now ready to show you the  amazing scene tools so if you go down to scene   tools you can switch between the scene lighting  and each one of these will give you a different   set of lighting parameters this is really cool  because you can use as a template and go in and   edit these lights individually it just gives you  a head start with everything having the lighting   rigs pre-made let's quickly visit the material  parameters here so this is a front end UI for   the shaders tab up at the top you can change  the mouth ambient occlusion the nostril ambient   occlusion the lips the roughness the specular  the micro roughness all the individual Parts as   well essentially character creator has built you  a node Shader so if you want to check that out   you just go to the shading t Tab and have a look  in there yes I know it's a little bit messy and   I uh would probably go in and adjust this down to  4 nodes only but again it's a fantastic start for   somebody who's coming in to try this for the first  time and not be overwhelmed okay I must admit that   was quite a fastpaced tutorial if you want to go  into any more depth and detail and I'm going to   do more lives and question and answers on the  patrons but also if you've got any outstanding   questions please use my comment section below  and I'll be more than happy to help you out I   really hope that I've inspired or perhaps given  you the confidence to go and try this out now I   know I'll get the comments well you can do this  all for free in blender that's not the point   actually a lot of people watching this video would  have attempted to do this all in blender and got   completely stuck in the Quagmire and this is just  an easier process of doing it it might not be free   but sometimes you do have to pay for software and  I am pretty tired now so I'm going to go and lie   down on the floor but if you haven't subscribed  please please please subscribe to this channel   it would mean the world to me and if you want to  become a patron as well and support this channel   that would be massive thank you so much from me to  you goodbye and that will do it bye-bye oh yeah I   nearly forgot could you tag me in your Creations  because I love seeing what you generate from   these tutorials it's always at plumped Muse on  every platform and again that will do it bye-bye

Channel: Prompt Muse

Views: 135,548

Keywords: #blender #3dcharactertutorial #blendercharacter #aito3d

Id: axkgDt55fJE

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023