Free Toon Characters coming in June
wsterdan
Posts: 2,619
One of my favourite set of 3D characters to date has been 3D Universe's Toon Generations, the original version. I've loved every other generation they've done based on Genesis versions 3-9, but the original version – based on an all-original mesh – is still my favourite.
Before I retired, I commissioned Steve Corder (3D Universe) to make me a modern, standalone version of the original Toon Generations, of sorts. I requested a body style that was a little more definition and a wider range of morphs, and he applied a quick sample of body types that was our starting point.
A quick word about Steve Corder. He's a brilliant artist and one of the easiest I've ever worked with; moreover, he's fast. Very, very fast. It was a pleasure to work with him and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Once the basic body types were set I gave him a list of different morphs I wanted added to the heads, and he turned everything around far faster and far better than I could have hoped for (despite me adding more requests as things progressed).
Once the basic toons were done, I made a second request; when Aiko 3 and Hiro 3 first came out, they came with Stephanie 3 and David 3 body shapes, in case you wanted to use your Aiko 3 and Hiro 3 clothing on more "realistic" characters. I wanted that.
My second set of requests were to have male and female "semi-realistic" head morphs added to the base characters, and again, he delivered exactly what I asked for.
I used the toon versions of the characters in my very first attempt at 3D animation, two episodes of The Hrimfaxi Adventures (you can see them on Youtube, my channel is "Studio Hrimfaxi", or on my website, "sterdan.com"). They were lots of fun to do and more of a "proof of concept" than a shining example of modern 3D animation, but I learned a lot and should I make any future 3D animations, they'll be much improved.
I've had a lot of fun with the characters – and still do – and I've decided to share them with the DAZ Studio community, for free.
My original hope was to find a PA to donate them to (no charge) so that they could update the characters and sell them to DAZ as a future freebie (ensuring a wide distribution to anyone interested and a stable site for hosting) but the artists I approached had too many of their own projects to take on another.
I hope to make some simple clothes and hair to include with the characters before I post them and – with any luck – I'll have everything ready by 2025/June/22 at the latest. If I have enough extras made before then, or I realize I'm not ever going to be satisfied with what I make or have time to do them, I'll upload the characters before that date.
I'm currently looking for options of where to make them available. I had originally planned on useing Sharecg, but they're in the process of closing down so I'm looking elsewhere. If anyone can recommend a site, please let me know.
Here's a few test images I did to see what they can do. The images are a mix of full toon and semi-realistic.
The characters come with clones to help them wear Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 clothing, but using those (and base Genesis 3 and 8 males and females) you can use any clothing from Micheal/Victoria/Aiko3/Hero3/Freak3 (or anything you have clones to be used for Genesis 3 and 8), as shown in the images.
The characters can usually use Genesis 8 poses and animations with minimal adjustment.
There are no iRay textures, they're made to work well with 3DL and OpenGL for fast rendering and animation.
I'm committed to some game programming for the next few weeks so I may not make a lot of immediate progress on the clothing/hair modelling, but I'll post progress images as I do.
If anyone has any questions or comments (or knows of a good site to host the files), please post away.
I've included the original body shape samples that Steve provided before starting the project, a render of the base male and female toons (bathing suits are included as morphing clothing), a render of the characters with some semi-realistic morphing applied (with a touch of "young", there are some age morphs included), samples wearing V4 and M4 Uzilite Next Adventure clothing and the Aiko3 and Hiro3 bodysuits with Project Z textures applied, a sample of a female character's young and old versions, and a pair of young space cadets.
More sample images to follow.
Base Toons:
75% Semi-realisitc with a touch of "young"
With V4 and M4 Clothing:
With Aiko3 and Hiro3 clothing:
Test Toons on a starship bridge:
Young female with her "mature" version
Young female and male cadets, 75% Semi-realistic with a dash of "young":
Here's a list of the morphs included:
Arms Length
Shoulders Scale
Shoulders Width
Foot Propagating Scale
Foot Propagating Scale Left
Foot Propagating Scale Right
Female Curvy
Female Overweight
Female Young
Male Buff
Male Hero
Male Monster
Male Overweight
Male Young
Semi Realistic
Fingers Length
Fingers Length Left
Fingers Length Right
Fingers Width
Fingers Width Left
Fingers Width Right
Hand Propagating Scale
Hand Propagating Scale Left
Hand Propagating Scale Right
Palm Scale
Palm Scale Left
Palm Scale Right
Ears Elf
Ears Fairy
Ears Goblin
Ears Gone
Ears Orc
Ears Size
Ears Square
Ears Troll
Eyes Almond
Eyes Size
Eyes Slant
Eyes Square
Head Propagating Scale
Lips Large
Mouth Size
Nose Height
Nose Length
Nose Pointy
Nose Pyramid
Nose Realistic
Semi-Realistic (Age Mature)
Semi-Realistic (Age Senior)
Semi-Realistic (Chin Oval)
Semi-Realistic (Chin Round)
Semi-Realistic (Chin Square)
Semi-Realistic (Head Alien)
Semi-Realistic (Head Egg)
Semi-Realistic (Head)
Semi-Realistic (Jaw Hard)
Semi-Realistic (Jaw Round)
Semi-Realistic (Jaw Square)
Neck Length
Chest Scale
Chest Depth
Chest Width
Navel
Semi-Realistic (Body)
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Comments
Oh my goodness! I'm SO EXCITED about this!!! AHhhhhhhhh It will be like Christmas in June! I can't wait!
