CC4 / ActorCore / AccuRig to Cinema 4D Pipeline

[blkmsk]

Hi, my name is Ben!

almost 2 years ago I discovered Character Creator and the creative flexibility and freedom it offers and integrated it into my workflow. But as I still wanted to work in my prefered DCC, which is Cinema4D, I started developing some tools to enhance the experience when working with CC4, ActorCore or AccuRig characters in Cinema 4D. The toolkit consists of a full body and facial rig as well as some tools to quickly import and retarget animations from different sources.

CC4D Tools

Introduction | CC4D Tools Manual

CC4D Tools: Character Creator 4 to Cinema 4D - Quick Setup Guide

And as I released a bigger update recently, which added a first version of a auto material setup for Redshift Render in Cinema 4D, I thought its a good time to create a ‘CC4 → C4D’ topic here on the forum for feedback, questions, suggestions and discussions about the Character Creator / Cinema 4D pipeline.

CC4D Tools: Character Creator 4 to Cinema 4D - Redshift Material Setup

My ultimate goal is to create a full ‘roundtrip’ pipeline for Cinema 4D as there is for blender and unreal, but its still some way to go

The next big topics on my roadmap are:

• support of ‘non-standard’ skeletons (right now only CC skeleton is supported)
• wrinkle support
• adding export options (C4D → CC4)
• refining the existing tools based on user feedback

I hope its ok to share this here!

Cheers Ben

[Nirwana]

Hi @blkmsk,

Maybe I missed it, but the one feature I’m still looking for is getting wrinkles to export properly for use with RS materials inside C4D. According to the video, the last update for CC4D Tools includes an Auto Material Setup, but does not seem to support wrinkles yet, correct?

[blkmsk]

Ah yes, correct! that also is on the list as the auto material setup is in place now

[Locutus]

Hello Ben,

I’m using your tool and I think it’s great.

Best regards
Peter

[blkmsk]

Hi there^^

just to keep this thread updated a bit more regularly here is little preview on what I’m currently working on and planing to integrate to the CC4D Tools with one of the next updates.

First one is a better OBJ exchange workflow between C4D and CC. As it is not possible to use a OBJ file from C4D as morph target in CC out of the box because C4D either keeps the OBJ groups or the vertex index when importing a OBJ exported from CC. But both is necessary to reimport the file in CC.

CC4D_tools_OBJimExport_WIP-01.mp4

And the second one is the integration of the facial wrinkels, of which I have a first working prototype.

CC4_wrinkleSetup_Research_v005_.mp4

Cheers Ben

[Nirwana]

@blkmsk

And the second one is the integration of the facial wrinkels, of which I have a first working prototype.

Nice to see you are working on this. Now, this is important to me.

Why is an OBJ exchange workflow desirable? So far, all I have needed was FBX to get stuff from iClone into C4D. Am I missing something? Why would I re-import an OBJ from C4D back into CC4? After sculpting in C4D?

[blkmsk]

@Nirwana

Why is an OBJ exchange workflow desirable? So far, all I have needed was FBX to get stuff from iClone into C4D. Am I missing something? Why would I re-import an OBJ from C4D back into CC4? After sculpting in C4D?

I usually model or sculpt my characters from scratch in C4D. To get this shape then onto the CC_Base_Body mesh I take the exported OBJ of the neutral base from CC and ‘shrink’ wrap it onto my model (sometimes in combination with the headshot 2 plugin).
The advantage is when I import this as a morph slider in CC it will adjust the bone positions automatically. also I can reuse the body/face shape for future characters because it is now a morph. And if I’m correct this can only be done with OBJ files.

But of course: I could also create a full body morph from a character that has been imported as FBX.

[Nirwana]

Well, I usually just use characters that I purchased (occasionally with minor tweak in CC) so I’m primarily interested in the iClone-to-C4D pipeline and not in the other direction.
I may add hair in C4D to a character exported from iClone and sometimes clothing (either also exported from iClone or sourced from other 3D sites), but I never create characters from scratch. Frankly, I don’t really see a point in doing so for the kind of content I make.

So, yes, support for wrinkles is a lot more important to me that an OBJ workflow, although, of course, I realize that you—being the developer of the plugin—make the decision how and where to apply development resources; especially, if the OBJ workflow is important to how you use the pipeline.

