Unreal Engine - CC3 Modular Character Workflow

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In this video I show a workflow for making Modular Characters using CC3.

[@KiwiHawk-downunder-nz]

Not sure if your aware, BUT if you select the advanced tab under hide mesh you get much more in the way of options for hiding the mesh which allows for what maybe better options to make the modular parts. if you export the cloths you can import fit them to the body in CC3 and export the body mesh with the clothing item so the clothing has the required parts, this negates clipping

[@TCMabe]

Thanks for the tip ... I am slowly learning CC3 and Blender ... I appreciate the help !

[@musicdudem6673]

This is the second time this week you have swooped in and changed the game my man you must be a super hero

[@musicdudem6673]

OH MY GOD I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS FOR ALMOST A YEAR

[@TCMabe]

Glad you found it ! I will be doing a new video soon with some more tips that were discovered shortly after making that video ! Cheers !

[@musicdudem6673]

@@TCMabe ah im so excited. Looking forward to it! Especially since most bundles like ACF or EasySurvivalRPG all have modular pieces. You'd think Reallusion would have made this topic a lot easier to find haha

[@TCMabe]

@@musicdudem6673 hoping to get back on my ACF series also … ACF 2.0 released for 4.27 today …

[@musicdudem6673]

@@TCMabe whaaat! Man you can't tell me these things at work 😂😂 so excited to go check it out. Can't wait for that new ultimate project too

[@musicdudem6673]

@@TCMabe I hope so too, honestly your ACF tutorials have helped me the most. Will the old tutorials be outdated now or will they still be good do you think?

[@moonbaboon9326]

EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you so much!

[@TCMabe]

You can delete the eyes and mouth by looking at the scene tab … they show up in a list panel there. Saves a lot of steps later on …

[@moonbaboon9326]

@@TCMabe thanks, yeah I’ve been trying to work cc3 and IClone into my pipeline, But I use a lot of modular assets from UE. So with this I can cut the head out from cc3-> send to IClone->connect the skeletal mesh with the modular assets (armors etc.)-> send that BACK to Iclone so I can get the “I clone skeletal mesh” to live link it, to animate and lip sync in IClone while still in UE. Lots of steps , but Atleast it’s a workflow to actually use it all lol. The easier method is of course buying armor and such for CC3, but that’s wayyy more expensive 😅. Anyway thanks a ton for this seriously, and I hope what I just explained above gets some other smart peoples brains turning in how to make this process better, so we all can push the limits of what can be done!

[@MadCoonGames]

Great Video Man!!! Helped me a lot!!! Thaaaks

[@MadCoonGames]

If you substitute the mouth and eyes with the one UV game versions, you can click them and delete them instead of what you did, maybe you find it easier. Great tutorial again, had not found a way to do this until you presented this. Also if you expand on your character in the scene tab, you can click the weird eye thing that did not get ereased when you lowered the opacity and delete it just like the eyes and mouth.

[@TCMabe]

@@MadCoonGames thanks for the tip … later on I found the eyes and mouth in the scene panel and I was able to delete them there. I thought I pinned the update somewhere. Maybe I should do a newer video ! Anyway glad you found it helpful ! Cheers ! And thanks for the comments !

[@MadCoonGames]

@@TCMabe Very fast response dude! Thanks for your vid, I was able to delete everything on the panel but the tongue. For the tongue I jut clicked the character, selected edit mesh/faces and selected the whole tongue and hid it, then after exporting with delete hidden faces it got destroyed for the export to Unreal. Again thank you cause I was planning on just skipping modular characters for the exception of heads. Cheers to you too, happy hollidays mate! Just suscribed :)

[@piterpunx]

This is really interesting dude! thanks for showing!

[@TCMabe]

No problem ! Hope it is helpful ! In the comments section there are details on how to actually delete the eyes and other stuff without having to hide them in UE4 ... Cheers !

