Autodesk's Character Generation is a handy, web-based application that enables user to create customized, rigged and ready-to-animate 3D characters.

Once designed, characters can be exported for a range of applications — from populating game scenes, to learning animation and modeling, generating models for pre-visualization, design visualization and more. Formerly dubbed "Project Pinocchio," a popular Autodesk Labs experiment that resulted in the creation of thousands of characters, Character Generator was designed with customer feedback integrated throughout development, and houses a library of pre-built male, female and creature characters.

Using slider and selection functions, users can combine and morph the physical attributes of the pre-built models — from body traits to facial features, skin color, hair styles, clothing and more — to create unique characters. Upon completion, users on Autodesk subscription or rental plans can leverage cloud credits to export their 3D creations to software packages such as Autodesk Maya, Maya LT and 3ds Max for further customization and animation, or use in game engines like Unity.

Character Generator features include:

° An extensive collection of male, female and fantasy characters, from which users can blend two different sources to create an original design;

° A vast selection of skin, eye, hair, clothing and shoes;

° Targeted blending options to refine characters on a per feature basis ;

° The ability to save characters in the cloud and modify them in the future as needed.

Autodesk subscription and rental customers will receive access to a body, bone and blend-shape facial rig collection compatible with Autodesk HumanIK middleware to enable keyframe, motion-capture or facial animation in Autodesk software. FBX and Maya publishing options for customers on Autodesk subscription or rental plans.

Character Generator requires five cloud credits per high-resolution character download for customers on Autodesk subscription or rental plans. Students and educators receive free access to the product, and a lighter version of the app for creating low-resolution and crowd characters is accessible for anyone to try at no cost. For more info about Character Generator visit charactergenerator.autodesk.com.