When a group of architectural illustrators set out to test Chaos Vantage, they planned a few small real-time experiments. Instead, they built Unbox, a fully animated short film where an architectural cube folds open like a mechanical puzzle. From “a few little minis,” it grew bigger – there are worse outcomes for a stress test.

DP: What was the initial spark for testing Chaos Vantage and why risk it on a narrative short instead of a comfy archviz sizzle?

Peter Stulz: Honestly, at first we intended to do a few little minis in Vantage… and then the second test spinned out of control and grew bigger each day. But no regrets, we embraced the prospect to develop a narrative architectural piece ourselves.

You see, we are architects and not an animation studio. So this was a massive learning journey for us: sequencing shots in an attractive manner, telling a story, how to reveal information and how to retain it… Vantage was fantastic, because it allowed us to be quite experimental here, make mistakes and learn while working on it.

DP: Give us the pipeline in one breath: DCC(s), renderers, interchange (Alembic/FBX/USD), and the editorial path from storyboard/animatic to picture lock.

Peter Stulz: Natively we use 3ds Max in our studio, still the main tool for architecture. Our studio mostly renders in Corona Render, but I feel very home in Vray. For asset creation I use Blender which then sent to Max via FBX. The animation was rendered in Vray CPU – 5 months was tight enough and I know Vray as an engine that delivers without funky surprises.

For the creative part, I drew initial sketches and the storyboard in Procreate. We were lucky to have my friend and cinematographer Olaf Aue (LinkedIn) on board, who was kind enough to share some of his Know-How. The storyboard was straight away sequenced in Resolve with some stand-in SFX and music, just to get a feeling for timing. The stills were then replaced with Vantage Previz shots; the iteration frequency could be kept fastpaced due to Vantage, that was a tremendous relief. Finally for that project we also familiarized ourselves just enough with character creator and Iclone to pull off a somewhat decent protagonist – which then is mostly kept out of focus anyhow :).

Depth of field and lighting are crucial in linear storytelling formats. Vantage allows for having these available during the early layout phase, enabling us to evaluate the flow and precise timing of edits early on, resulting in fewer iterations and more streamlined communication, features that Olaf, as a cinematographer, found lacking in the animation feature films he previously worked on.

DP: Hardware reality check: what exactly were the two workstations (CPU/GPU/VRAM/RAM/storage), and how did that cap scene size, proxies, and iteration speed?

Peter Stulz: There are two parts to this, the GPU and CPU specs: For working with Vantage, I had a 4060TI with 16GB. It was mainly the ground displacement in Vantage that was the key factor for VRAM necessity. Otherwise Vantage is smart when scaling to smaller GPUs. You don’t need massive GPUs to get started with Vantage.

For the final CPU rendering – we have several AMD 9950x in our studio with 64GB Ram, totally unspectacular workstations. In fact rendering moved between machines, whatever was available, the bottleneck was that we had just two render licenses available. Another thing, that I really appreciate about Vray CPU – it stays pretty consistent even if you throw in an older architecture.

DP: How did you keep the master scene nimble?

Peter Stulz: 3ds Max can become a real chore, when scenes get too heavy. I wholeheartedly hate unresponsive scenes – anything that breaks the creative flow has to be solved. Technically, there are several approaches: obviously using Proxies for heavy assets is a must; staying parametric if possible also keeps my scenes small; my modifier stacks can get quite impressive and I avoid baking them.

I xref wherever it makes sense, especially if parts of your scene are used in different settings. If I find the time, I localise heavy textures and reduce them – tedious but worth the effort later. Ideally the Master Scene only contains the camera, the lights and a few key assets. All the heavy load is loaded from external files. These scenes mostly are only a few MB in itself – helping with autobackups.

DP: Camera language before pixels: how did boards/animatic evolve once you could “walk the set” in Vantage?

Peter Stulz: It was important to develop a storyboard outside of 3D first to avoid thinking as a 3d designer. The environment was conceived like a sandbox, so we could freely explore the set with different lenses and angles. The superfast iterations we could do with Vantage really helped to test alternatives. That felt very powerful. Obviously some storyboard shots were then adapted or omitted. Vantage was great to secure we are on the right path.

DP: Lighting in Vantage: What translated 1:1 to finals, and where did parity crack?

Peter Stulz: At first it is scarily impressive how close Vantage can feel to the final look. We did a few final shots directly in Vantage and realised afterwards we could have done more in Vantage to prove the point. The extra turntable animation is done 100% in Vantage, but we really had to go deep in the settings to get rid of some flickering.