[AutoDidact]

@blkmsk

I usually model or sculpt my characters from scratch in C4D. To get this shape then onto the CC_Base_Body mesh I take the exported OBJ of the neutral base from CC and ‘shrink’ wrap it onto my model (sometimes in combination with the headshot 2 plugin).

Well it is probably best to make the pipeline tool with two way capabilities as I can see why some users of external 3DCC’s may want to use their modeling tools in C4D to create/modify and send items back to CC4/Iclone.

There were a quite few scene prop items
(sci-fi consoles, hallways, weapons etc) that I modified in Blender and used the Blender pipeline tool to send them over to CC3/Iclone for use in my cartoon shaded Film I rendered in Iclone

AI voice acting clips GHOST ORIGINS

[Nirwana]

@Nirwana

So, yes, support for wrinkles is a lot more important to me that an OBJ workflow, although, of course, I realize that you—being the developer of the plugin—make the decision how and where to apply development resources; especially, if the OBJ workflow is important to how you use the pipeline.

I’m happy to say that the latest update to CC4D Tools introduced support for wrinkles in Redshift (apart from the OBJ export and import), which is why I am currently testing the tool. Since the update came out a few days ago already, I’m a bit surprised that Ben has not mentioned it here.

I’m currently rendering a little test, but so far I’m pretty satisfied with CC4D Tools. If my other tests prove equally successful, I’ll probably change my current workflow:
So far, I have always exported the complete character, including all the body and facial animation from iClone via FBX in one go.

Now, I’ll have to export the clothed character from CC (I never exported anything to C4D from CC before) in bind pose and without any animation, because apparently iClone won’t create the JSON file during FBX export that CC4D Tools apparently needs for the wrinkles setup. Any facial and/or body animation will have to be exported from iClone and then “retargeted” (just takes a couple of clicks with CC4D Tools and waiting for the scripts to do their thing) onto the character previous imported from CC.
I have been trying the tool with Camila. While the automated RS material setup works well, I noticed that—at least for “Advanced”—the hair material used by CC4D Tools looks different from what the hair looks like in iClone. When I dug into it a little, I found that (a) the hair used SSS and (B) did not use the diffuse map in the color channel, which made the hair look a darker shade of blond and also increased render times noticeably.
So I deactivated SSS and fed the diffuse map into the color channel, and now the hair renders faster while the color is closer to what it looks like in iClone. (I’ll be looking into re-creating Camila’s hairstyle with C4D hair next, anyway.)

There are still a number of things I need to figure out:

• How to use the body and facial rigs (I never used such rigs before, outside the ones in iClone); in particular which controllers need to be moved and which rotated. In the manual, I think I even saw a demo clip where one controller was resized/scaled to move fingers. It would never have occurred to me to resize a controller to manipulate the joint hierarchy.
• I also need to find the joints (or their replacements) because I need those for Target tags, Constraint tags (for attaching props), and so on. Previously, I used to just unfold the joint hierarchy imported from iClone and locate the appropriate joint, but when rigged with CC4D Tools this original hierarchy seems no longer accessible (at least I haven’t found it yet). Presumably, some more digging is involved.

To be continued…

[blkmsk]

Thank you for posting this here! I would have done it once I’m back from vacation^^

If you have any issues or questions I’ll be happy to help!

[AutoDidact]

How to use the body and facial rigs (I never used such rigs before, outside the ones in iClone); in particular which controllers need to be moved and which rotated. In the manual, I think I even saw a demo clip where one controller was resized/scaled to move fingers. It would never have occurred to me to resize a controller to manipulate the joint hierarchy.

Welcome to the world of Human Ik control rigs My good man!
it may seem a little Daunting at first but once you get the logic of it
then digging down into the OM to grab and rotate a hand bone will seem ridiculous by comparison .

Also Maxon C4D has a decent animation layers system so you can make any minor adjustments
to a characters limbs on a separate layer while
leaving the original base layer animation untouched.

But the biggest advantage of the CC4D tool is
importing the character one time and being able to apply animation to him and then remove the animation from the control rig and replace it with a new imported animation while leaving the original imported character
(and any redshift adjusted materials etc) in C4D.

UE5 Quin Rigified-

[Nirwana]

@AutoDidact

Welcome to the world of Human Ik control rigs My good man!

I guess so. However, I expect to still do most of the animation tweaking in iClone. The CC4D Tools’ rig is for minor tweaks.

