This section is for all the contestants of the 2026 Reallusion 3D Character Contest participants to share their Work-in-progress post (WIP Post) and ask any questions related to this year’s contest.
To keep things organized, please follow these simple guidelines:
Submission Category & Cash Prizes
Best Character Design - Realistic ($1,000 / $750 / $500 )
Best Character Design - Stylized ($1,000 / $750 / $500 )
Best Character Animation - Realistic ($2,000 / $1,500 / $1,000 )
Best Character Animation - Stylized ($2,000 / $1,500 / $1,000 )
Check our Contest Rule Page for detailed information. The maximum submission per category is one, which means you can submit to all categories with five different characters!
Time is ticking. Make your submission before Auguest 31st, 2026 (PT)!
Topic Tags:
[WIP Entry] — Use this tag when you are making a contest WIP post. Please use this tag only for this forum.
Please title your post as [WIP] 2026 Reallusion 3D Character Contest - (entry name) - (you name)
Not for This Subcategory:
Please avoid posting any other topics besides your WIP entry and asking contest related questions.
Don’t have the software and you already have a nice 3D profile? Please submit your application here.
Community Rules:
Keep discussions respectful and constructive. Insults or disrespectful behavior will not be tolerated and may result in a ban.
Let’s keep this space positive and helpful for everyone to learn and share!
“…which means you can submit to all categories with five different characters!”
So if I want to animate my character that is submitted already to Character Design, I can’t submit it animated into the Character Animation only a different character?
Makes no sense…
For this contest, we encourage you to submit your original characters. If your submitted character is based on another concept art or AI prompt, please also specify it in your WIP with the reference illustration and material.
I have a couple of questions:
Does this mean the original concepts have more value or have more ‘points’ compared to other characters that are made from someone else’s concept art?
Instead of sketching the character from scratch, if I photobash a few different images with AI then does that count as an original concept art? Will that have equal weightage compared to someone who sketched and prepared the concept art the traditional way?
I am assuming this is a 3D Character Creation contest, wouldn’t the end result is what matters the most instead of having some importance to how the concept art itself was achieved?
Hi everyone
I have a quick question regarding the submission requirements. For the “WIP / Process URL” field, am I allowed to provide the link to this exact thread here on the Reallusion forum where I am currently documenting my daily updates?
I am keeping all my workflow steps, concept thoughts, and progress screenshots here in one place, so I would prefer to use this forum thread as my main project log rather than external platforms.
Thank you for your help!
To clarify my previous question, the submission form says: “Please input a valid URL to your WIP posts on ArtStation, BlenderArtist, or ZBrush Central.”
Since I am keeping all my progress exclusively here on the Reallusion forum, will the submission system accept my Reallusion thread URL in this field? Or is it mandatory to cross-post and use one of those three external platforms?
I would really prefer to keep everything in one place here on the forum if possible.
Thanks for clarifying!
Hi, on realistic category is there a limit on poly-count ? is it meant to be game-ready ?
Could I create a cinematic quality character and strand-based hair systems in Maya or C4d and render the character in those softwares too ?
thanks.
You have to post on one of those three platforms. This contest is a way for Reallusion to show industry professionals what it’s software can do. the contest rules very clearly state: " You MUST create a WIP (work-in-progress) post on [ArtStation], [BlenderArtist], or [ZBrush Central] to showcase your progress, as this will be considered in the judging criteria". in the last two contests, you would not receive any points in the WIP catagory if you did not post on one of those three sites, and that is how it is with this one as well.
The part I haven’t figured out is if there is a reason to post on this forum at all.
Ah, that actually makes perfect sense now. Since I am using the 3-month contest license, keeping this thread active is probably their way of tracking my ongoing engagement and verification directly on their platform.
It makes sense that they want the best of both worlds: checking our activity here while promoting the software on major external platforms.
Thank you so much for the heads-up about the strict points system! I will definitely keep updating this thread as my main log to show my activity, but I will make sure to cross-post everything to ArtStation or ZBrush Central right away so I don’t lose those crucial WIP points. Thanks again!
I would prefer to use BlenderArtists but the link that they’ve shared is from the 2024’s contest. Would be good if they can host up a new page on BlenderArtist with the 2026’s contest title.
You are absolutely right, and that’s exactly what I ran into. Since there is no official 2026 page yet, I went ahead and created my project thread in the standard “Artwork / Work in Progress” section instead.
Is it usually fine to leave it there, or do these threads get moved automatically once the correct 2026 contest category is officially set up?
For now, keeping it there seems to be the only way to have a working link for the submission form.
I just confirmed it with Eric on email that this year there’s not a 2026 section on blender artists, and it is fine to put it in work in progress section on Blender Artist. They’ve also updated the link on the BlenderArtist hyperlink on the rules page.
Submission Category & Cash Prizes
Topic Tags:
Not for This Subcategory:
Community Rules: