The Blender Character Project has unveiled CharMorph 0.4, marking a significant advancement in open-source 3D character creation for Blender. Positioned as the “spiritual successor” to the now-discontinued MB-Lab, CharMorph empowers artists to generate custom, rigged 3D characters complete with hair and clothing, suitable for animations, motion graphics, VFX, or game development.
Evolution from MB-Lab
CharMorph builds upon the foundation laid by MB-Lab, reimplementing most of its predecessor’s features while introducing notable enhancements. Unlike MB-Lab, CharMorph is a complete rewrite, utilizing the same base meshes and character morphs without incorporating any of the original code. This fresh approach allows for improved functionality and flexibility in character creation.
Rigify Integration
A standout feature of CharMorph is its seamless integration with Rigify, Blender’s modular rigging system. This includes comprehensive support for facial rigs, enabling more expressive and dynamic character animations.
Real-Time Clothing Fitting
CharMorph introduces real-time clothing fitting, allowing garments to adapt instantly to character morphs. This streamlines the design process, eliminating the need for manual adjustments and ensuring a snug fit as characters evolve.
Customizable Skin and Eye Colors
Artists can now directly set skin and eye colors within CharMorph, providing immediate visual feedback and facilitating the creation of diverse character appearances without navigating complex shader settings.
Material-Based Displacement
By implementing displacement at the material level rather than relying on the Displace modifier, CharMorph enables real-time previews of surface details. This approach enhances the efficiency of the design workflow, particularly when using Blender’s Eevee renderer.
Future Developments
Looking ahead, the development team plans to extend CharMorph’s capabilities beyond humanoid figures to include animals and other creatures. CharMorph 0.4 represents a significant leap forward in open-source character creation within Blender. With features like Rigify support, real-time clothing adaptation, and customizable attributes, it offers a robust and flexible solution for digital artists. As with any new tool, it’s advisable to thoroughly test CharMorph’s features before integrating them into active production pipelines to ensure compatibility and stability.
