How to turn 3D Scans into fully-controllable virtual actors

3D-scanned people are widely used to create visualisations in many industries beyond games and films. From manufacturing, business, archviz and digital twins to media entertainment, they are the key element to bring simulations closer to realism, making the virtual scenario convincing as a real world.  

Thousands of 3D people can be easily found online. But as realistic as they look, most 3D characters tend to lack the natural movement of real human beings, either in static poses, emotionless faces or stiff body animations. To transform scanned models to animated people requires not only skill and experience, but also the technology for character creation.

Now, Reallusion, the developer of iClone and Character Creator, has brought a new “Scan to Animation Pipeline”, adding details, realism and performance for scanning images. In collaboration with The Scan Truck, a Hollywood-based 3D scanning service company, and ICVR, a global creative and digital production studio, Reallusion has successfully turned scanned models into lively animated 3D characters that are fully controllable and can be exported to major 3D tools for any productions.

When experts met leaders in character creation

Located in Los Angeles, the heart of the American entertainment industry, The Scan Truck and ICVR  have partnered with major Hollywood studios and international corporations including Warner Brothers, FOX, Universal Studio, Sony pictures, Apple, Netflix and more, to create avatars and digital content for famous games, films and marketing campaigns. Recent successes include creating digital doubles for Grand Theft Auto 5, Xbox games, and for feature films including Marvel’s Black Window, Dune, and Terminator: Dark Fate.

It was an instant click between The Scan Truck, ICVR, and Reallusion, each with a long list of credentials on character creations. Impressed by the character creation technology of Reallusion’s “Scan to Animation Pipeline”, The Scan Truck and ICVR took part in the new 3D character creation workflow with Reallusion without hesitation.

After recruiting 15 people for a shooting day inside their studio truck in LA, The Scan Truck precisely captured the likeness of each model using their high-end scanning technology.  

Next, a multidisciplinary team of technologists, artists, and engineers in ICVR constructed these scanned images into high quality 3D models through detailed data processing.   

“We as content creators feel the pain of people out there, having these high quality models but  not accessible for most usages,” said Chris Swiatek, Chief of Product, ICVR. “It is fantastic to see our 3D content turned into vivid 3D characters with controllable animation and deployed in a wide range of applications beyond games and films.  We're very excited to be among the early testers of this pipeline and to see the increased efficiency it brings to art production as a whole.”

From creation to content animation, Reallusion redefines 3D characters

Constantly evolving its products to keep pace with next-generation technology while also providing unique implementation that adapts its tools to all levels of creators, Reallusion is setting a new industry standard for real-time character creation. The company’s “Scan to Animation Pipeline” provides the highest realism and control over 3D people, aiming to effectively level up business visualization for archviz, digital twins (manufacturing, construction), traffic or crowd simulation. At the same time, the new pipeline synchronises with the rapid growth of real-time visualization offered by GPU and game engines including NVIDIA Omniverse.

Deploying its advanced technology on facial and body rigging, morphing, and lipsyc animations, Reallusion’s new pipeline can generate two unique outputs from 3D scanned images:

actorORIGIN: High-res digital humans for Character Creator 

These ultra-realistic digital humans deliver the highest details for close-up performance, customizable with hair, facial and body morph, skin layers, and outfit systems, suitable for real-time film and AAA game projects. It is the native character format (CC3+) in Character Creator, with a large amount of assets including body shapes, appearances, outfits, and accessories for mix’n’match.

actorSCAN: Photo-realistic 3D people for crowd rendering

These one-mesh, fully-dressed, lightweight models are designed to enliven business simulations with fully rigged, all controllable, true-to-life digital crowds, all with facial expression and lip-sync animation suitable for long to middle camera ranges.

Scanned actors live on stage in 3D productions

Reallusion’s animated 3D avatars are fully compatible with thousands of AAA production motions available on ActorCore, Reallusion’s premium online 3D asset library, allowing one character to be used for multiple purposes from business, training, archiviz, to films, and games. All content is also compatible with most 3D programs including Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, Maya, MotionBuilder, 3ds Max, Cinema4D and iClone.

Join the incredible “Scan to Animation” pipeline

With a never-ending passion for bringing CG characters to life, Reallusion is looking for partners who excel in 3D scanning and character design to join ActorCore, enabling designers from all backgrounds to easily enliven their game, movie, and interactive projects with rich asset selection. Contact marketing@reallusion.com for more information.