Programs to build characters in

There are multiple programs you can use to make characters. There are pluses and minuses in them as well. Let’s give you an overview.

3D programs like Blender, Maya, Max, Cinema 4d.

Pluses: great at modeling from scratch, full control of UV maps, everything from scratch.

Minuses: same problems, everything is from scratch. No Painting, no preferred sculpting/retopology tools, no auto-blendshapes or rigging.

Sculpting/painting programs like Zbrush and Sculptris with painting tools like substance painter

Pluses: very artistic, full control, make beautiful 3D art from clay.

Minuses: HIGH skill threshold, retopology sucks, Difficult to UV map, no texture, weighting, or blendshape capabilities.

Character building tools like Daz3d or CC3

Pluses: Incredible character creation tool with minimal work, huge library of assets, optimized and rigged with blendshapes.

Minuses: only makes characters, no dragons or things outside bipeds, can get pricey, there are intellectual property rights concerning usage of it.

These are the most common character creator tools out there. I would recommend CC3. It’s reasonably priced and now they are adding support for live speech recording of faces, optimized UVs and LOD counts for characters and more. There is also headshot which will take a character’s face from a photo.

-in course, we will do a quick demonstration on how to make a character in CC3.