Learn to create an animated character from scratch and import it into CRYENGINE with our latest video tutorial.


In our latest CRYENGINE Master Class, Roman Perezogin, one of our Junior Technical Designers, takes you step-by-step through the process of creating a character and then importing it into CRYENGINE by using Character Creator 3 and iClone 7 from Reallusion and Adobe Photoshop. The video shows you a practical, professional workflow that you follow along with and apply to your own projects.

Character Creator 3 is a powerful tool which you can use to create high-quality, realistic characters and assets, including a rich feature set which allows you to edit almost everything you create, and even add your own textures with Substance. iClone 7 is a highly-intuitive, real-time animation application that allows you to easily create sequences thanks to its timeline and animation set up. You can download trial versions of both applications from https://www.reallusion.com/.

This tutorial uses both applications to create a character and add facial animation to it, then demonstrates how to import the character in into a CRYENGINE level and adjust settings with the material editor. It also shows you how to use Adobe Photoshop, the ubiquitous graphics editor available with a free trial from https://www.adobe.com/, to adjust shaders and the parameters of various character materials.

To get the most out of this tutorial, you should be familiar with the basics of game development and using the CRYENGINE sandbox. . You can also use written documentation in conjunction with this tutorial. If you are completely new to CRYENGINE, we recommend that you download our beginner’s course or watch the tutorial on our YouTube channel.
We hope you find this tutorial useful. If you’re looking for more tutorials, don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you have suggestions for tutorials, let us know on the forum, or via Facebook and Twitter. You can ask questions, pick up tips and tricks, and more by joining our community and the CRYENGINE development team over on our official CRYENGINE Discord channel. If you find a bug in the engine, please report it directly on GitHub, which helps us to process the issue quickly and efficiently.

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Hi!
Excellent ! I got useful information here. Thank you!

Hi there, I am really impressed with the tutorial and the ease of importing skinned character in CryEngine.
However, It seems like the skeleton exported from iclon7 and character creator seem to follow a different naming convention than the default Bip01 skeleton shipped for GameSDK. I reckon this might create problems with playing default GameSDK .caf animations on the exported CC/iclone7 rig. If I were to rename the exported skeleton to Bip01, would that allow me to play default caf files on the new skeleton?

Thanks!

Hi there,

Indeed taking animations from another skeleton will not work as intended, even if you rename the bones. Subtleties in how the skeleton is rigged, positions and setup, along with the export process can cause severe animation issues.

You would need to re target the animations for your iClone rig. For your information we also provide FBX Animations designed to be re targeted for this purpose in our free marketplace package:
https://www.cryengine.com/marketplace/product/CEMP-2184

Very easy to get Characters in to cryengine Great video.

Just i few small thing i have noted .
Characters in iClone are facing -y and after rotating 180 and loading in Character tool they still face -y only when playing anim do they face +y ?.
And The timeline frames in Iclone dont match Character tools timeline, which makes it a pain finding the start / end frames in import animation.

Thanks .

Looks fantastic!

Hey Tomie, nice job!

Couple things regarding your issues:

Rotating the character will not help, you will need to re-orient the animations in the curve editor of iClone, or 3DS Max, whichever you use. iClone should have the possibility to do that.
Regarding the timeline issue, always export everything - If you want to time the animation, you can select them in the animation import tool in CE and select the frames you want to use.

regarding re-orient.
This is defeating the point of paying for ready made assets.

Lumberyard offers an option to change the facing direction which works good. and i only spent a day getting a fully playable Character into the engine.


Could cryengine not intergrate something like this in future updates ?.
Thanks

character creator 3 pipeline does not required any software even I clone 7. if you want to create character dress them and export them to other software then pipeline c3 can do it own.

I can now blend / export / import or customize my characters from ZBrush, CryEngine, Unity and Daz to do my geometry homework on Three-Dimensional Geometry in worksheets on Wonderland Mathematics and Math-Salamanders.

My tasks are mostly related to character design (aesthetics, abilities, movement). I paid $1200 for iClone 7.0 Should I also get Character Creator 3?