A Quarter-Century of Digital Clay

The ZBrush Summit 2025 Virtual Edition runs from 7 to 9 November 2025, celebrating 25 years of ZBrush. Hosted by Maxon, the event streams globally via ZBrush Live, Twitch and YouTube. It marks a dual milestone: a decade of the live Sculpt-Off competition and a quarter-century of the digital sculpting software that reshaped 3D character creation across film, games and design.

The online format, introduced during the pandemic years, remains. No travel, no queues — only three days of streamed presentations, artist showcases and production-level tips.

Friday: Legends Return to the Arena

The Summit opens with the Past Competitors LIVE ZBrush Sculpt-Off. Over fifty artists from the competition’s first decade, including Maarten Verhoeven, Zhelong Xu, Ashley Adams and Christian Carranza, have been invited back for a three-hour speed-sculpt challenge.

That’s followed by the Public LIVE Sculpt-Off, an open competition judged on creativity and execution under time pressure. Both contests reinforce what has become the Summit’s defining spectacle: sculptors creating original work live, in front of a global audience.

Saturday: Practice, Process and Production

Day Two runs from 9:00 to 18:00 PST, starting with Robson Barros from Loot Studios discussing Creating 3D Printable Miniatures That Tell Stories. His live ZBrush demo focuses on scale readability, pose design and physical durability for tabletop models.

Ryan Kingslien, who helped define early ZBrush anatomy training, revisits Beyond Reference, a session on form interpretation and sculptural anatomy. Daniel Hahn (Daytoner) then offers a production-focused look at hard-surface workflows used in toy and concept model creation.

Marko Lazov follows with live creature design improvisation under Turning Chaos Into Creatures. Przemyslaw Malachowski demonstrates Designing Tattoos in 3D, showing how sculpting tools can map artwork precisely to body anatomy.

The evening concludes with WeFX detailing ZBrush use on Wednesday Season 2 for Netflix. Team members Brandon Golding, Carlos Jacinto, Cesar Dacol Jr, Mauro Matheus and Sam Javanrouh break down their creature and prop work before the traditional “Good-Byes” close the stream.

Sunday: Studios, Toys and Technical Futures

The final day begins with Jordi Cerdà Gaya presenting 15 Years Using ZBrush and Crafting 3D Models by Natural Intelligence, a reflection on freelance product modelling and digital craftsmanship.

A highlight session follows from ID Software (Denzil O’Neill, Jason Martin and Solomon Gaitan) showing how ZBrush contributed to asset creation for Doom The Dark Ages.

Matt Hilton from Hasbro takes the stage for Making Joe, revealing the sculpt-to-production process for the G.I. Joe Classified Series. Mitchel Wu then reframes digital sculpting from a photographer’s perspective in The Second Life of a Subtool, tracing the journey from ZBrush mesh to practical miniature sets.

Later segments include Patrick 4D’s short presentation, followed by the Maxon Development Team previewing upcoming features and a 2026 roadmap. Details of these “exciting features” were not yet disclosed at press time.

The Summit concludes with the LIVE Sculpt-Off Winners Announcement, crowning champions from both the public and invitational events before a final farewell.

Looking Back – and Ahead

First released in 1999, ZBrush has become a cornerstone of digital production pipelines and earned a 2014 Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its multi-resolution sculpting system. The 25th anniversary Summit blends that heritage with a forward look. For production artists, the sessions promise practical insights across sculpting, concept art, collectibles, and VFX asset creation.

Maxon – ZBrush Summit 2025 Virtual Edition

The post Sculpt-Offs, Anniversaries & Anatomy: ZBrush Summit 2025 celebrates 25 years first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Since its debut in 2015, Character Creator (CC) has been widely embraced across industries and has grown into one of the most powerful 3D character creation tools on the market. As Character Creator marks its 10th anniversary, CC5 arrives with groundbreaking upgrades, including HD character workflow with subdivision support, enhanced shaders, and a next-generation facial animation system.

Auto Setup

In parallel, Auto Setup has evolved to broaden pipeline compatibility, seamlessly integrating industry-leading solutions with the Reallusion ecosystem, offering pre-configured skeleton and material setups for 3ds Max, Blender, and Unreal Engine. Auto Setup plugins are updated to support CC5 HD characters at no additional cost, with support for Maya and Marmoset introduced with the release of Character Creator 5.

Prelaunch?

Reallusion celebrates the CC5 release with a special CC5 Prelaunch Offer. Customers spending $399 or more before CC5 launches will receive CC5 (worth $299) for free. The first 1,000 participants get an extra $50 in Bonus Points for future purchases. With CC5 arriving this summer, now is the time to secure this limited offer and gear up for next-gen real-time 3D character creation. Moreover, all existing CC4 plugins and content will remain compatible with CC5, ensuring a smooth upgrade for users.

Learn more about the upcoming updates here.

The post The First Look at Character Creator 5: Prelaunch Offer Starts NOW first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Advertorial.

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.

Check it out here: https://blendercharacterproject.org/

Or on GitHub: https://github.com/Upliner/CharMorph

The post CharMorph 0.4: Open-Source Character Creation Evolves first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Reblium lets you build highly detailed characters by combining procedural generation, customization tools, and a robust library of assets. The software provides various textures, outfits, and morphs for characters, allowing Artists to generate assets faster.

Procedural Character Creation

The core of Reblium is its procedural system, which offers a semi-automated approach to generating characters. This reduces time on manual modeling and sculpting. Artists can tweak and customize procedural elements, with options to adjust proportions, facial features, and clothing.

While procedural workflows can be a time saver, users should ensure the generated characters fit their specific project needs. Reblium promises flexibility, but a manual fine-tuning phase might be needed to meet high-detail requirements.

Asset Library and Customization

Reblium comes equipped with a built-in asset library that includes a wide variety of outfits, accessories, and textures. The library is designed to speed up the character-building process by offering ready-made components. Artists can modify these assets to create custom characters or use them as-is. All assets can be adjusted for size, texture, and overall appearance. The blend between pre-built and customizable assets offers a balance of control and efficiency.

Documentation for Reblium outlines the process for working with the asset library, and Artists can follow guidelines to extend these resources with custom models.

Reblium Studio Documentation

Morphs and Rigging Tools

Reblium includes advanced morphs for character rigging, enabling Artists to create complex facial animations and dynamic character movements. The software automatically adjusts rigging based on the morphs applied, ensuring character animations remain consistent across different body types and styles.

While this automation can help with production speed, the results should be checked carefully. If specific rigging or animation setups are required, some manual adjustments may be necessary.

Export and Compatibility

Reblium supports multiple export formats, including FBX and OBJ, making it compatible with various software in your pipeline. Artists can bring their characters into most 3D modeling and animation tools, such as Maya, Blender, or Unreal Engine, without major issues.

The export functionality is straightforward, though compatibility with some custom rigs and animation workflows should be verified before large-scale implementation.

Licensing and Pricing

Reblium offers a permament license for 99$, and there should be upgrade bonuses if the next version comes out. Before deciding, consider how often you’ll need character generation and whether the features justify the investment. Pricing details can be found on the official website.

Final Thoughts

Reblium offers a powerful set of tools for creating 3D characters, with a focus on procedural generation and customization. It’s a solid option for Artists looking to speed up their character development workflow. However, the procedural nature may require fine-tuning, especially for projects with specific character requirements. As always, new software should be tested before integrating it into a production pipeline.

The post Reblium first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.