As for where to host them, Renderosity or 3DShards might be good options.
Oh I'm beside myself with excitement over this! 3D Universe is one of my all time favorite content creators - I really like his toon assets!
If you're wanting to include FilaToon mats for the characters for their release, please let me know as I'd be more than happy to make FilaToon mats for them.
I'm really thrilled by this news. I can't wait to see these guys released to the wild! Wow! What an incredible gift this is going to be to the community!
Thanks for the feedback; I'd had Renderosity on my list of possible sites, but I wasn't aware of 3DShards, I'll have to check 'em out.
I'm also a huge fan of 3D Universe's toon characters; even owning these guys I still didn't hesitate to pick up his latest Toon Generations package.
I'll put together a package for you to test out in the next few days. Even if you don't make Filatoon mats for them, you might enjoy a little play time and I'd consider you a beta tester to help detect any wrinkles that I should be ironing out before releasing them.
this is awesome.... even more awesome if they work in Carrara
I still use the first version of toon generations as well as they work in Carrara as well as many of 3DU products from earlier times ...
That would be great! I'd love to beta test these guys!
Amazing
To quote a certain meme: Cool and good!
I hate to be a spoiler, but shapes (and rigging) are protected by copyright so any clone shape requires the prior permission of the rights owner (Daz for the Genesis figures) before it can be dsitributed.
Hi Richard;
No problem, it's probably a good idea to figure things out before any serious problems might arise. I've PM'd you directly rather than start a bunch of legal discussion between non-lawyers. I appreciate your help and thoughfulness, my thanks.
Impressive work!
You can always release it in the DAZ Store.
wsterdan You can try RenderHub, I believe the file size limit is more than Rendo.
Please check out it yourself.
I agree, 3D Universe always does great work. As to releasing it in the store, my goal is to give away for free and releasing it into the store would no doubt require some maintenance updates to meet release standards and some sort of after-sales support, neither of which I'm up to.
I've opened a ticket with DAZ and hopefully I'll have more information in the next week or so. The only issue might be the clones for clothes-fitting, the characters themselves should be fine.... just almost naked.
Thanks, I'll definitely check it out.
I'm starting to work out a few mini-tutorials on using the upcoming Free Toons.
For the most part, they work the same as any other DAZ character, so there really shouldn't be much to explain to DAZ Studio users; I'll focus instead on a couple of features that aren't necessarily built-in with the regular base characters.
If DAZ allows me to include them, the Free Toons will come with Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 clones for both male and female. They work pretty much the same and as well as other clones do with most DAZ characters.
On a side note, if DAZ says "no" to the clones, I'm currently making a clothing development mesh that will hopefully help people make their own clothing.
Besides the Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 clones, you can convert clothing from most other characters the you can use with your Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 characters by using Genesis 3 and 8 as intermediate converters. If you can fit a Genesis 2 or Micheal 4 item of clothing to your Genesis 3 or Genesis 8 character, then you should be able to fit it to your Toon character.
To explain more clearly (usually I make things more confusing, not clearer, so this is new for me), let's start with the Female Toon (currently still called "Walt Base (Female)", I'm still workshopping final names and at the moment am leaning towards "Omnitoons", feel free to offer suggestions).
I'm going to go to the extreme a bit and convert a bodysuit from 3djoji's Little Heroes package for Toon Generations. If you bought 3D Universe's Toon Generations 2, it came with a clone for Toon Generations 1.
We start the scene with the Toon female base and a new Genesis 3 female character.
We fit the bodysuit to the Genessis 3 character first...
... then select the bodysuit and reassign the "fit to" to the Toon female base.
We tell the converter that it's coming from a Genesis 3 character (the second box for type of clothing isn't used nor needed) and the bodysuit is now fit to the Toon female (I've changed the texture a bit to make it easier to see the next part).
Once the bodysuit is fit to the Toon female, you can see that it's now suffering from the normal shrink-wrap effect around the breasts. Let's see if we can fix that.
Selecting the Toon female, in the Parameters panel we have options for "Torso". Under "Torso", we have two slightly different settings for helping with the bridge area between the breasts, "Breast Bridge" and "Chest Clothing". You can adjust either or both until you have something more to your liking, where it doesn't look as if the clothing was spray-painted on.
Once the clothing is converted, it should retain all of the clothing item's original morphs as well as fitting the Toon character with any of the Toon character's morphs applied.
I'll try to get a sample of the Clothing Creation mesh in the next few days.
Very cool! Thank you for the update and the tutorial, I think that will be helpful when people want to use other generation clothing on the new figure. If the clones are allowed, this will really open up the figure's wardrobe!
