Reallusion’s Digital Human Contest 2020 – Winners Revealed

By Stephanie Hayot - January 15, 2021

Reallusion’s Digital Human Contest launched in September 2020 with the aim of introducing game-changing solutions for character artists to add speed and creativity to 3D character creation. Within 2.5 months, there were more than 160 submissions across Realistic, Stylized and Animated characters categories. 35% of the entrants were new to Character Creator and successfully adopted it into their creation pipeline.

“We are elated by the number of new 3D artists excelling with Character Creator. Among the entries, concept artists, animators, game developers and 3D generalists presented characters with work-in-progress that demonstrated the excellent and diverse skills brought to the competition. We also learned a lot from them. We believe that real-time character creation is the future for artists to revolutionize the process of building quality characters with an efficient workflow and adaptable pipeline.” – John Martin, VP, Product Marketing

The Digital Human Contest is hosted by Reallusion, and sponsored by industry leaders in character design, including Noitom, ArtStation, ZBrush, Substance, Texturing.xyz, Marvelous Designer, and Faceware. Character Creator’s native pipeline functions allow artists to seamlessly integrate a new workflow designed for rapid creativity with zero sacrifice in character quality.

Watch the video overview of submissions and outstanding entries:

WINNERS

REALISTIC CHARACTER CATEGORY

Under this category, entrants create a realistic human character in Character Creator by combining the character base with tools like ZBrush, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer, Blender, Wrap, Texturing.xyz, and Maya.

1st Place: Scout Annie – by Rafael Benedicto, 3D Character Modeler

“Character Creator helped a lot in this project as I was able to build and iterate an anatomically-accurate human in just minutes, then spend more time on other things like her outfit and equipment. And the results speak for themselves.” – Rafael Benedicto

2nd Place: Cyber Boxer – by Miguel Soudjay, 3D Artist

“It was a whole new way of creating for me. Character Creator 3 is a tool that blends perfectly with other software and makes it an undeniable asset in the creation of characters like the Cyber Boxer. The topology is flexible and you have the possibility to have a rigged character to do your poses and animations.” – Miguel Soudjay

3rd Place: The Evil Queen of Divine Troop – by Joe Lo, Freelance 3D Artist

“My story began 4 years ago, I spent countless nights mastering various 3D tools after finishing my daytime accounting job. I couldn’t tell you how excited I was to successfully render and illustrate the transformation of a wounded old lady to a perfectly shaped evil queen.” – Joe Lo

STYLIZED CHARACTER CATEGORY

Under this category, entrants create a non-realistic bi-ped character in Character Creator by combining the character base with tools like ZBrush, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer, Blender, and Maya.

1st Place: Tech Witch – by Angel Alonso Garcia, Concept Artist / Art Director

“I used CC3 Base+ as the basis for the characters, then I did the high poly modeling in ZBrush. Once the stylized anatomy was designed and modeled, I baked the information on the LOW poly model in ZBrush and Marmoset. The difference of the maps created in both programs gave me more variety, to be able to bake different textures.” – Angel Alonso Garcia

2nd Place: Deep One Hybrid – by Konrad Hetko, Freelance 3D Artist

“In the beginning, I was wondering if Character Creator would be able to deal with such big deformations of the face. But the results were really good. Going back and forth between ZBrush, CC and Substance wasn’t a problem. I would be happy to participate in the next CC Digital Human Contest if it takes place.” – Konrad Hetko

3rd Place: Sienna – by Andrea Antillon, Character Artist & 3D Fashion Illustrator

“A pipeline where all the tools are fully integrated with each other, allowing the project to flow, and giving the artist more freedom to focus on their actual art, is a delight to use. Participating in this challenge was an enriching experience.” – Andrea Antillon

ANIMATED CHARACTER CATEGORY

Under this category, entrants animated their CC character using any 3D animation tool like iClone, Unreal Engine, Maya, Unity, Blender, Cinema 4D, etc.

