What Can Be Achieved in One Night

An Overview of Making a Christmas Brief
In my nearly twenty years of utilizing iClone and different Reallusion merchandise, I’ve seen the software program transfer from a market area of interest to a whole animation bundle supporting most trade instruments and creating an economical methodology of manufacturing animation. The identical holds true for Cartoon Animator, its 2D cousin, which is a significant participant in its personal proper.
To show this potential to deploy animations in a day or night I tackled a brief Christmas themed, toy store animation with a lot of animated characters together with some “picket” toys with out legs and arms however they nonetheless danced to the Suno generated Christmas music, A Season in our Hearts because the driving pressure of the animation.
Under is the quick vacation video:
Gathering the Property
Considered one of my first duties was leaping over into Daz Studio which I exploit as an out and in instrument for my older Daz property. I transformed the Christmas Carol toy retailer to an FBX file and dumped it into the iClone workspace. I dropped the entire retailer full with toys, bushes and different Christmas objects and let iClone separate all of the meshes into particular person items after it requested if I wished to take action.

This characteristic alone saves a whole lot of time because it supplies a retailer filled with toys and different property as separate objects that I can then manipulate to my wants, together with skinning a few of the toys for animation utilizing drag and drop motions.
Producing and Rigging the Principal Characters
Earlier than I went to Meshy.ai I finished by Midjourney and used the immediate:
A full-body, ahead dealing with 3D Toon Santa in a T-Pose with arms stretched out to the edges set towards a stable white background.
I used the identical immediate for the elves after substituting the phrases Male Elf or Feminine Elf for Santa. This supplies some continuity of poses for AccuRIG to work with.

For some cause I can’t appear to get any consistency at Midjourney to get the arms palms-down for higher rigging. It solely occurs ever so usually and as you possibly can see from the ultimate mesh the feminine elf was wonderful apart from some weirdness within the cap; Santa had an additional finger on high of the hand whereas the male elf didn’t want any alterations.
GoZ to the Rescue
I used ZBrush to take away the additional fingers and clean out a few of the unusual strains on the feminine elf cap taking just some minutes. The built-in GoZ characteristic made the transfers from Character Creator 4 to ZBrush and again easy. No want for exporting and importing as integration with ZBrush runs deep.

The pictures offered an awesome place to begin for Meshy to create the above meshes in as near a T-Pose as I may get. It’s also possible to use A-Poses within the prompts. AccuRIG shortly turned the meshes into animatable characters.
If I’ve issues with deformed arms, I often simply rig a 2 fingered hand if common movement isn’t required. This hand rig will nonetheless open and shut your entire hand however isn’t to be used in closeups. If I’m on a decent time constraint I not often take time to rig all of the fingers except obligatory.
This will get the principle characters and many of the toy store out of the way in which. Now I solely have some odds and ends to collect up as I work. For an instance I added a cat curled up on a cushion close to the “different” Santa on the very finish of the manufacturing together with a wooden burning range. These had been last-minute additions that weren’t deliberate however added for environment.
Suburbs In Winter
I wanted a road scene outdoors the toy store home windows for filler. Proving that Reallusion property stand the take a look at of time, this pack is an oldie however a goodie loaded with winter-based property. What I used to be after was the Procuring Avenue prop that’s one aspect of a snow-covered retailer stuffed road with glow-based lighting on sure decorations. Being a single prop, this instantly gave the scene the filler it wanted.

Now that it’s now not a black void outdoors the toy store home windows we want exercise. Not quite a bit because the digital camera gained’t present the road in nice element, however sufficient to present us just a little motion.
Crowd Generator – Winter Crowd Set
That is the place the Crowd Generator actually saves manufacturing time because it makes fast work of filling the opposite aspect of the road with animated folks. The Winter Crowd set was an ideal match for the duty and after finding some idle motions I had a 20-person crowd created and animated in lower than a couple of minutes.

You gained’t see a lot of the group within the closing shot, however it’s there in case I alter my thoughts and need to use the group for extra element. Making a 5-person crowd versus a 20 crowd takes about the identical time and I had the computational overhead to deal with a good bigger crowd, why not?
The fundamentals of the scene are coming collectively shortly and I’m prepared so as to add the music and begin animating.
The Different Santa
For this character I used my very own Santa from {the marketplace} with out the cap and large coat sitting on a really good rocking chair generated by Meshy. This character shall be seen not directly, lounging by the hearth, because the digital camera strikes across the toy store inside. The inference shall be that it’s Santa.
The Soundtrack – A Season in our Hearts
I used to be very fortunate with Suno AI because it generated an awesome unique Christmas music on its first try to was in reality the primary music generated out of the preliminary pair. Typically I’ll drag and drop the music onto a prop, however I’ve to recollect which prop, and that is going to be a considerably busy scene.
I dragged in a field and set it as a dummy within the modify panel because the music container. A easy drag and drop related the music with the dummy. All I needed to do was search for the dummy within the scene supervisor to see if I wished to vary one thing about it.
Now I may have some enjoyable… animate the characters!
Dancing Santa and Elves
That’s proper… it is a music video, a style that outlined iClone in its early years and is a simple option to make a vacation video for household, pals and the web. A music video is a enjoyable, fast and simple automobile for brand new animators to get some expertise.
One more reason music movies are nice for learners is the truth that the script could be free or no script in any respect and nonetheless find yourself with an awesome finish product. We don’t have to stick to a sure sort of dance or motion. We simply want dancing. It couldn’t get a lot easier.
I select sequential routines from the Street Dancing Popping pack for Santa and two totally different routines from the Girl Dance pack for the female and male elves so they may groove alongside Santa with out stealing the present. I looped these motions to the top of the timeline.
Work or Preview Cameras
In the long run we’ll solely be utilizing a single animated digital camera run however that doesn’t imply that it’s the solely digital camera within the scene. I relied closely on the Preview digital camera, and we will add any variety of cameras we want to have the ability to view the scene correctly for animating from totally different angles. That is fully as much as you as to what number of work cameras you employ.
Animate All the pieces
Have to animate one thing with no arms or legs? Use AccuRIG for the skinning with its bone masking characteristic to masks out the bones for lacking legs and arms so that they gained’t look unusual when dumping a movement on them.
Once I say “animate all the things” that’s near what occurred. I dropped the motions on the principle characters and timed it to the music. It was straightforward and went easily. Then I seen the toy store had some rows of picket troopers on the cabinets within the digital camera shot. Wouldn’t or not it’s good in the event that they danced too? In unison, in fact, to make it even simpler. Unison means animate one character then copy and paste nonetheless many characters you want.
To make them dance I needed to rig them, and it was really easy in Character Creator 4 AccuRIG that it must be unlawful. The Prop Puppet would have labored too however I simply wished to pull and drop motions to avoid wasting time.
Picket Toy Troopers, Teddy Bears and Bushes
I despatched the toy soldier over to Character Creator 4 and AccuRIG took care of the exhausting work whereas I masked out the lacking arm and leg bones so the movement wouldn’t have an excessive amount of deformation on playback. Once more… fast and simple out and in. A matter of minutes.

