Picking Body & Face for Creating 3D Characters iClone

Series Summary

3D character creation and animation continues to gain in popularity with film-making such as Shrek, Ice Age, and Over the Hedge; and ever increasing realistic graphics in video games for computer, X-Box 360, Playstation 2, and Game Cube attain a “real life” feel in “Medal of Honor” and even in such fantasy games as “Halo” and “Resident Evil”. Reallusion Inc has created an incredible and easy to use animation program, called iClone, for beginning and veteran animation artists and filmmakers.

With this program you can learn animation and how to build your own three dimensional characters; starting from basic templates you can customize almost every feature from facial structure and expression to walking and break dancing.

In this free online video series learn from iClone content developer and expert character builder Paul Louis as he demonstrates how to create 3D characters and animation using iClone. Learn crucial steps such as matching the face using reference points, finishing the face and using the smudge and smooth tools, changing body size, changing facial features, adding hair, adding clothes, making a custom t-shirt and jeans, adding 3D environment, adding facial expression, adding music and movement, changing the camera, and playing the final animation.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com this is Paul Louis and I’d like to welcome you to how to create a 3D animated character in the program known as iClone, enjoy. Okay so to start off making our customized 3D character in iClone we’re going to open iClone and we’re going to come to our main screen and as you can see in the window there’s already a default character that you see, we’re going to go up to tools and click on character and then from the template section we’re going to choose the male bodysuit character. I’d like to start off with the male bodysuit character, double click on it it’ll bring it right into the window here, it’s a bodysuit that you can texture things onto and you can change the face but I like to use this because of the fact that you have a complete blank slate and you can work with any area of the body, you can work with the face and the shoes, you can just have a fresh start with this type of character here. So I want to go right up here and click on face because the first thing we’re going to do is import the face that we’re going to use on this character, so go up to tools, we’ll go to load image and I’m going to find in my texture folders here a photograph of a face that I found, it’s loading the face and there’s the face."