You have to understand, Vantage works like this: It downscales automatically to achieve close-to realtime speed and then gradually refines the look. But that logic causes limitations: For example GI depth in tricky setups might cause visible flickering. If you want to get rid of unwanted artefacts like these, you have to go deeper into the settings; and then you get these Vray 2010 vibes again :). Apart from that the denoiser might create some artefacts, textures are getting blurry, VDBs were not possible etc.

DP: Materials & lookdev: which shader features were non-negotiable, and what did you simplify for real-time parity?

Peter Stulz: Since we decided to use Vray CPU for finals, we just accepted that some stuff for Previz looked different – we knew it would be ok in the finals. But to answer the question we used Vantage for a another client project and it became clear again: If you want to produce in Vantage you can not set stuff up in Vray and hope for the best. In that case we had a semitranslucent ocean setting and that looked quite diffferent in Vantage and had to be especially adapted.

DP: The moving house: How was it rigged , and what broke first under real-time playback?

Peter Stulz: The architectural cube is in fact one scene with 2000 frames of animation. No cheap tricks – nothing appears magically out of thin air – it’s all in there. Only the initial cube with the rough surface is a different prop because it had a tricky blending shader which was animated ( animating materials in 3ds Max is a disaster …).

The rig for the unfolding was very basic and was built out of a lot of nested helpers. That was the most simple way to avoid the “locked axis” problem. What is this? Well, rigging a rubics cube is in fact not so straightforward as it seems: after a few twists the individual parts start to move quite unexpectedly – try it yourself, it’s actually pretty hard. The nested helpers solved this, now it was a matter of adjusting the right timing; how fast is the right speed for a massive 12m cube? You want to correspond a certain weight without boring the viewer. At the end we sprinkled some subtle secondary movements on top.

DP: Performance metrics: What were typical FPS for look-dev in Vantage and per-shot render times? Both for Vantage previews and V-Ray finals?

Peter Stulz: We could render out playblasts in Vantage (+/- 200 frames) over a toilet break in 1.5k resolution at 1:2.39. For finals in Vray I attempt to stay around 10 minutes / frame. If you want to use Vantage for final quality in FullHD, you crank up the settings to 1 minute / frame. If there was any noise left, the Resolve temporal denoiser is the last polish.

DP: The famous 95%: where did Vantage land “close enough” to V-Ray and what are the missing 5%?

Peter Stulz: Every “resolution” in Vantage is more coarse. I am not only talking textures, but sampling, atmospherics, global illumination. Obviously the denoiser also tends to smear everything. Everything is just lower definition than in Vray / Corona. That’s why oldschool rendering is still very valid to achieve that crispy level of detail.

DP: Editorial rhythm: how often did you re-cut while “shooting in engine,” and what told you a shot was edit-locked before triggering finals?

Peter Stulz: In our case that answer is quite simple: the presentation date was coming up, so we had a very strict timeframe when shots had to be done. Only thing we updated in the last days, we extended a few shots by 30 frames, because they felt rushed in the beta cut. That little change improved the rythm quite substantially.

DP: Pitfalls & fixes: three things that wasted time before you found the trick and what was the trick?

Peter Stulz: Vantage is built in a way that it actually could be used as a standalone loading in VrayScenes. Since I had my friend Olaf Aue as a cinematographer on board we tried to use it in that way. Theoretically that works, but with a lot of drawbacks and very limited editing and getting the changes from Vantage back into 3dsMax is hard.

We omitted that concept and resorted to live link only with 3ds Max. But actually that standalone option is not so bad – Chaos could really focus there more.

DP: If you rebuilt “Unboxed” today at 100% Vantage, what would the delivery plan look like? QC, shot classes that stay real-time, and the shortlist that still goes offline?

Peter Stulz: I know, that there are more shots that could be realised in Vantage directly. But if you plan this, it is smart to set up the whole project more focused on Vantage directly. Switching to Vray, if needed, is easy, the other way can be frustrating.

DP: What did “Unboxed” change in how you scope, price, and pitch real-time narrative work to clients?

Peter Stulz: We can offer fast animation works more easily which don’t need very high quality or are visually suitable for Vantage (clay shots).

DP: Wishlist to Chaos: What are the top parity/features that would let you ship more shots straight out of Vantage next time?

Peter Stulz: I would like easier quality settings if you intend to use Vantage as final renderer. We had to do a lot of tweaking for specific scenes or even change the 3d scene to avoid artefacts. Additionally Vantage ships with specific assets like a water surface or animated plants. These are great, but in LiveLink they are hard to be used, because there is not way to insert them in your Root Scene.

DP: For Vantage newcomers: What is your “first-day” checklist?

Peter Stulz: Familiarize yourself with the basic UI and do some stress tests to find the limits. Additionally I would look for a study project that comes close to a client environment. There is no point in having all the bells and whistles, if in a real production case you are missing the crucial components.

