Tips & Techniques: How To Create Unique Body Shapes & Sizes

Firstly, Happy New Year, everyone. I can't thank you all enough for coming back here and seeing what's up. Your kind Emails since I started the blog about a week ago, have made me obliged to keep on going with this. So in appreciation, here's another tip & technique for creating unique iClone characters. Someone recently Emailed me and asked if I use 3ds max for creating the bodies for my characters. The answer is no. I have no idea how to use 3ds max (although I hope to one day). But the body templates already provided in the full version of iClone, are more than enough for you to create multiple & unique body types. Although there are only 6 body types in iClone, you can use the same one over and over, and still make it appear different in shape. The trick to this illusion, is adjusting the size of the head, hands, & feet. For example, the photo above shows several characters who seem to all have different body types. However, the Dwarf, Ogre and Nerd characters, were all made with the MINIATURE body type in iClone. By adjusting the head, hands & feet, you can make an Ogre seem gigantic and muscular,... a Dwarf, seem short and stubby, a cartoon, Nerd type, seems, ...well, "cartoonish" and nerdy :). And the last picture shows characters made with some of the other body types provided in iClone, but again, with head/hand & feet adjustments. Also, when you open iClone, use the default character already in the window, as a reference for your new characters' size. For instance, when I made the Ogre, I knew I had to make him huge. So although I clicked on MINIATURE for the shape of his body, I proceeded to scale him much bigger than the default character that had been in the window previously. This way, if I import him into a scene with other characters, he will already be the right size in relation to them. So try this technique and see what you come up with. And if you want to see a little example of all the body/character types you can create in iClone, click on the player below.
Till Next Time, ... "Keep Cloning" .... Pauly