Steve did such a great job on these characters! I'm very much looking forward to seeing what everyone does with them. I really enjoy toon characters and getting to see more toon renders sounds like a lot of fun!
This would be awesome! i have so much of the original Toon Generations but felt restricted in their use re clothing and poses.Would great to use them in animate and anilip and the clones would be fantastic. Especially being able to vary the head and body morphs. Would they be able to work with Gen 2 & 3 poses?
They work best with Genesis 8 poses and animations, but there are a few converters in the store and one or two free converters in the forums that should be able to update them for you. Essentially, without the converters, you'll probably get the same results as if you apply Genesie 2 & 3 poses to a Genesis 8 character... they'll work, but will need varying amounts of adjustments.
5 thumbs up -- that's 5 out of 5. It would be great to use some older outfits and these. Now most are just sitting there .
They don't use the Genesis 8 rigging? That would also be an only-with-prior-permission thing - Daz allows add-ons to use its rigging etc., but not new stand-alone figures.
almahiedra pointed out this free product (thanks again, almaheidra):
https://3dshards.com/product/ces-3ds-legacy-clone-generator-for-genesis-9/
Which should allow you to the same clothing that could be used with my toons, working by using existing clones. Clones are still needed at some point; the author noted that the reason he used Genesis as his medium for generating Genesis 9 is that Genesis has a V4 clone by default, for example. It looks like a great product, and if DAZ allows me to include my Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 clones, this product might allow the Omnitoons to generate other clones so that you eventually wouldn't need to autofit them to Genesis 3 or Genesis 8 first before autofitting them to the Omnitoon (as is needed in my mini-tutorial above).
If DAZ does not give you permission to distribute the clones than one solution is to supply the reverse clones, by which I mean clones of your toons for G3 and G8. These are your shapes, so you can re-distribute them.
Whilst that may seem unhelpful, as the idea is to get the G3/G8 clothing onto the your toons, not vice-versa, it is however very useful since other users can easily (and I believe legally, as long as they are for personal use) create G3/G8 clones for your figures by using the clones you supply.
I don't know, Richard. It's been a week since I asked about permission to use the clones with no response, but if I understand you correctly I'll also have to check if they used actual Genesis 8 rigging (without using any Genesis 8 mesh) that I'd need permission for that too, but if they only approximate Genesis 8 rigging it would be okay?
I'm not an expert but I don't think I could. Richard could explain better but in the current situation, the G3 and G8 clones are made by taking the Toon meshes and reshaping them to match the shapes of Genesis 3 and Genesis 8, and it's just copying those shapes – with my own mesh – that's the issue. Your way would mean taking G3 and G8 meshes and reshaping them to match the Toon shapes, and if distributing the *shapes* of Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 are a no-go, distributing actual Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 meshes would not be allowed.
Unless, of course, I've got things backwards.
No, because it is still using Genesis 8 as a reference. Essentially if the daz figures are used, by copying or by a visual guide, to create a new figure then it can't claim to be a (wholly) original work and can't be shared. I'm sorry to be a perpetual downer, but these are things that 3DU should have considered (and hopefully did, and got right).
Moved to PM, where I should have put it in the first place, my apologies.
-- Walt
Richard, would it be okay to let some people beta test the package while we wait for word from DAZ or Steve and if it turns out they can't be distributed, I could remove any download links and advise the testers of the situation, just to keep things moving forward a bit?
I understand that. But if you already have G3 and G8 clones for your toon figures, then it is just a few steps in Daz Studio to create Toon clones for G3 and G8.
Basically you export out a base resolution G8 figure as an object, re-import it, then use the transfer utility to fit that object onto your toon figure using the G8 clone as the source shape. This should result in the G8 skin having the shape of your toon. You can export this to obj, then re-import into G8 using Morph Loader Pro so that G8 has a morph of your Toon. This can then be used by other users to create a G8 clone for your toon by doing the whole thing in reverse.
I believe distributing a G8 morph is allowed, as indeed many commercial products and freebies do just that.
I honestly have no idea what's allowed or what I'll be able to give away at this point. If I understand you correctly, I'd have a G8 or G3 morph that I could distribute and people could use *that* to make their own G3 or G8 clones. Got it... I think. Yeah, that might work, unless I can't distribute the Toon characters at all based on what Richard said about rigging.
Hopefully we'll hear from DAZ "soon" about what's allowed (it's only been a week so far); I honestly didn't think I'd have this much trouble giving something away for free, I thought finding a site to host it was the hard part.
Thanks for taking the time to explain it simply enough for me to understand it, much appreciated.
If the distribution of the base figure's mesh data (data consisting only of vertex lists, without vertex coordinate data) is not permitted, then all creators selling or distributing their unique character morphs and part morphs would be committing license violations.
Since it's unlikely that all of them are violating licenses, wouldn't it suggest that the distribution of mesh data is not prohibited?
Or, in principle, the distribution of mesh data is not permitted, but DAZ 3D is tacitly condoning the situation?