Game developers face constant challenges to deliver their game from concept to commercialization and some have chosen the Reallusion iClone character creation and animation solution to get their title to market faster and help to keep their studio on budget.
Featured game developers using Reallusion’s character and facial animation tools include; Invader Studios, HakJak Games, Vassago Studios and more featuring Unreal Engine, Unity and CRYENGINE.
*Check out some of the real-life stories below on how Reallusion’s new Game Character standards have empowered indie studios and solo game developers alike.
Generating AAA Studio Facial Animations for Animation-Ready Game Characters in Unity
Invader Studios from Italy, is an independent software house located in the Roman countryside. The company was officially founded in July 2016 by a group of young and ambitious game developers. The core team is made of more than 10 professionals with external collaborators working remotely from different regions.
After the worldwide resonance of their Resident Evil 2 unofficial remake, and their meeting and support from Capcom Ltd. in Osaka, Japan — Invader Studios is currently working on its first cinematographic survival horror IP developed with the Unreal Engine 4 titled: Daymare: 1998, which is planned to be released in 2018 on PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4.
Invader Studios has announced that thanks to Reallusion’s iClone Faceware Facial Mocap, Daymare: 1998 will be more cinematographic than ever as this animation technology has enabled them to streamline the production of their first, third person survival horror IP.
“Reallusion’s iClone Faceware technology is giving us fantastic advantages as it is incredibly fast, high-quality, and remarkably affordable. A true AAA technology potential for all indie videogame development studios like us.”
– Michele Giannone / Invader Studios
Making Photorealistic 3D Game Characters for Crowdfunded Games
Jedediah “HakJak” Steen is a solo game developer, striving to live a life-long dream of making games for a living. He quit his job at a Fortune 500 company and started HakJak Productions part-time in 2015, while finishing up college courses and raising a family.
After his first project – Guts & Glory, went viral on YouTube, he took a leap of faith to work on the project full-time. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign the game recently launched on Steam’s Early Access platform to let the community help shape the future of the project.
Jed discovered Reallusion software after becoming frustrated with trying to accurately recreate character models from photographs. When he found CrazyTalk 8, he was skeptical because it just seemed too easy to work well. Then he found Character Creator and realized that he could use that to rapidly build the rest of the character models and export them to Unity. Character Creator gave him far more freedom and power to create what he wanted than any other character creation software.
“I really wish I had found Reallusion software sooner so I could have made all the characters in my game with it. Basically, the entire process was easy and efficient, and produced high quality results. These tools are now valuable additions to my gamedev toolbox.”
– Jedediah Steen / HakJak Productions
Building Highly Detailed Non-Playable Characters for CRYENGINE
Vassago Studios was founded in 2014 by Roman Perezogin, who has been working independently with his own funds in this one-man studio, where he has utilized iClone and its Character Creator tool to meet deadlines and funding for his game – Darkness Anomaly.
In 2015, the production of Darkness Anomaly started with the creation of a playable demo which tapped into the CRYENGINE INDIE DEVELOPMENT FUND – a grant program for the indie dev teams doing work with CRYENGINE. During development Roman has repeatedly found himself in a time crunch where he needed to constantly advance his progress through the use of different tools. That is where he found iClone and Character Creator.
“We are currently using the Reallusion tools, and this is quite amazing in multiple ways as the possibilities with iClone to re-work animations, especially in the area of facial animation are pretty fast and stunning. It’s also a huge advantage that all iClone animations, and characters work surprisingly well with CRYENGINE.”
– Roman Perezogin / Vassago Studios
“Creating beautiful, highly-detailed NPCs in hours, and letting them come alive in the CRYENGINE was never so easy before! We are very lucky to have found the iClone software for indie devs.”
– Roman Perezogin / Vassago Studios
Creating and Animating Game Characters for Unreal Engine
Chad Schoonover is an experienced animator with extensive knowledge in animation and motion capture for AR / VR, Games, Film and TV.
In the past years he has been working on creating a non-proprietary quick turn around pipeline using, Maya, Motionbuilder, iClone, Faceware, UE4, Octane, MVN and Noitom magnetic suits. Along with keyframe animation as well as Motion Capture with layers. Full body and face.
The majority of my time has been spent working in Motionbuilder, Maya, UE4, and iClone; with extensive experience in almost all areas of motion capture and character animation, as well as building non-destructive animation pipelines, and blend trees.
I bring creative solutions to improbable demands.
“Creating game characters and animation is a snap for Unreal. There’s lots of tools out there for animation, but iClone 7 just does it a bit faster and the characters look great inside the real-time PBR viewport while I’m animating.” – Chad Schoonover
To prove his pipeline, Chad has created a 10 video tutorial series that show the process to create and animate Character Creator characters for iClone, motion editing in Motion Builder and iClone for export to Unreal.
The entire process workflow is documented by Chad where he uses screenshots to detail the path to Unreal from iClone. Download PDF here: Reallusion_CC2iC2UE4
1 comment
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