Welcome to the MAYA subcategory under Pipeline ! This space is dedicated to discussing topics related to MAYA workflows with Reallusion tools.
Supercharge Professional Character Production
Fast-track your Maya workflow with free Reallusion Auto Setup. From designing characters and animating facial expressions to deploying crowd simulations, bypass the tedious construction of material graphs and skeletal rigging. Auto Setup also empowers the creation of realistic Arnold renders for high-definition characters from Character Creator, iClone and ActorCore.
Supported Software & Content
Character Creator: Import fully rigged, HD-level characters with subdivision, displacement, and Smart Hair.
iClone: Transfer facial/body performances or crowd simulations into Maya with correct positioning and animation baked in.
ActorCore: Populate cinematic scenes with optimized lightweight characters, motion assets, and theme-based crowd elements.
The CC Digital Human Shader provides adjustable subsurface scattering, roughness, specularity, and micro-normal properties for achieving lifelike results. These parameters can be finely adjusted based on editable sliders provided by four-channel RGBA color masking.
Eye Shader
Fully adjustable iris, sclera, limbus, and pupil components
Anatomical accuracy with realistic roughness, depth, and refraction
Personalization with refined coloring, brightness, and specularity controls
Teeth Shader
Adjustable color and brightness based on age, health, or creature design
Compatible with CC morph sliders for extreme expression shaping
Ambient occlusion adds depth to the mouth cavity for realistic shading
Smart Hair Shader
Supports modular hair card system with library of hairstyles, beards, and brows
Enables natural strand variation and chroma blending from root to tip
Control density, thickness, and specular highlights for beauty and realism
Wrinkle System
High-resolution multi-texture blending for CC3+/CC5 characters
installing now - was on Maya 2026 so have had to revert to 2025, already have an OSL folder set up - so just moved the wrinkle shaders over.
installmel returns an error:
source “C:/CC Auto Setup for Maya 2025/installmel.mel”;
pymel.internal.apicache : Rebuilding the API Caches…
modelingToolkit
Error: OSError: file P:\OneDrive\Documents\maya\modules\cascadeur\scripts\pymel\internal\parsers.py line 801: Cannot find maya documentation. Expected to find it at C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2025\docs\Maya2025\en_US
Which was obviously pathing to the wrong folder due to my prefs - deleted that and it installed and shelf is visible.
Yeah, the Maya 2026 plugin seems to be what we need. Reallusion…
I’ve installed pymel in the Maya folder as a new scripting language, and changing lines to 2026.
I get an error (in Maya), that it cannot source “maya”. Which could be the maya folder in my documents. The second error is that AutoSetupMain isn’t a…file(?). This is running scripts within Maya, and also directly on my PC. Last attempt: Using a functional plugin as a framework for installation.
This is probably as far as I can go, because of the…IP legalities. I’m not even attempting this with 3DS Max. Feel like I’ve wasted time, but that sunk cost fallacy is twisting my brain’s gyri. Accurate metaphor.
2026 plugins, guys. Let’s gooooo!! We’re living in the future, for some reason. Woo!
Could you please help us check your Arnold render version (MotA 5.4.3 or above) ?
(It needs to be updated separately from Maya install)
If you already installed other OSL shaders and set up the environment variable before, just place the OSL shader from Auto Setup into the same folder you defined in the environment variable.
Hi, jdswiney
we’re sorry, but Maya 2023 is not yet supported. Due to certain Python version conflicts, the Auto Setup plugin cannot be used in Maya 2023.
Thank you.
A skilled MEL script TD could probably create a similar plugin on the Maya side of things.
We already have the ability in Maya manually convert Maps to Arnold.
MEL script can automate any automate process in Maya.
Why reinvent the wheel? They already have the code it just needs some modifications for 2023. Maya 2024 uses Python 3.10 Maya 2023 uses Python 3.9 So there are a few things to work out but I’m sure it could be done. If they opened it those of us still using 2023 could adjust it without starting from scratch.
