looking for alternative for Fuse/Mixamo

Questions, skill improvement, and respectful critique involving art assets.
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DirkB
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looking for alternative for Fuse/Mixamo

#1 Post by DirkB »

A few weeks ago I started to make my first visual novel and as I am very bad at drawing, I started looking for software to help me with character creation.

As I didn't want to spend much money right away, I settled for Fuse/Mixamo and paint-net.

The process goes like this. Make a character in Fuse 1.3. Upload to Mixamo. Choose animation. Make a screenshot (Fuse CC doesn't look as good in Mixamo and has fewer customization). Delete everything surrounding the character in paint-net (save as png). Add it to a background scenery in paint-net as a new layer. Resize character. Done. The only big issue I have with this is that hair colors in Mixamo turn black into grey most of the time, but I can solve this by taking a screenshot from Fuse and cutting out the hair.

This way I can make lots of quite good looking characters with a good variety of clothing in a short amount of time and it doesn't cost me anything. I do lose time by having to clear screenshots of areas surrounding the character, but this isn't such a big deal.
Now they mention that Fuse 1.3 will no longer work with Mixamo starting 22nd August, meaning that I need to look for another way.

I have been reading a lot about all kinds of software but I can't make up my mind.

My personal impressions so far (correct me if I am wrong).

MakeHuman: free, but not so good in animation/expressions as Fuse/Mixamo. Limited clothing/hairstyles, but I think there may be more downloadable for free? Overall look to me seems far less impressive than Fuse 1.3/Mixamo.

Poser: One time price. I am not sure if you can easily choose the same clothing and apply it to many different characters. I read that it has a steap learning curve and finding what you need can be difficult due to bad library organization. It's unclear also to me just how many preset clothing/hair styles are available.

Daz3D: Free version has very limited possibilities. You can buy lots of stuff, but if you want to have many different characters, clothing/hair styles, isn't this going to become an extreme investment? I read that you can buy morphing separately, but you will still need to spend a lot on clothing I guess?

Character Creator 2 (iClone): Free version also has very limited choices. Costs more than Poser. I don't know if it's any better than Poser.

Fuse CC beta + Photoshop: Monthly subscription. Less clothing/hair styles than Fuse 1.3. Looks bad in Mixamo mainly due to eyelashes. Good variety of animations in Photoshop.

I also noticed something about render times that it may take sometimes many hours to render one single picture.

Anyway, so I want to have a way to create a large variety of characters, with a decent amount of different styles and clothing, in a relatively short amount of time with quality at least equal to what I can get now from taking screenshots of Fuse 1.3/Mixamo. I should also be able to apply the same clothing style to many different characters.

I don't mind spending some money on this (but not more than around 100-150 euro).

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Re: looking for alternative for Fuse/Mixamo

#2 Post by Katy133 »

I keep an art programs tag on my Tumblr blog. It's several pages long, but I've reblogged lots and lots of links to freeware art programs that will be listed there among those posts. You'll probably find a program that suits your needs there. A lot of the posts include free programs.
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Re: looking for alternative for Fuse/Mixamo

#3 Post by runeraccoon »

Katy133 wrote: Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:17 pm I keep an art programs tag on my Tumblr blog. It's several pages long, but I've reblogged lots and lots of links to freeware art programs that will be listed there among those posts. You'll probably find a program that suits your needs there. A lot of the posts include free programs.
Sorry for hijacking the thread, but THANK YOU. Your list/reblog is awesome. Bookmarked!

DirkB
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Re: looking for alternative for Fuse/Mixamo

#4 Post by DirkB »

Thanks for the reply. It looks like a really interesting collection of links.

Yesterday I already started spending money on Daz Studio (platinum membership and head/body morphs). I am guessing I might be spending around 300 euro for my novel for including extra hair styles, clothing options (some are cheap with platinum membership) and background sceneries. Sceneries like classroom, restaurant, house, living room, hallway etc will cost me the most but it has the advantage that I can use multiple camera angles.

I read some use MakeHuman with Blender which is all free, so it may be a good alternative, but has a steaper learning curve and I am not sure about the quality versus Daz.

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