An add-on for importing and automatically setting up materials for Character Creator 3 & 4 and iClone 7 & 8 character exports.
Using Blender in the Character Creator pipeline can often feel like hitting a brick wall. Spending potentially hours having to get the import settings correct and setting up the materials often with hundreds of textures.
This add-on aims to reduce that time spent getting characters into Blender down to just a few seconds and make use of as many of the exported textures as possible so that character artists can work in the highest quality possible using Blender.
CC3 Blender Pipeline Tool (Installed in CC3)
CC4 Blender Pipeline Tool (Installed in CC4)
- Download the latest release.
- In Blender go to menu Edit->Preferences then select Add-ons.
- Click the Install button at the top of the preferences window and navigate to where you downloaded the zip file, select the file and click Install Add-on.
- Activate the add-on by ticking the checkbox next to Edit->Preferences then select Add-ons
- The add-ons functionality is available through the CC/iC Blender Tools Tab in the tool menu to the right of the main viewport. Press N to show the tools if they are hidden.
- From the menu: Edit->Preferences then select Add-ons
- In the search box search All add-ons for "CC/iC Blender Tools"
- Deactivate the add-on by unticking the checbox next to Edit->Preferences then select Add-ons.
- Then click the Remove button.
- Remove the current version of the add-on by following the remove instructions above.
- Follow the installation instructions, above, to install the new version.
- Wrinkle Map system implemented.
- Characters with wrinkle maps will setup wrinkle shaders in the head material automatically.
- Preferences for Build Wrinkle Maps.
- OpenColorIO ACES color space support.
- ACES color space overrides.
- Optional Texture Packing and Texture limits added to reduce number of textures in imported materals.
- Some systems can have very low texture limits (i.e. only 8 on some OSX systems) this can help import full CC4 characters.
- Preferences for pack and/or limit textures.
- Body sculpting updated:
- All sculpting modes work on a copy of the character.
- Multi-res applied base shape copied back to original character in a way that preserves existing shape keys.
- AO Map added to baking, layers and export.
- Additional strength, definiation and mix mode controls added to layer ui.
- Spring Bone Hair Rigging (Cloth Rigging to follow)
- Added initial Hair curve extraction from hair cards.
- Spring bone hair generation from selected hair cards or greased pencil lines on surface.
- Hair card weight binding fine tuning controls.
- Hair cards are weighted individualy to neighboring bones and uniformly across to avoid lateral stretch and behaves more like cloth physics implementations.
- Spring bone generation from grease pencil lines.
- Fixes:
- Some extra transparency material detection.
- Fix to hand & finger bone roll alignment when bind pose has arms and hands at a steep downward angle.
- Fix to partial material name matching errors from ActorCore and AccuRig.
- Export bake socket fix for Blender 3.4+.
- Shapekey locks will be disabled and all shapekeys reset to zero on character export.
- Fix to retarget baking in Blender 3.4 not baking pose bones to rigify armature action.
- Fix to Rigify motion export bone root name.
- Rigify IK-FK influence controls replicated in Rigging panel.
- Fix to material setup error caused by missing normal map data.
- Fix to Generic character export.
- Fix to Generic converted character export.
- Rigify export mesh and/or animation overhaul.
- Smoothing groups added to export file dialog options.
- Support for CC4 Plugin, facial expression and viseme data export.
- Fix to legacy hair detection & scalp detection.
- Very slight subsurface added to scalp to prevent the dark/blueish artifacts on skin.
- Fix to bump maps connecting to normal sockets.
- Eye limbus darkness recalculated.
- Initial attempt at exporting Blender 3.3 Curve hair on characters via Alembic export.
- Fix to embedded image correction and image filepath comparisons.
- Fix to basic material texture loading.
- Convert to Accessory function added to Object Management.
- Adding existing RL material to a new character import will copy the material data.
- Match existing materials (for AccuRig imports) button added to Create tab and Rigify info pane.
- Attempts to assign existing materials to the AccuRig import that match the original export to AccurRig.
- For a Blender > AccuRig / ActorCore > Blender round trip workflow.
- Eye occlusion (Eevee) color darkened.
- Hair shader (Eevee) Specular blend added (Base surface Specularity -> Anisotropic Specularity)
- Fix for palm control location with less than 5 fingers.
- Fix for ActorCore / AccuRig import detection.
- Missing bone chains from CC3 rig will hide corresponding control rig bones (e.g. missing fingers)
- Export texture baking no longer duplicates baking on same materials across different objects.
- Export fix to CC3/4 when material name starts with a digit.
- Fix to import/convert of multiple generic GLTF/GLB props or characters.
- Fix to exporting Roughness and Metallic texture strength (should always be 100).