1st Place: Time Intruders – by Angel Alonso Garcia, Concept Artist / Art Director

“The contest gave me the opportunity to present my project. A story that begins with an action sequence, with several characters and in environments that allow a variety of different spaces to be shown. In order to do this, I had to focus all my efforts on developing characters that I could create and animate in a very short space of time, with a stylized visual style, that had its own personality.” – Angel Alonso Garcia

Watch the video: Time Intruders

2nd Place: The Cyborg Doctor – by RJ Lin, 3D Artist

“Being a 3D artist, I can build up a character from imagination which is really a cheerful thing. Sometimes I’m not sure if I am a pro artist or not. This award makes me feel that I’m a good one. I don’t think my work is better than other entrants, but I really love it!” – RJ Lin

Watch the video: The Cyborg Doctor

3rd Place: The Messenger – by Christoph Rüger & Khaya Ludidi, Indie Game Developers

“We only made the switch to Character Creator shortly before the contest. We had previously used a character model from a 3D asset store with various modifications. Our primary reason for the switch was the variety of characters we wanted for our game – and it was immediately clear that it was the right choice. Character Creator was the enabling factor for our somewhat unorthodox setup in Unity, like the dynamic wrinkles which are based on wrinkle assets from CC. Overall it was a great experience and well worth it!” – Christoph Rüger

Watch the video: The Messenger

BEST DIGITAL DOUBLES

Entrants who created digital double characters by using ZBrush, or Character Creator’s Headshot, plugin, an ideal tool combination to generate 3D likeness characters.

Beetlejuice Likeness – by Anthony Hayes, Senior Character Artist

Benedict Cumberbatch Likeness – by Konrad Hetko, Freelance 3D Artist

Mona Lisa CG Portrait – by Jayesh Shriniwas Naik, Film Character Digital Sculptor/ 3D Character Artist

WuTang Clan – Ol’ Dirty Bastard – by Alexander Siedlarek Tarrida, Traditional / Digital Artist

Betty Boop – by Oscar Barrales Hernandez, 3D Artist / Motion Graphics

BEST USE OF ICLONE

This award goes to the Best use of iClone on character body animation, facial expression, physics assignment, environment setting, and final rendering.

Yumi Batgerel, 3D Character Artist

BEST STUDENT ARTWORKS

Outstanding student artworks among three categories will receive special awards and Reallusion software licenses to encourage continuous creation.

Andrea Antillon, Character Artist & 3D Fashion Illustrator

Tommy Ling LU, Freelance 3D Artist

Wolfgang Stockinger, 3D Artist

HONORABLE MENTIONS

There were tons of amazing entries and it was extremely difficult for the panel of judges to rate all entries as top honors in all categories. 42 artworks have been selected as Honorable Mentions, and received awards from Reallusion to recognize the amazing work by all.

REALISTIC CHARACTER

Yumi Batgerel, 3D Character Artist; Konrad Hetko, Freelance 3D Artist’ Anthony Hayes, Senior Character Artist

Pasquale Scionti, Senior Environment / Lighting Artist; Luis David Zavala García, Freelance Character Artist; Alexander Siedlarek Tarrida, Traditional & Digital Artist

Haoui Adel, Architect; Nicolas Sequeira, Freelance 3D Artist; Jaskaran Singh Grewal, Technical Artist

Wolfgang Stockinger, 3D Artist; Tommy Ling LU, Freelance 3D Artist; Aron Versteeg, Realtime Generalist

Jayesh Shriniwas Naik, Film Character Digital Sculptor / 3D Character Artist; Charles Peckstadt, Character Artist; Ernesto Salvador Ramírez Blanco, Freelance Designer

Andrius Beconis, 3D Artist; Femi Falade, Freelance Artist

STYLIZED CHARACTER

Peter Alexander (a.k.a Mythcons), 3D Generalist; Juan Olarte, Surfacing / Modelling 3D Artist; Angel Alonso Garcia, Concept Artist / Art Director

Giancarlo Sevilla, 3D Modeler / Digital Sculptor /Texture Artist; (2 entries) Oscar Fernandez Gonzalez, Digital Sculptor / Illustrator

Alexander Gonzalez Rodriguez, 3D Character Artist; Michael Falcony, Freelance 3D Artist; Adrian Sagardoy Pagador, Multimedia Artist / Painter / Sculptor / Game Designer