This was beginning to come collectively after I seen the lifeless Teddy Bears! Now these need to be animated so into CC4 they went. I once more masked out the legs and arms after which despatched it again into the scene with no importing or exporting… simply clicking a mouse.

Earlier than you recognize it, I used to be linking animated Teddy Bears to rockers, then twirling drums and spinning Christmas bushes. None of them had been tough. Now we’ve got motion within the scene. As soon as the principle characters begin doing their factor the entire different toys be part of the social gathering, and so they rock on to the music.
The Different Santa… Once more
I’m prepared to sit down the Different Santa within the rocking chair, hyperlink it to the chair then begin the chair rocking backwards and forwards between a few keyframes. I can copy and previous these keyframes all the way in which to the top of the timeline. Since Santa is linked to the chair and is barely seen on passing, we don’t need to animate him. That a lot is often implied within the viewers thoughts no matter whether or not it really animated or not.

Animating a Single Digital camera
Whereas making the digital camera run, I’ve to confess that I didn’t have a lot deliberate on what the digital camera monitor can be, so I did what I often do when there isn’t a tight script… I winged it. I knew what I wished to focus on in order that was the main determination maker on the place the digital camera moved to.
Additionally, with a single cam you should utilize transition curves comparable to “ease in – ease out” to clean the motion or change speeds going out and in. The digital camera change with a number of cameras would definitely work right here too however it doesn’t have the curve transitions.
Time Body to Completion
About 6 hours in a single late afternoon to night. No, that isn’t a mistake or a misprint. Not 600 hours, not even 60 hours however round 6 hours together with gathering up all of the property and motions wanted. Together with AI-generated property, customary property and the Suno generated music which conveniently avoids copyright points.
One Scene – One Challenge
One other factor about this video is that it’s multi functional undertaking file. One scene. Typically, this may’ve been chopped up into a number of tasks and pieced collectively in a video editor however iClone dealt with all of it, together with the sound. Now this doesn’t imply you gained’t need to drop the ultimate render into your favourite editor for publish work and tweaking, however it does present what iClone can do with out an exterior editor.
Snags
None! I didn’t need to backtrack or alter course as a result of one thing didn’t work. I’m having a tough time believing it was this straightforward. Whereas this was a easy video in idea there have been no hiccups that made me waste time or get pissed off. Nothing made me alter my plans for the ultimate product. Actually, all of it went so effectively I used to be ready so as to add just a few issues and make just a few tweaks.
Abstract
So, what’s my level right here? Demonstrating how straightforward, quick and cost-effective Reallusion merchandise like iClone, Character Creator 4 and Cartoon Animator are. From massive productions to mom-and-pop operations and even one particular person with a ardour that few perceive, Reallusion merchandise are cost-effective, highly effective, straightforward to make use of.
One more reason this was a fast undertaking is because of using newbie’s stage animation that anybody can do. No edited or minimize up motions simply dragged and dropped or movement puppet.
It wasn’t that way back that the truth of going from an “concept” to “video” in a single afternoon or night would have gotten you laughed out the door. Now we simply get iClone, CC4 or Cartoon Animator and begin animating.
The turnaround time for a previz or easy animation has been considerably decreased and with extra polish that previz can flip into manufacturing footage. The underside has fallen out of the associated fee per second of animation when utilizing instruments like iClone, Character Creator 4 and Cartoon Animator.
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MD McCallum – WarLord
Digital Artist MD “Mike” McCallum, aka WarLord, is a longtime iClone consumer. Having authored free tutorials for iClone in its early years and chosen to write down the iClone Newbies Information from Packt Publishing in 2011, he was lucky sufficient to satisfy and alternate methods and suggestions with customers from all around the world and likes to share this info with different customers. He has authored a whole bunch of articles on iClone and digital artwork normally whereas reviewing a few of the hottest software program and {hardware} on the planet. He has been printed in most of the main 3D on-line and print magazines whereas staying true to his greatest ardour, 3D animation. For extra info click on right here.