- Export bake maps now correctly sets bit depth and no alpha channel. Opacity texture bakes should work now.
- Convert generic character from objects to props added.
- Auto converts generic imports where possible, when using the import character button.
- Texture and material de-duplication (optional)
- ActorCore rigify accessory fix.
- CC/iC Create tab and panels added.
- Physics & Object Management moved to CC/iC Create.
- Multi-res sculpt & bake helper tools panels added.
- Separate Iris & Sclera emission colors for parallax eye shader.
- Displacement calculation reworked as it behaves differently in Blender 3.2.1 (was causing triangulation artifacts)
- Fixes
- Export T-pose action created correctly when character bind pose is already a T-pose.
- Tongue subsurface scatter parameter fixes in UI.
- Hair material UI corrected in Blender 3.2.1 (caused by renamed icon enums)
- Accessory bones now copy to rigify rig.
- Physics JSON changes and additions export.
- Unity T-pose export fix.
- Body Collision Mesh fix.
- Unity export logic fixes.
- Resize weightmap function.
- Increment/decrement paint strenth weightmap buttons.
- Image path writeback fix.
- Full Json data generation added.
- Rigify Toe IK Stretch Fix for Blender 3.1+
- Convert to Non-standard function.
- Convert from Generic character to Reallusion material based non-standard character.
- Export baking fixes and default PBR export support added.
- UI naming update.
- Repository rename to cc_blender_tools (title CC/iC Blender Tools), old repo links still apply.
- Initial support for exporting any non-standard characters to CC4.
- Character should be aligned -Y forward, Z up for correct bone translation in CC4.
- Json data constructed on export to try and reconstruct materials using the CC4 Blender Tools Plugin.
- Materials must be based on Principled BSDF otherwise only texture name matching is possible.
- non-standard characters rigged with Auto-Rig Pro will (try to) invoke the ARP export operator (if installed)
- ARP export operator cleans up the rig and leaves only the relevent deformation bones.
- Import functions expanded to allow import from FBX, GLTF and VRM for non-standard characters.
- These are not considered to be CC/iC characters and have no material parameter, rigging or physics options.
- Iris Color and Iris Cloudy Color added.
- Tool bar tab renamed from CC3 to CC/iC
- Some UI button name changes.
- Rigify
- Finger roll alignment fixed. All fingers now have exactly the same local bend axis.
- Disables all physics modifiers non-contributing armatures and meshes during retarget baking to speed it up a bit.
- Physics:
- Low poly (1/8th) Collision Body mesh created from decimating a copy of the Body mesh and removing the eyelashes.
- Hair would easily get trapped in the eyelashes and a lower poly collision mesh should speed up the cloth simulation.
- PhysX weight maps normalized, provides a more consistent and controllable simulation across different weight maps.
- Tweaked some cloth simulation parameters.
- Smart Hair meshes in particular should simulate better now.
- Low poly (1/8th) Collision Body mesh created from decimating a copy of the Body mesh and removing the eyelashes.
- Unity:
- Added animation export options (Actions or Strips)
- Fix to shape-key action name matching.
- Rigify Retargeting:
- GameBase animation retargeting to CC Rigified Rig.
- (Experimental) Mixamo animation retargeting to CC Rigified Rig.
- Facial Expression Shape-key animation retargeting from source animation to CC character.
- Shape-key NLA baking added (optional).
- Materials:
- Diffuse Color, Hue, Saturation & Brightness parameters for Skin and Hair materials.
- Exporting:
- Export to CC3 button renamed to Export Morph Target when editing OBJ imports with ObjKey.
- When Export button is disabled: The reason is displayed under the button.
- Export button Key check is overridable in the add-on preferences.
- Other Changes:
- Fix to ActorCore character (ActorCore website download) animation retargeting.
- Basic face rig generated from full face rig and has the same jaw & eye controls and parameters.
- Jaw pivot retargeting fixes.
- Palm bones no longer affect deformation or generate vertex weights.
- Crash fixes importing characters with very short names.
- CC/iC/ActorCore animation retargeting to CC Rigified Rig.
- Preview and Bake functions for retargeted animations.
- Arms, Legs, Heel & Height adjustments.
- Source armature and action selector, filtering by Armature name.
- Animation importer, import multiple animations in one go.
- Renames actions and armatures to match file names.
- Optionally removes meshes & materials.
- Bake control rig & retargeted animations to Unity.
- Export Rigified character to Unity.
- Basic face rig drivers for Eye Look blend shapes. (If character has ExPlus blend shapes)
- GameBase to Rigify support.
- Face rig Automatic Weight failure detection and (some) auto-correction.
