Mixamo and Fuse (Currently) Free Character Creation/Rigging/Animation Tools

by PhoenixGames on May.29, 2016, under Art and Designs, Software and Games

Being a programmer, my art skills are not my strongest point. With that in mind, I have been searching for tools to allow me to create good quality art for game projects without having to explain my creative vision to an hired artist. I also like to have the freedom to create my own art, rather that having to rely on a third party.

I already posted about MakeHuman in a previous entry, and I still use this program regularly for human figure creation.

I recently came across an online service called “Mixamo” (Which which is an amazing tool for animating a mesh. This software is currently free, but may not remain so. The idea is that you upload a 3D model to the service, and it will automatically rig it (saving a huge amount of time by itself). Then, you can choose from a large database of animations, (most of which are paid) and finally, the animated model can be downloaded and used.

This image shows a character from MakeHuman being animated in Mixamo:

Mixamo also has a product called “Fuse”, which is a fully-fledged character creation tool. I used the Steam version, but the newest version is on the Adobe Creative cloud (Fuse CC). It is very similar to the kind of character creation tool that a lot of RPG type games would have, but it has far more powerful features. Fuse is a download, while Mixamo’s animation tool is an online service, but Fuse integrates with Mixamo seamlessly, allowing for easy animation of characters, as shown in the below images.

There are other programs that allow for character creation in addition to Fuse, there is Autodesk Character generator, and some other plugins and apps for specific software. I think, however, that there is a need for a program like this that can be integrated into an existing game project. Games could then use this library to allow players to create completely new characters very quickly and easily, without the developer having to create a very complex character creator from scratch each time.

The different submeshes that are used to form the character would need to be customised for each game type, but other than that the software would be completely reusable.