Converting Bone-Skinned Models to Non-Human Characters

3DXchange helps you convert almost all bone-skinned models, with or without embedded animations, into an avatar for use with the IK and FK features in iClone. The exported avatar is called Non-human Character since the bone structure and the mesh nodes totally differ from the Standard Characters in iClone.

The characters created in this section can only be animated by the commands in the right-click menu, or by using key-framing techniques (with Motion Editor). However, if you want the converted characters to be able to utilize the MixMoves, Motion Puppet, Direct Puppet, Device Mocap features or be applied with the templates in the Motion Library from the Content Manager, then you need to follow the Converting Models to Non-Standard Human Characters pipeline.

The supported file formats for this pipeline are:

Generating Non-human Character from iClone iProp or FBX File

Video Tutorial: Maya

Video Tutorial: DAZ

Video Tutorial: Blender

The models from iClone are embedded with AML animation clips. Though these clips cannot be loaded into 3DXchange, they can be extracted and converted into motion clip files after the iProp is converted into an Non-human Character.

1. Drag and drop any bone-skinned model into 3DXchange. You may encounter the Sampling dialog box if you load an FBX file. Please refer to Loading and Sampling for more information.

   Bone-skinned iProp from iClone	Bone-skinned FBX model with animations

2. Refer to Generating motion clips if the FBX file is embedded with animations. (Skip this step if the loaded model is bone-skinned content from iClone)

3. Click the Convert to Non-Human button in the Character section.

   

4. A command dialog box for setting bones pops up. Click the OK button and the iProp will now become a character.

   (Please refer to Setting Bones for Converting to Non-Human Character section for more information about the dialog box)

5. Optionally, You may modify the mesh of the newly-generated character. Please refer to Modifying Mesh for more information.

6. Export (Ctrl + E) the model as an avatar (.iAvatar).

7. Load the character into iClone. Right click on the new-generated avatar and all the animation clips you added will be listed in the Perform entry of the right-click menu.

   Perform list in iClone

Note:

• If the loaded model is a bone-skinned iProp from iClone, you can not play to view the embedded animations. However, these animations will be extracted from the model once it is converted into a character.

• The extracted motion clips are stored, by default, in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Reallusion\Custom\iClone 5 Custom\Motion\.

• If you encounter an issue where the character hops as you are using the IK and FK methods in iClone, then please delete the first clip and key in the Perform and Motion Layer tracks.

• You may also modify the material of a selected mesh node before converting the model into an avatar. Please refer to Material Section for more information.