Reallusion officially joins the Blender Development Fund to pioneer the next wave of Character innovation

Founded in 2000, Reallusion software simplifies character creation and animation like nothing before. Major products include Character Creator (CC) for character creation, iClone (iC) for facial and body animation, and ActorCore an asset store dedicated to scan-quality characters and AAA mocap animations.

In early 2021, Reallusion introduced the Blender Character Pipeline, a streamlined workflow between iClone, Character Creator and Blender. Now, Reallusion is commiting to the Blender Development Fund and becoming a Corporate Silver partner while planning a string of new features that will harness the best of both programs to unlock entire new synergies. 

Best Together 

There is a large user overlap between Blender and Reallusion communities. This complementarity is obvious. In 2021 the Reallusion Lip Sync Animation Contest alone brought in more than 130 entrants from Blender, including first prize winner – Loïc Bramoullé.

“We believe that Reallusion’s innovative character solutions plus Blender’s powerful editing has proven to be the most practical character pipeline, making a marked difference in the future of 3D character creation.”

Charles Chen – CEO of Reallusion

Via Reallusion’s disruptive character pipeline, Blender users can easily build unique characters based on fully-rigged human models from Character Creator, with natural talking and body animations in iClone, to beautifully render in Blender with ultra-realistic digital human shaders; proving the success of the Reallusion to Blender character pipeline.

“The Blender Development Fund is receiving an increasing level of industry donations. Blender has become an indispensable part of a modern 3D creation pipeline. We’re very happy that Reallusion decided to support core Blender development this way.”

Ton Roosendaal – Chairman Blender Foundation

2021 Rewind: A Series of Blender Plug-in Support

Reallusion already took several steps in 2021 to integrate Reallusion’s software with the Blender platform. Users can find a list of Blender plugins that help automate CC character import, bring in iClone animation, add character rigs, and complete a hair design workflow.

The Blender CC3Tools is an open source plugin that imports CC characters into Blender, auto sets digital human shaders for Eevee render, and transfers CC cloth physics for simulation. This tool can also send Blender creations back to CC, providing custom blendshapes, materials, and mesh assets. 

The Hair Tool is an Blender addon that helps users easily generate hair-cards based on 3D curves in a non-destructive way, with all the features needed for unique Smart Hair designs. 

With Auto-Rig Pro, users can send characters from Reallusion to Blender, with all their clothing and accessories, in just one-click. This plugin enables instant rendering of ActorCore animations in Blender or the addition of new motions in Blender AutoRig Pro.

RigiMap, an unique plugin that brings iClone and ActorCore motion data to Meta-rigged (Rigify) characters. Not only does this ease the animation editing process, but it also provides a gesture library, while being  able to bake IK/FK.

At the same time, Reallusions’ iClone 7 (IC7) Omniverse Connector also enables collaborative short film projects with Blender, with USD sync through Nvidia’s real-time photorealistic simulation platform.

2022 Prospective: More Powerful Features to Come

And this is just the beginning, as Reallusion builds on this momentum when moving forward into 2022 with a series of new feature plans. 

• Round-trip Character Design Pipeline
  • Directly update selected items instead of sending the entire character back-and-forth. This will speed up the iterative process on mesh editing, blendshape design, and texture creation.
  • Preserve all material data, physics attributes, and other data settings with an  in-and-out process.

• iClone Blender Data Link
  • Enables simultaneous animation sync from iClone to Blender, where users will be able to see immediate updates in Blender while making animation changes in iClone.

• Character with Blender Meta-rig  
  • Automatically assign the Rigify meta-rig once importing iClone or CC Characters into Blender, while supporting native Blender motion editing and animation back into iClone.

Both communities can count on Reallusion to continuously roll out additional features that  further accelerate the Reallusion-Blender pipeline, as we keep innovating and integrating for the long haul. 

Join the Revolution 

Reallusion and Blender are both in a new revolution that compliment each other, as we aim to bring down traditional industry entry barriers to empower all levels of users in 3D character production. 

There has never been a better time to be a pro animation artist. And as we look to the future, we invite independent developers to join us in building a better Blender pipeline, so that creators everywhere can crossover and realize their true creative potential.