[@piterpunx]

@@TCMabe awesome! thank you :)

[@turielo]

Hello! First of, even a year later, thanks for the overview, I didn't knew about that easy and handful shortcut in CC3! Now I have a question regarding the Materials of the body parts after the modular import. I followed your steps (except for the eyes and other parts you handled with a transparent material, I simply hided them in CC3 using Edit Mesh before exporting). But I have an issue when combining the parts back into Unreal (using 5.1), there is a very visible frontier between parts, like a seam, but only with the Materials. They seems darker and really show where the different parts were cut. No issue with the mesh itself, so it's not related to a wrong combination (I did that mistake before). It really shows between the arms and torso (the armpits are really dark), and a little less for the legs/torso or torso/head junction (kind of a thin line). I did also separate hands and foot and if there is a similar issue it's nearly imperceptible and do not show as much as the others. It's like when importing back to UE5, the Material is unsure if the UV Map is correct anymore (the mesh being cut) and kind of darkens or stops abruptly at the end of the visible part of the mesh imported. When combining parts, it therefore shows really weird rendering or shows exactly where the different parts are joined together. For the most part it should be okay using clothes, but for example if I kept my work as it is right now and decided one character is shirtless, we would see a very strong difference in textures around the arms and armpits. Otherwise, the texture map render correctly, animations runs perfectly, all meshes are joined without any issues.... Just this weird visual difference between the parts Materials. I exported from CC3 with "Delete hidden parts" enabled, without it, it makes the whole body visible. As for using a transparent Material, it works "seamlessly" (testing combining two identical meshes, one with full body and no arms, the other with only arms, the rest of Materials using the transparent one), and everything looks good, but I'm worried about performances (I'm new to this kind of gamedesign work, but I read a lot about transparency beeing heavier on performance, so I have to ask), and theoretically it would be more disk heavy to work with full bodies with Transparent Material applied on parts we want hidden than a modular work like you showed and I'm using (not mentionning it would be more complicated to sepârate a left arm from a right arm, the Materrial from CC3 corresponding to both of them, so more duplication needed, and more weight in files). Of course I also checked the lighting and other possible sources like bad texture imports etc... it only happens if I export the mesh using this modular method. A whole body or using transparent materials works without the Materials beeing weird. Any tips or thoughts about this issue? Thanks!

[@TCMabe]

I am on vacation so my initial reply will be a little shorter…. I would either export less parts … for example the whole body and separate heads …. To minimize layers of separation. Additionally you might try exporting one copy of the entire character and using its materials on all of the pieces … not sure if this will help but it’s where I’d start my journey. Also make sure you have the latest auto tool from Reallusion and follow their guide for best results … magazine.reallusion.com/2022/08/12/character-creator-to-unreal-engine-5-best-practice/

[@turielo]

Hey! Thanks for the quick reply! So about the CC3/UE auto tool I'm up to date (made the mistake once, never again, haha!) Regarding my workflow, each body is composed of a head, torso, arms and legs (arms and legs each divided in a left one and right one), so 6 parts total. To save ressources, be quicker and have the ability to change the skin (color, complexion, etc) I have each Material in a separate folder and reapplied to meshes (so I use just one for each mesh, and each Material multiply by the type of skin and applied via blueprints). For example heads have common teeth, tongue, eyelashes etc, arms have common arm and body Material, etc. I followed the same method you used here, same inside the blueprint (with the head as the main mesh). And when I import a new mesh from CC3, I use the same materials. That's why I'm pretty sure it's not directly material related, because full bodies (one single mesh) doesn't have issue. I'll try to make less parts to see if there is a difference, like one main body and just arms imported as modular parts, and see what happened. I think I tested without changing the materials, with raw imports, and the issue with materials still occured. I have to verify it again to be sure. What made me think about UV maps is that when importing inside UE, when looking at wireframe, there is only the mesh polygons visible (which is kind of the point to make modular character I guess) so maybe it would mess up the material rendering, but it would be weird, I would think the CC3 team would have thought about it... but again, not my specialty here. When you suggest to make fewer parts, did you mean for this modular method, or if I had to work with transparency (which would make sense so less polygon, transparent but still existing, would be on top on each other, and mess up the rendering) Anyway, thanks for your time! Enjoy your vacation!

[@iDentityUS]

Thx so much for this

[@TCMabe]

Glad you were able to find it useful ! Cheers !

[@belowdown7339]

Great tutorial 😊 Can you please show how to make that equip/pickup system!

[@TCMabe]

That is Survival Game Kit version 2. Has a lot of tutorials for it and is available on the Marketplace.

[@belowdown7339]

@@TCMabe thank you so much, I’ll check it now!

[@uimbtw6300]

So would this be ideal for creating a modular character system with CC4? Im thinking of buying it just to accelerate my non-artistic side with a slightly aesthetically pleasing and small system that still incorporates all the animations I have with UE5 mannequin. This would be for a game and not a film. I also saw a comment where you said you would cycle back to this but never did. Unless the title is something else ? Thanks subb.

