Reallusion's Character Creator 3 and Carrara

Hermit Crab

Thanks for getting back with some of your results, MatCreator - you've done well, especially to bring a variety of software into the workflow.  I'm glad you're enjoying your investment and hope you get the results you want in Carrara.

There is a Carrara Animation Course by Phil Wilkes (PhilW) sold here in the store: https://www.daz3d.com/animation-in-carrara-video-tutorials

@UnifiedBrain:  The Reallusion program used is called Character Creator 3 and comes free in a limited version with Iclone.  There is another paid for version called Character Creator 3 Pipeline which can export animated figures as .fbx files - this is what I was showing working in Carrara in the opening post of this thread.  The animations don't originate in Character Creator - it is only a figure design and set-up program.  However, anyone who has Iclone can bring Iclone motions into CC3 to be exported with the figure.  These are generally very high quality motion capture sequences which can be chopped and changed or 'blended' together to create longer or shorter motions - as MatCreator has done.  Iclone has other tools for creating animations and these can be saved in the user's asset library.

Exporting any motions which have been bought from Reallusion's store (as opposed to one's own or the Reallusion motions which come with the program) involves paying extra for an export licence.

'Character Creator Preset' a character exported from CC3.  These can either be Reallusion's CC3 characters or characters imported from various other programs which CC3 converts to CC3 characters. 

Edited to get rid of extra word.

WendyLuvsCatz

It’s only as good as the iMotion and the user, I am perfectly capable of importing iClone FBX into Carrara with footsliding myself 

one thing iClone does have is a floor/foot collision solver which helps immensely and can be baked to the iMotion for export.

UnifiedBrain

Thanks Markus.  I was just responding to MatCreator, who restarted this old thread.  I should have reread the thread from the beginning before posting. :)

My main question was, can can a smooth walk cycle (Mocap?), such as MatCreator demonstrated, be created inside Carrara?  The Iclone workflow is WAY too complicated for me to even consider at this point.

Hermit Crab

Typically, I failed to answer your main question, UnifiedBrain!

Remembering that I'm no animator, I have always understood a convincing human walk-cycle to be one of the most difficult things to achieve, partly because our eyes are 'tuned-in' to how humans should look and act.  There is a lot to take account of: the body rises and falls with each step; the arms swing to help balance the body as the weight is transferred from one leg to the other: the impact with the ground and changes in the poses of the feet; the swing of the hips: the fact that people will not always walk in a perfectly-repeated cycle ... etc, etc.

But it is something that could be attempted in any software which allows pose-to-pose animation.  Put the figure in a pose, advance along the timeline and adjust the pose and so on.  My knowledge of NLA clips is minimal but I think you could concentrate on only the arms, say, and save an NLA clip before concentrating on the legs (I think).  The old Carrara 3 Handbook, which I bought many years ago shows how to create a simple walk-cycle and there are general tutorials on YouTube.

I shouldn't enthuse too much about Iclone here on the DAZ forum, but the basic workflow of animating within Iclone is very easy.  Simply put a character in a scene, select a motion from the library and drag it over the character.  The character animates and the timeline advances.  Add another motion in the same way and the figure animates further along the timeline.  If I select the figure I can drag another figure from the library to replace it and the new figure keeps the animations which the old one was given.  I can duplicate an animated character and the duplicates all have the same animation.  Getting an animation of two people arguing or having a sword-fight can be done in this easy manner.   The other animation tools would take a while to go into and I'm not an expert user.

@ Wendy: you are the expert in this with your amazing experiments - I'm pretty much all talk, unfortunately.  You're right, of course.  Canned animations are fine on an empty stage.  If the ground is uneven, then the feet often miss it or go through it.  The foot-sliding also drives Iclone users nuts, apparently.  I don't use it in earnest enough but I think it happens mostly when motions are combined and don't flow well into each other.  

MatCreator

I used the devil figure with clothes from iclone. The set I grabbed gave me the essential morphs pack which has the devil figure, but the clothes are standard.

I blended and edited motion presets that are standard with iclone, so nothing was an "extra purchase"... iclone is pretty awesome and very easy to use, even setting up a customized walk cycle isn't too difficult. I wouldn't know where to begin trying something like either of those two clips in carrara by itself.

I will check out that carrara site for sure. I'm anxious and curious to see some native carrara animations, thanks =)

PGre

This Carrara walk cycle took years to perfect.