I have used the animation layer system in C4D before (as well as motion clips) to tweak animations on non-humanoid characters (e.g. quadruped animals) that were not imported from iClone, but came with their own animations in the FBX file that I purchased. But that was some time ago, so I suppose I will have to re-learn this stuff all over again.

@AutoDidact

But the biggest advantage of the CC4D tool is importing the character one time and being able to apply animation to him and then remove the animation from the control rig and replace it with a new imported animation while leaving the original imported character (and any redshift adjusted materials etc) in C4D.

Well, so far all my projects have had a single character with one animation for one scene. In other words, so far there was no need to replace the existing animation with a totally different one (e.g. use the same character in a different scene). (Eagle-eyed viewers of my channel may notice that I have animations with more than one character, however, these were not made using iClone/CC in any way, shape, or form.)

So, I would only re-import the character (including its animation) if I had tweaked the animation in iClone. Since the materials were already adjusted for Redshift after the first import; re-importing the same character simply means copying the Redshift materials onto the revised version, and that only takes a few seconds.
Now, with CC4D Tools I still need to re-import the character, but then I “retarget” the animation and bake it to the controllers of the “old” one. That also takes some time. So, while there may be fewer clicks required, the amount of time it takes is not all that different (to be clear, CC4D Tools is a great time safer compared to doing manually what it does with just one click; however, with my workflow so far, I never did it “manually”, i.e. by using the native C4D animation/re-targeting tools).

That said, if the character’s clothing is simulated in C4D, then it does take a little extra time to “connect” the clothing to the re-imported character, which is somewhat inconvenient, but also takes very little time compared to the time that is required to re-simulate everything because the animation has changed (e.g. re-connecting the clothes takes, say, 1 or 2 minutes, re-simulating may take an hour or two). I have not tried cloth simulations with CC4D Tools yet; I expect it to work, but you never know.

BTW: Cloth simulations are the main reason I have to go back to iClone and tweak character animations, because, if the body mesh intersects (e.g. under the arms, arms vs (female) breasts, crotch area, and legs in certain poses, or— very tricky—fingertips intersecting the body mesh) that plays havoc with the simulation (and the intersection may only be for one frame, not really visible unless you look for it in slow-motion; or it may happen between frames with the cloth simulation still stumbling over it, because it uses substeps that interpolate between frames).

So all the features are nice and dandy, but the best feature of the updated version of CC4D Tools for me is wrinkles in Redshift. That alone is worth the price of the entire tool to me; the other stuff is more like icing on top.

[AutoDidact]

Well, so far all my projects have had a single character with one animation for one scene. In other words, so far there was no need to replace the existing animation with a totally different one (e.g. use the same character in a different scene).

Right, I keep forgetting you are not an animated filmmaker/storyteller like Auroratrek.

The CC4D pipeline would benefit him greatly because he has the same cast of characters in a long term project progressing through his storyline with different animations needed for each shot.
These recent CC4D updates are real enhancement for you guys using C4D in a Reallusion based Character pipeline

[Nirwana]

@AutoDidact

These recent CC4D updates are real enhancement for you guys using C4D in a Reallusion based Character pipeline

I think of it as using Reallusion software in a C4D-based pipeline…

@AutoDidact

Right, I keep forgetting you are not an animated filmmaker/storyteller like Auroratrek.

Frankly, not everybody has a knack for being a storyteller/filmmaker or possesses the creative and technical skills required. In fact, I’ve never even met anyone that qualifies as a good storyteller/filmmaker in real life (meaning, not online or heard about in the media).

Also, I find it exceedingly difficult to stick with any project over a long time (i.e. months or years). If I know at the outset that something is going to take such a long time, it is very likely I won’t even start, unless it is pretty much unavoidable that I do (which certainly does not apply to a hobby). So, there’s that, too.

As a result, I tinker around with things 3D, do only very short and simple projects instead of epic narrative ones. But I’m not complaining; “A man’s got to know his limitations.”—to quote Dirty Harry.

[Nirwana]

OK, here is a test render (part of the Full Face animation from CC):

Quick Test: iClone Wrinkles in C4D with Redshift | HDR

NB:
The file I uploaded is HDR (as 90%+ of my videos are), but it can take YouTube quite a long time until the HDR version becomes available. Also, watching this in HDR requires compatible hardware and software (e.g. YouTube app on an HDR TV). I’m pointing this out, in case the skin tone seems a little off.

