How ActorCore’s library of 6,000+ assets completely changed my 3D process

Getting virtual characters to fit seamlessly in a scene is one of the most challenging parts of any visualisation project. If you pick the right characters and animate them in a believable way, it can 100% make the project. On the other hand, if the people jar with the aesthetic or move in an unnatural way, the viewer will be immediately put off, and you’ll wish you hadn’t bothered.

Believability isn’t the only challenge, though. Putting characters into a scene is also notoriously time-consuming and expensive. Creating characters takes time and skill, rigging them is laborious and prone to issues, and don’t even get me started on keyframing the animation. Historically, if you’ve wanted to do it well, you’ve had to hire a specialist.

Thankfully, there are an increasing number of easy-to-use tools that have hit the market in recent years. One of the best I’ve found is Reallusion’s ActorCore, an asset store for 3D people and rigged characters with facial and lip-sync animation for crowd generation, architectural visualisation, digital twinning, games and film.

I first came across ActorCore when I was integrating Reallusion’s CharacterCreator and iClone applications into my character workflow. I have found it to be the quickest way to source rigged characters with realistic textures and movements. The library is extensive and varied with over 1,000 characters and more than 5,000 motions. There is also a good mix of free and paid-for models.

Use ActorCore whatever your industry

My core skill centres around architectural visualisation. Having done this for over 20 years now. I have seen more workflows for adding characters into images and videos than I can even count.

In the early days it was all about 2D billboards with an alpha channel. In videos these billboards would rotate to always be facing the camera and could be animated by using different images for each frame. It makes me cringe thinking about it again.

Then we started integrating 3D models into scenes. Sometimes they were static and other times animated. They might have been see-through or fully textured. It was time-consuming and very difficult to get them looking realistic, but alternative workflows were few and far between.

Finding asset stores like ActorCore has been revolutionary. Gaining access to realistic characters with motion capture movement built in has turned a laborious process into a drag-and-drop dream.

With packs such as "Worker" and "Office", I can quickly find models that will fit right into my project. Populating virtual buildings, shopping malls, and streets with realistically moving digital humans couldn’t be easier. No more hours of searching through online repositories and becoming more and more frustrated at the lack of quality and usability.

As well as arch viz, ActorCore works equally well in games, films, television, and animation industries. Independent developers and major game studios can use the platform to quickly source pre-rigged characters and complex animation sequences such as combat, parkour, and stealth. This drastically cuts down on development time and costs.

For film, TV, and animation, indie filmmakers and pre-vis teams can use ActorCore to effortlessly create background crowds, stunt sequences, and digital doubles. It also helps directors storyboard and block out complex scenes before ever setting foot on a physical stage.

Multi-platform support

As well as working for a broad range of industries, ActorCore also supports an impressively broad range of software packages. I use Blender most of the time, but ActorCore is also compatible with almost all types of 3D applications, including Unreal Engine, Unity, Autodesk Maya, and more – not to mention its compatibility with Reallusion’s Character Creator and iClone.

ActorCore adapts its 3D characters and motion-capture data to the specific environment you are working in. So, when you download a character or motion, you aren't just getting a generic file but instead an optimised FBX file tailored directly to the architecture of your target platform.

And to bypass the chore of manual character retargeting and material mapping, ActorCore provides dedicated plugins and import presets. This includes native automation tools for game engines, built-in presets for 3D animation software, and native compatibility with NVIDIA Omniverse for digital twins.

Seriously easy to work with

The benefits of using ActorCore assets are numerous, but one of the best things, for me, is that the topology is optimised. Having regularly experienced RAM overload in the past, using models from ActorCore helps, especially when working with large and complex scenes. If you're working with crowds, then ActorCore is perfect.

Texture sizes can be controlled through the export functionality, which makes it possible to create multiple different exports of the same character for use in multiple different applications. In addition, models can be customised with an unlimited number of colour and material variations.

One of the most important considerations with any asset store is the realism level of the motion. ActorCore characters feature AAA mocap animation, guaranteeing a high level of quality. Transitioning between motions is seamless, making it simple and straightforward to link movements together in a natural way.

The bottom line is that ActorCore helps non-specialists integrate characters into their work. There is no long, drawn-out, complicated learning curve, and once you’re up and running, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Find out more about ActorCore and how it could revolutionise your workflow.