DP: One more hypothetic: with one extra week or one extra GPU, which single area would you invest in—and why?

Peter Stulz: Funny alternatives. As described above a half-decent GPU is good for previz which was the main usage in “Unbox”. Having a week extra is always great – so I would opt for that!

DP: Where exactly did you keep the “cube layer” for the whole piece: did we start life on the Blender Default Cube, and how much of that origin survived?

Peter Stulz: It sure was great that we could hire the mighty default cube as a support role. It didn’t even mind too much to be shipped into another 3d-suite – what a humble character and it really outshined itself in our short. 3d-artists should show more appreciation to have it per default all free!

DP: The cube’s side text: What does it say, and why?

Peter Stulz: The cube text gives instructions how to mix the perfect Daiquiri as it is served on Kepler 5 but it is quite explicit so I can’t go into depths here. But if you look for easter eggs, we have hidden various personal items in the architecture. Talking about audio my friend Olaf had a lot of fun browsing through his SFX library and pull out quite unusual sounds for the cubes inner mechanics.

The post The Cube Moved: Go for the Chaos (Ad) Vantage first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The new Clothy3D tool promises to make character pipelines more flexible, at no cost, at least for now. The software is designed to auto-fit and rig clothing models across a wide range of 3D characters and platforms, offering a set of converters that could connect otherwise separate workflows.

What It Does

Clothy3D can auto-fit and rig clothes from sources like Marvelous Designer, Daz3D, or iClone Character Creator, and also supports 18 body types of Metahuman. It transfers skeletons and skin weights between characters, rigs static meshes with existing skeletons, and even wraps mesh topology and textures from one character to another. Input and output are handled in FBX, and the devs mention support for OBJ and DXF in converters.

Why It’s Interesting

The tool effectively acts as a universal adapter: skeleton transfers, mesh wrapping, and skin-weight conversions could be used to move assets across different ecosystems without tedious manual setup. For pipelines that juggle assets between Unreal Engine, Daz, or Marvelous Designer, that flexibility might save hours.

On top of that, there’s a marketplace attached, where assets can be discovered, bought, and sold. Right now, content is sparse, but the structure is in place and depending on adoption, this could grow into a useful exchange hub.

Caveats

All of this comes with a big asterisk: Clothy3D is brand new and still in a beta-like state. It’s free to use at the moment, but untested in production environments. While the promise of “fit anything to anything” is tempting, reliability across real-world projects remains to be seen. If you’re looking for a weekend experiment or if your pipeline involves a lot of cross-platform character work, Clothy3D might be worth a spin. Just don’t expect the stability of a battle-tested DCC plugin yet.

Interface, Scenes & Exports

Clothy3D’s UI is built around a three-scene viewport layout: left, middle, and right scenes all sharing a synchronized camera view so you always see from the same angle. The left scene acts as a composite view, reflecting the combination of whatever is imported in the middle and right scenes; the right and middle scenes remain independent and each can host its own models or assets. Depending on which tool you’re using (Cloth Convertor, Character Convertor, etc.), the roles of these scenes adapt accordingly. For example, the middle may show cloth, the right the base character, and the left their merged result.

In terms of the UI controls: it features a layered tool-button system, so choosing a top-level action shows context-sensitive button sets beneath it. Hovering on a tool button triggers a tooltip after a moment, helping with discoverability. You can also control viewing options such as whether faces are rendered front/back, or switch the “Color Mode” (normal color, black, or white) to enforce consistent visibility, especially useful for transparent meshes or to show stitching faces.

Mouse navigation is standard: left-drag orbits, middle-drag pans, mouse wheel zooms; the right button largely is reserved for editing mesh elements (faces, vertices, edges) in the middle and right scenes, or for panning in the left view.

Regarding import/export: the middle and right scenes can each independently import and export their own models or assets. The left scene doesn’t allow direct imports (it’s purely an aggregation), but whenever something is loaded into middle or right, it also appears in left. In the “Account & Import/Export” section, you can also see your user account info (e-mail, remaining monthly exports). Export is capped, users get a limited number of exports per month.

Thus the interface is designed to provide parallel views (source / target / result) in lockstep, while keeping editing tools, visibility toggles, and import/export flows relatively consistent across the different modules.

Character Convertor

The Character Convertor tool lets you ingest an arbitrary rigged tetrapod base character (in FBX or DAE format) and produce a standardized interchangeable base character asset. First, you import your rigged base character into the middle scene. Optionally, you can clean up or edit that character, for example, delete unused meshes like clothes or weapons, duplicate or align meshes, hide faces, adjust vertex positions, or even tweak skeletons and skin weights.

