There are so many new features in Reallusion’s standalone, Character Creator 3 Pipeline, that I will be devoting some entire articles to specific features such as the new “Create” feature. This incredible feature will import clothing and other items in OBJ format for fitting and skinning in CC3.

We can manipulate Vertices, Faces or Elements along with a new sculpting tool to raise, lower or smooth mesh. This allows for a lot more adjustment than existed in previous versions of Character Creator.

Let’s see what we can do with all these DAZ goodies we’ve accumulated over the years.

DAZ & CC3

There is a new Transformer tool to get complete characters into CC3 but when it comes to offhand items and pieces of clothing the Create menu gives us a way to get them in place ready for skinning. We can bring in Hair, Clothing, and Accessories with this method. Whether it’s an old legacy character, Poser asset or Genesis doesn’t matter with this method.

Export your item(s) out of DAZ Studio as an OBJ. The item(s) are put into place with the standard manipulation gizmos and the new mesh editing feature when needed. Each of these went through a one-button skinning process with the skinning tool that does not involve painting weights. You can paint the weight for refinement later, but this was not necessary with the items I used for this test.

There were no bumps in the road on this trip. In fact, it was rather pleasant considering how smooth everything went. You can see so for yourself in the tutorial.

Clothing and Items from DAZ Inventory

Marvelous Designer & CC3

A CC3 base female was exported in OBJ format then added as an avatar in Marvelous Designer. Simple clothing was designed including bell bottom pants, shirt, headband, and leg sash. Each of these items was individually imported into CC3 via the Create menu and processed as described in the DAZ section above.

Each item of clothing was textured with simple images or colors within CC3 and the model was tested in various poses to check the skinning which passed with no further refinement needed.

ZBrush GoZ & CC3

The earrings, armbands, wristbands, necklace, and sandals were created in ZBrush and brought into CC3 by the same method as above. These were initially textured, and UV mapped in ZBrush and then more suitable Iray materials were substituted in CC3 for the render.

The same CC3 mesh was sent directly into ZBrush with the new GoZ function where the items were masked off and extracted the sent directly back to CC3 via GoZ. This eliminated all the previous exporting/importing that was required in the past.

Cleanup

Substituted some materials for Iray friendly materials to improve the render and that basically was all the cleanup needed before posing and rendering.

Clothing and Items Created in Marvelous Designer and ZBrush are Imported into Character Creator 3

As you can see this is one powerful set of new tools that brings character creation one step closer to that magical easy button we’re all waiting on. This opens the vast DAZ library to iClone users and allows DAZ users to leverage their existing inventory in the more versatile iClone ecosphere.

M.D. McCallum, aka WarLord, is an international award-winning commercial graphics artist, 3D animator, published author, project director, and webmaster with a freelance career that spans over 20 years.  Now retired, M.D. is currently working part-time on writing and select character development projects. You can learn more about MD on his website.