- Support for Voxel Heat Diffuse Skinning add-on for voxel weight mapping of the face rig.
- Optional two stage Rigify process to allow modifications to the meta-rig.
- Optional basic face rigging.
- Support for ActorCore character Rigging. (Only with basic face rigging)
- Support for G3 character generation, which includes Toon base characters. (i.e. the old CC3 base)
- Support for rigging G3Plus, G3, ActorCore characters exported from iClone. (iClone exports with no bone name prefix)
- Some Control Widget fixes and scaling.
- Better character Generation check on import for exports without JSON data.
- Rigify function added.
- Character objects are bound to the Rigify control rig.
- Vertex weights are remapped to Rigify deformation bones.
- Object Management panel
- All round-trip/Export object management functions moved to this panel.
- Including checks and clean up.
- Normalize weights function added.
- Bake/Combine Bump maps into Normal maps function added to Material Parameters panel.
- Highlight shift added to Eevee hair shader.
- Some fixes to exporting additional objects with character.
- Added a 'Check Export' function to identify potential problems with the export.
- Added initial export to Unity project function.
- Round-trip/Unity export additions and fixes.
- Added baking raw metallic and roughness values into textures, when no textures connected, when exporting.
- Modifiers removed from eye parts when exporting that prevented exporting blend shapes.
- Modifiers applied on FBX exports.
- Armature set to Pose mode on export, otherwise skeleton/bind-pose imports to CC3 incorrectly.
- Some file path fixes when baking new textures with exports.
- Fixed skin micro-smoothness calculation causing smoothness seams between head and body materials.
- Fixed UI updating wrong unmasked micro smoothness parameter.
- Blender 3.0+ subsurface scattering method set to Christensen-Burley, rather than Random-Walk, which does not work well with hair transparencies.
- Color mixers for actor core/color masked materials prevented from generating negative/zero color values which could affect diffuse lighting.
- Fixed PBR eye material crash.
- Texture Channel Mixer added, primarily for alteration of Actor Core characters with RGB and Color ID masks, but can be used with all CC3 based materials.
- Cycles hair anisotropy reworked.
- Cycles parameter tweaks:
- Brighter iris settings for SSR eyes.
- Hair subsurface reduced (May want to turn it off completely, there can be too many artifacts generated in the hair.)
- Skin subsurface slightly increased.
- Cornea material detection crash fix.
- Baking add-on compatibility update.
- Character and Object operators (Character Settings Panel):
- Add object to character, with parenting and armature modifier.
- Convert and add materials to character to use with material parameters and export write back.
- Transfer body vertex weights to object.
- Clean up object and material character data.
- Export back to CC3 will include Texture & Json data for any new objects added with these operators.
- Fix to Subsurface scattering for Blender 3.0 Cycles renders.
- Cycles adjustment settings added to preferences for user fine tuning of subsurface material parameters for Cycles.
- Added more support for exporting from characters with embedded textures.
- Baking fix for Blender versions 2.83 - 2.91
- (Experimental) Added operators to add new objects to the character data.
- See Character Settings panel with new object selected.
- Export accessory button no longer locked to character.
- Some import/export folder logic changed to try and cope with project folder & files being moved.
- Added custom texture node baking on export to CC3, including baking bump maps into normal maps on export.
- If nodes are used to modify (or replace) texture inputs to material shaders, those nodes can be baked into the texture channel on export. This assumes the mesh has a valid UV map.
- Bump maps can be baked into normal channels. Typically CC3 will only allow Normal maps OR bump maps for a material, not both, so an option has been added to combine them into just the normal map.
- Fix to crash from multiple character imports from iClone.
- Note: Exporting multiple characters in one Fbx from iClone to Blender is not fully supported.
- Characters should be exported individually.
- If multiple characters are detected then a warning pop-up will be displayed.
- Updated export function to generate compatible Fbx file for CC3 re-import with FbxKey and to write back json material parameter and texture information. To be used in tandem with Blender Importer Plugin for CC3 3.44 for full round-trip character editing in Blender.
- Import/Export Interface simplified.
- If character has Fbxkey then character is setup for editing. (i.e. Shapekeys locked to basis)
- Otherwise (character is posed or has animation) character is setup for rendering.
- Only Fbxkey character can be exported back to CC3.
- Optional Json and Texture write back for exports.
- Optional teeth rotation fix that affects some older generated characters when importing back into CC3.
- Bake on export function added to bake custom material nodes connected to master shader's texture map sockets into textures to include when re-importing back into CC3.
- Additional objects can be selected for exporting with the character, but must be properly parented and weighted with an armature modifier. Otherwise CC3 will ignore them.
- Some property and parameter fixes.