Maya 2024 uses Python 3.10 Maya 2023 uses Python 3.9 So there are a few things to work out but I’m sure it could be done.
To my knowledge Reallusion has never
“opened the code” to any of it’s export plugins nor have they ever offered multiple “backward compatible” versions to accommodate people using older versions of the external target 3DCC’s & game engines
That is why I suggested an alternative
of approaching Arnold shader conversion from the Maya side of things , because I see little chance of them making their plugin code open to the public just because you refuse to update your version of Maya.
It’s a free plugin that only has one purpose. It’s not like I’m asking for the code to iClone or CC5.
Maya 2023 is only 2 years old. It’s not like I’m using Alias Power Animator from the 1990’s. Lot’s of studios are still using 2023 so it’s not just me.
Why are you so negative? Reallusion has made some big strides in their policies over the last few years. Maybe they have never open sourced one of their free plugins because nobody asked them nicely to do it. They are trying to make their products integrate with the common DCC’s. If they have limited resources to deal with older versions maybe opening the code to a free plugin would give more customers a reason to continue to buy their products.
I am still using Iclone 7 & 3DX7 pipeline
Character creator 3 and Maya 2023 myself
obviously I am more left behind than you are.
But that is my choice because I use other software like Blender & C*scadeur as well.
My experience is that Reallusion is not alone in their policy of supporting only the latest versions with cross application plugins, seems to be “standard practice”
As I said, there is no reason a third party can’t create an Arnold hypershader conversion script and take responsibility for supporting it or bug fixing it if it crashes peoples install of Maya.
Free or not, If Reallusion just hands their plugin code over to the public
I imagine it could cause branding, confusion and make people believe that Reallusion is somehow responsible for its maintainance or support.
Finally, IMHO these “Free” export plugins are loss leader products to lure people into the the Reallusion eco system and buy the latest software products and content.
I can see why it may not be in their
business interest to create a potential competing “alternate” market for their plugins that could harm their reputation if not implemented ethically or competently by people not affiliated with Reallusion
I agree that it’s easy enough to build your own converter. The secret sauce is all in the json file that now exports with CC5. You can easily reverse engineer a python script through Claude Code to examine the JSON file and write a conversion process for you that overwrites the shaders that import with the FBX.
I had to hack the JSON file export that gets produced on the CC5 Blender export to understand the wrinkle map system a couple of years ago, and once I understood the logic and mapping to blendshapes, it wasn’t overly complicated. My main issue was that I use aitoon for my work, and the node has issues with transparency and masking. The new CC5 custom nodes are cleaner than my old workflow, so I was happy to patch my conversion script.
I downgraded from 2026 to 2025 to use the plugin, but I’m on a Maya Indie licence, so that wasn’t too painful.
Everyone seems focused on the shaders. Shaders are easy. That’s not the part I am concerned with. I am looking at all the rigging setups. That’s a monumental task to rework. It would be nice to be able to use Maya 2023 for what it’s best at which is animation. I would like to be able to move it back and forth between Maya, iClone and UE5.6 and have the same rigs in place. I’m not sure I buy the code differences excuse since they are having you install pymel which was deprecated after 2023.
I am looking at all the rigging setups. That’s a monumental task to rework.
Reallusion provided a free characterization
profile to convert a CC imported FBX FK rig to a Maya human IK control rig.
(Not sure if they have an updated HIK Characterization profile for CC5 though so check on that)
The control rig can be used for manual animation in Maya or Mocap retargeting
if you need a more advanced rig such Maya advanced skeleton there is not way to auto set up that from an imported FBX from CC4/5 so you will have to do it manually in Maya yourself anyway.
I would like to be able to move it back and forth between Maya, iClone and UE5.6 and have the same rigs in place.
Not possible!!
Control rigs are evaluated differently in each app. the best you can realisticly have is Live link where the animation data is being translated live between different rigs via a local retargeter in the receiving app Like UE5.
We’re living in the future, for some reason. Woo!