[Nirwana]

I’m currently working on simulating cloth on a character rigged with CC4D Tools and setup for wrinkles. A few observations:

• Cloth simulations work in the viewport but not when trying to cache them, UNLESS I turn off/disable the Python tag (wrinkle solver). I think the Python code updating the RS head material (for the wrinkles) every frame may mess with the simulation caching.
• Usually, I start character animations exported from iClone for use with cloth simulations in C4D with the character in an A-pose (often better than a T-pose for clothing) and then blending into the “real” starting pose over 30 frames or so. For the use with CC4D Tools, I had to add a T-pose on the first frame (i.e. before the A-pose) in iClone, because otherwise the reference pose would not work properly and mess up the imported and re-targeted motion. After retargeting in C4D, I have to make the frame with the T-pose inaccessible, by starting the preview area on frame 1 instead of 0. Otherwise, the cloth simulation is going to freak out because the character goes from T-pose to A-pose in a single frame.
• The RS lighting setup you mentioned in the last video, is not part of the product, is it? I think, it might be a useful addition, if, as you said in the video, it is meant to re-create the standard lighting in CC.

Feature wishlist:

• Setting to make wrinkle-material update only when rendering (the update slows down viewport performance noticeably, e.g. during simulation runs). The workaround is turning the tag off, as mentioned above.
• Function to remove motion data baked to controllers for face and body (preferably individually).
• Presets for Unreal Engine skeletons (that way, FBX motions exported from UE or compatible with UE could be easily retargeted directly in C4D without going through iClone first). Some users may also like support for Unity skeletons, but I’d be happy with UE.

Not exactly a feature wish, but on some of the tutorial videos (especially the last one), the volume seems way too low; I had to use subtitles to understand what was being said (my hearing is not all that great anymore, but I normally don’t have this problem with other YT content). If that could be addressed for future videos, I’d appreciate it.

Final observation (for this post): The documentation shows Google errors in some places, see screenshot.

[AutoDidact]

@Nirwana

Function to remove motion data baked to controllers for face and body (preferabl

Admittedly it has been a while since I did any major animation projects in C4D, but I am pretty sure that animation Data can be easily Isolated and deleted from the C4D Dope sheet

Even with our highly feature rich Blender pipeline tool there is no global “remove animation” button and this probably for the best as going into your software’s animation system
,to delete animation data ,is a very deliberate act that is less likely to happen by accidently hitting one button

[Nirwana]

I have no idea how to use the dope sheet when the keyframes are baked to controllers. It’d be difficult enough, if the keyframes were on the regular joint skeleton (as in your screenshot), but (a) that joint hierarchy is not there anymore in any form recognizable to me (b) I don’t understand the control rig sufficiently to know what to delete manually and what to leave alone. We have already established that this is pretty much the first time that I try to work with such a rig at all, and all this is still very unfamiliar to me.

Besides, I’m perfectly willing to accept any risk of accidentally deleting the keyframes with one click. That said, I’m pretty sure that some kind of “Are you sure?” query can be prompted before any data is actually deleted.
What is more, I use incremental saving (there is something like a version number in the file name and C4D automatically increases that with each saving procedure), meaning, by the time I’m done with a project, I may have 90 different versions in 90 separate project files saved, so even if there is any accidental loss of data by clicking the wrong button, I think, I’m fairly well covered.

iClone has a “remove animation” feature, so why shouldn’t CC4D Tools? I also don’t quite see what any feature the Blender pipeline may or may not have, has to do with the features of CC4D Tools.

[AutoDidact]

I have no idea how to use the dope sheet when the keyframes are baked to controllers. It’d be difficult enough, if the keyframes were on the regular joint skeleton (as in your screenshot)……iClone has a “remove animation” feature, so why shouldn’t CC4D Tools?

Well perhaps the developer (Ben) thought that someone willing to buy a $$Maxon sub$$ would at least try to develop a basic understanding of his software, even for so called “tinkering”.

you can learn Xparticles but not the basics of the native animation system??

LOL!! incredible

I also don’t quite see what any feature the Blender pipeline may or may not have, has to do with the features of CC4D Tools.

Again because ,like most developers of external plugins for the major 3DCC’s/game engines, Victor probably assumes that any Blender user has the temerity to know some basic blender animation interface knowledge before trying to use complex external pipeline tools for…you know… animation.