- First attempt at a single material parallax eye shader added. Which does not use SSR or transparency and thus can receive full shadows and subsurface scattering in Eevee.
- Fixed Eevee subsurface scattering settings:
- Reworked shaders to allow for direct application of subsurface radius to Principled BSDF nodes.
- Only the default values in the subsurface radius socket are used in Eevee rendering.
- As such, Eevee does not support inputs to subsurface radius and so shader and parameter code needed to be re-written to accomodate this.
- Cycles unaffected by this.
- Fixed node group upgrade code that incorrectly renamed existing node groups and did not properly replace old shader/node groups with new ones in existing blend files.
- Added render target preferences setting for Cycles and Eevee.
- Added cycles specific shaders for hair, tear-line and eye occlusion.
- Moved all shaders over to new shader model.
- Streamlined parameter and shader code to be data driven, rather than hard coded.
- Character, Object and Material parameters now stored independently for each character import.
- Json data parser to automatically set up all shader parameters.
- New eye shader model.
- New teeth and tongue shader model.
- New skin and head shader model.
- Back ported the more advanced Eye Occlusion shader from the Unity HDRP setup.
- Added displacement modifiers & parameters to Eye Occlusion and Tearline objects.
- Initial support for ActorCore models type C/D/D+.
- Fixed 'Export as accessory' correctly exporting as .obj when character was imported from an .obj file. (And not exporting as .fbx with the wrong file extension)
- Lighting setups set Cycles transparent bounces set to 50 to accomodate Smart Hair mesh density.
- Lighting setups do not delete existing lights or camera, but they will hide them.
- Material setup now properly detects Game Base objects (i.e. Converted to Game Base in CC3 before exporting to Blender).
- Each material now maintains it's own set of parameters.
- Updating material parameters in linked mode will change the same parameters on all materials of the same type.
- Updating parameters in selected only mode will only change the parameter for that one material.
- Applies IOR shader input setting when building materials.
- Exposed some build preferences in the Build Settings panel.
- Enabled SSR and refraction when importing with refractive eyes.
- Auto updater now targets Main branch for current build.
- Fixed problem appending duplicate displacment map images.
- Fixed not removing eye displacement modifiers on rebuild.
- Added eye occlusion hardness parameter.
- Refractive Eyes:
- Iris refractive transmission with depth control and pupil size parameters.
- Limbus parameters.
- IOR and refractive depth parameters.
- Blood vessel and iris bump normals.
- Option in preferences to generate old eyes instead.
- Skin roughness power parameter added.
- Corrected an issue where the opacity maps were ignored in favour of diffuse alpha channels.
- Added opacity parameters for hair, scalp and eyelashes.
- Added roughness and specular parameters for eyelashes.
- Fixed a crash calling the import operator from from script.
- Added auto update scripts.
- Full smart hair support.
- Hair and scalp hints expanded to cover the smart hair system and moved to the preferences.
- Parameter changes update only that parameter in the imported or selected objects materials.
- Fake anisotropic highlights add to smart hair shader. (Can disable in the preferences.)
- Fake bump normals can be generated from the diffuse map if there is no normal or bump map present. (Can disable in the preferences.)
- Animation ranges only changed if physics enabled.
- Build settings and material parameters separated into their own interface panels.
- Build settings now applicable by material and the object and material build types as detected by the add-on are exposed and editable so you can fix them if it gets them wrong.
- Material parameters are context sensitive to the currently active object and material.
- Material parameters grouped into sections.
- Detects smart hair material or normal hair material and only shows relevant parameters.
- Option in preferences to gamma correct smart hair colours so they behave more like the colours in CC3.
- Fix to hair mesh detection with new smart hair system.
- When no texture maps are present for an advanced node group, does not generate the node group.
- When exporting morph characters with .fbxkey or .objkey files, the key file is copied along with the export.
- Function added to reset preferences to default values.
- Alpha blend settings and back face culling settings can be applied to materials in the object now.
- Option to apply alpha blend settings to whole object(s) or just active materal.
- Remembers the applied alpha blend settings and re-applies when rebuilding materials.
- Option to pick Scalp Material.
- Only scans once on import for hair object and scalp material, so it can be cleared if it gets it wrong and wont keep putting it back.
- FBX import keeps track of the objects as well as the armature in case the armature is replaced.
- Physics support added:
- Uses the physX weight maps to auto-generate vertex pin weights for cloth/hair physics (Optional)
- Automatically sets up cloth/hair physics modifiers (Optional)
- Physics cloth presets can be applied to the selected object(s) and are remembered with rebuilding materials.
- Weightmaps can be added/removed to the individual materials of the objects.
- Weight map painting added.
- Saving of modified weight maps and Deleting weight map functions added.
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