[@TCMabe]

So … I think there are pluses and minuses. CC3 or CC4 are incredible and produce some amazing results. It is costly over time. Blender is also a viable option if you learn how to cut meshes up. CC3 has the benefit of creating the source to be cut though so that’s a bonus. Adding clothing to the character and morphing things to look right is also great with CC3. My recommendation would be to search out tons of tutorials on Modular Characters with Blender and CC3. In earlier versions of UE … like 4.27 you can also import the CC3 character directly onto a UE4 skeleton using the free import tool from Reallusion. If you go that route then adding the animations are way easier … the newer version seems to have some import issues but maybe it’s just stuff I need to learn. I know this response is maybe a little disjointed but hopefully it helps. My Discord is usually a good spot for bigger discussions. Cheers !

[@AscaronFrid]

Hello. How does "UE4" fix which part of the body to hide when putting on armor?

[@TCMabe]

That is up to you to design … an easy method is to add a tag to the item and a tag to the body part … for example add a Head tag to the helmet and a Head tag to the Head mesh on the game …. On item equip get the tags and use it to hide any mesh with a matching tag … on removal have it make anything with the same tag visible.

[@zenparvez]

Hey TC I know this is a 2 yr old video but I really wanna know if I can combine unreal marketplace armors (example the Modular Heavy Armour) to a cc4 character that has been imported through auto setup and the animations imported separately as well for later use on sequencer ??

[@TCMabe]

In CC4 you seem to have more possibilities for achieving this goal. When you import the armor, you can treat it as clothing or accessories and scale it to fit and also use the tools to hide skin where it is equipped … You will still probably want to hide the character and export each individual piece of armor… Then use the auto set up tool to bring them into unreal engine.

[@zenparvez]

@@TCMabe That's the other way around but I loses all the weight mapping and proper binding that I get in UE5, I tried this method but the result looks terrible. I mostly use cc4 and unreal as a cinematic platform so I don't have headaches for optimizing. I looked everywhere but seems nobody bothered covering this side of the topic, you have the closest so I had to comment to get some light in this topic.

[@TCMabe]

@@zenparvez come to my Discord ... I will show you ...

[@zenparvez]

@@TCMabe Hey TC, I had joined, my user id is Audioscream.

[@PijarnJangsawang]

thank mabe , SGKV2 work good with ACF ?

[@TCMabe]

Not sure yet … usually you are best to use one or the other … SGKv2 is a great asset and has a lot of the hard work already implemented. ACF can easily be built to make survival type games though … still exploring !

[@smeemcgee8414]

How would I get this to work for first person, attempted this and it mostly works but when i go into first person if i look straight down while standing i can see the back of the third person head

[@TCMabe]

Depends … 1st person single player or multi ?

[@TCMabe]

Look up Owner No See and try it on your head mesh

[@smeemcgee8414]

@@TCMabe ok ill double check it and single player

[@TCMabe]

@@smeemcgee8414 if it is single player… You can also just hide the characters head whenever you go in the first person View… You can also experiment with moving your camera more forward… Maybe even bump it forward for 1st person

[@smeemcgee8414]

@@TCMabe yeah i got it working now the heads just not casting a shadow lol one of those things i guess

[@musicdudem6673]

Hey were you still going to redo this video? I havent really gone through this yet becuase of the newer one lol

[@TCMabe]

I did two videos … this one and a previous one here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gmKaXq2intKBbLM the only thing that needed better explaining was how to delete the eyes and things like that. You can select them in the scene section of the editor. Then just delete them…. If you don’t … then you have to manually hide them using materials…. But I cover that in the video. Between the two videos I think most of it’s covered … if you have questions let me know ! Cheers !

[@musicdudem6673]

@@TCMabe Oh awesome, thank you! ill jump into this after work!

[@TCMabe]

@@musicdudem6673 ignore the part about 3DXchange …it wasn’t needed …

[@orivxdevlabs]

Could you do this with ALS?

[@TCMabe]

Look in my videos … I did a CC3 to ALS video a while back ! Cheers !

[@orivxdevlabs]

@@TCMabe I actually followed that recently! Worked well. I just wonder if this method will work with using the master pose function with how ALS’s anim bp works. I might just give it a shot and see! I was trying to dismember and break constraint doesn’t work for cc3 characters lol, it stretches the skin out and makes it look crazy. 😂

[@scislianlongshadow]

useless unless you are using a cc3 character which many of us are not.

[@TCMabe]

Useless to make that comment on a video that clearly is using cc3 and describing a workflow using cc3 models. That’s like making a comment on a fly fishing video and saying it’s useless unless you are fly fishing. And furthermore…. You’d be surprised how many people use cc3 …. Look at the views as a small indicator.