Then you wrap a target interchangeable base character (in the right scene) to match the imported rig. Two wrapping approaches exist: applying an existing deformer template (faster, if one matches the character topology) or manually deforming via point/face matching (with a Character Builder or import of partial shapes, then matching points/faces). As you wrap, you can iteratively adjust both source and target geometry to improve the match. After wrapping, you configure parameters in the processing flow, run automatic steps, and finally export your new interchangeable base character to disk.

In effect, the Character Convertor acts as a bridge: you bring in a rig you want to preserve or reuse, deform a canonical interchangeable skeleton mesh to match it, and output a version you can reliably use in downstream tools like cloth fitting, skeleton transfers, or asset marketplaces.

Tutorials

Clothy3D already comes with a sizeable set of tutorials to help users ramp up. There’s a Studio Quickstart that introduces the core UI and navigation, along with dedicated quickstarts for Character Convertor, Cloth Convertor, Dress3D, Skeleton Transfer, and Deform3D. Beyond the basics, workflow guides walk through Unreal Engine integration (UE5.4), building characters via the Character Builder, wrapping and matching meshes, and using deformer templates for quicker results.

The clothing workflow is covered extensively: tutorials explain converting standard garments, preparing clothes for Metahuman, simulating and rendering cloth, working with Marvelous Designer assets, managing double-sided or layered clothing, and fine-tuning shape control points. Other deep dives address transfer points for skin weights, keeping selected parts rigid, smoothing weights, or adding auxiliary bones. There are also lessons on editing and converting skeletons, rigging static characters, handling complex footwear like high-heel shoes, and preparing/publishing assets to the marketplace.

The post Clothy3D: New Tool for Clothing Auto-Fit, Rigging & Mesh Transfers 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.

In nuce: Epic Games has released version 1.3 of its MetaHuman Creator – initially as Early Access. This is software that can be used to create 3D human characters. This is accompanied by another release – the MetaHuman DNA Calibration Library , which includes several add-ons for the MetaHuman Creator. The library is intended to simplify the customised editing of 3D characters in tandem with the MetaHuman Creator. The library allows access to a wide range of customisable assets (such as hairstyles or clothing) that can be used to equip 3D characters and is primarily aimed at technical artists. The library is made available via binary files for Windows and Linux.

MetaHuman Creator Early Access Out Now: Meet the Team | Unreal Engine

In toto: Below are just a few of the innovations that come with the dual release. In the almost five-minute video above, Vladimir Mastilovic, Vice President of Digital Humans Technology at Epic Games, Paul Doyle, Director of Product Management at Epic Games, and James Golding, Technical Director at Epic Games, explain what Early Access entails.

• Exporting .mhb files: This facilitates collaborative work on a 3D character. Once exported as a .mhb file, other users can import it into their MetaHuman Creator to work on the design of a character. Until now, characters created using the MetaHuman Creator were linked to the respective artist’s Epic Games account.
• The MetaHuman DNA Calibration Library is divided into DNACalib and DNAViewer. DNACalib can be used, for example, to rename character meshes, remove joints, facial blendshapes or LODs. DNACalib is a C library with Python bindings. DNAViewer, on the other hand, reads DNA files into Maya, creating a 3D head equipped with operable rigs. The rigged 3D head can be exported from Maya in FBX format.

Click further: All further information can be found in the official announcement on unrealengine.com . Interested parties can access MetaHuman via unrealengine.com/en/metahuman.

Sources: cgchannel.com ( message from Jim Thacker), unrealengine.com ( blog entry from Epic Games)

The post MetaHuman Creator 1.3 and DNA Calibration Library ! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Adobe releases its Character Animator in version 22.5. The Character Animator is a real-time tool for motion capturing and character animation. We last reported on the Character Animator on 9 November 2021 , when it was released in version 22.0.

New functions: At the heart of the new features is the Starter Mode, which is available to all users free of charge. Starter Mode primarily offers functionalities relating to the presentation, recording and exporting of characters. However, the free version of Starter Mode is limited in its range of functions compared to the paid version. Nevertheless, the following functions are also available to users of the free Starter Mode.

• Contains sample puppets: It is also possible to import puppets.
• The settings for the behaviour of your characters: Simply drag and drop from the behaviour panel, which you can find at the top right of the user interface.
• You can customise the backgrounds using the background button.
• Adjust aspect ratios: So that your character fits into the film image.
• Triggerable poses, emotions and backgrounds: Can now also be displayed in the preview.
• Quick export function: Export animations directly as an H264 file.

Click further: You can get an overview of the features in Character Animator 22.5 at helpx.adobe.com. The following video uses application examples to illustrate the advantages of Starter Mode.

FREE Adobe Character Animator: Starter Mode

The post Adobe releases Character Animator 22.5! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.