Characters and looks

Zornov makes 3D characters that are ready to animate, with bones, a face that can talk and blink, hair of their own, and clothes that follow every pose.

Make a character

Characters are built by the AI editor, so you describe the figure in words and change it the same way. Open the AI editor with ⌘ K on Mac, Ctrl K on Windows and Linux (or from an AI assistant connected to Zornov), and ask for what you want:

Add an elderly man, heavy build, grey hair, standing in the middle of the frame.
Make a teenage girl in the anime style with a long ponytail.
Add a fox on two legs with orange fur.

You can describe:

• A starting point: baby, toddler, child, teen, adult, elder, slim, athletic, heavy, heroic, realistic, stylised, toon, chibi, anime or anime chibi.
• The body: age (in years or a word), style (realistic, stylised, toon or anime), a broad or narrow-shouldered figure, build, shoulders, hips, legs, arms, neck, hands, head size and skin colour.
• An animal on two legs: a cat, dog, fox, bear, rabbit or mouse, with a fur colour. It gets ears, a muzzle, a nose, whiskers and a tail, and the same body and bones as a person, so you dress it and animate it the same way.

Every character comes rigged. The face is made of separate parts (eyes, lids and lashes, lips, teeth, tongue and brows) with shapes for expressions and speech, so it can smile, blink and lip sync without any set-up. See Animation and puppets to make it move.

Use a model of your own

To bring in a figure you already have:

1. On the Player toolbar, click 3D camera and lights.
2. Under 3D model, choose From a file… and pick a .glb, .gltf, .obj or .stl file.

A glTF or GLB file with a skeleton, face shapes and animations comes in rigged, with its animations ready to play. A model without bones can be rigged in one click: select it, open the Animation tab in the Inspector, and in the Character section choose Rig as person, Rig as animal or Rig as chain. The bones are fitted to the model and its skin is bound to them automatically.

Hair

Every character is born with sculpted hair of its own, separate from its outfit, so taking the clothes off leaves the hair in place. Ask the AI editor for a style and a colour (the brows follow the hair colour):

• short, buzz, crew, pixie, bob, long, wavy, curly, afro, ponytail, bun, spiky, twintails, bangs

By default hair is one sculpted mass with locks. Ask for strands to get groomed hair cards instead. Beards (a goatee or stubble), moustaches and brows are made of strands too. Long hair is bound to the head, with its ends giving way to the neck and chest, and a hat presses the hair down under its brim rather than cutting through it.

For hair or fur that swings as the character moves, select the model and use Hair on top in the Simulation section of the Animation tab, or choose Hair and fur in Simulation settings on the Model tab to set the number of strands, length, curl and stiffness.

Clothes

Clothes are real garments cut to the body. Each one sits a little off the skin by its fit and is bound to the body's own bones, so it follows every pose without a rig of its own. Hard things (hats, glasses, buckles, buttons and armour plates) ride rigidly on one bone.

Ask the AI editor to dress the character, for example "put her in a beige cotton trench coat and a fedora". You can ask for:

• Kinds: shirt, jacket, coat, trousers, skirt, dress, cape, hat, shoes, gloves, glasses, scarf, belt, bag, armour.
• Colour and trim: a main colour and a second colour for the trim.
• Material: wool, tweed, denim, silk, leather, steel and others.
• Fit: from tight to baggy. Tight clothes such as leggings draw the skin in under them.
• Length: waist, hip, thigh, knee, calf, ankle or floor.
• Sleeves, and whether a jacket or coat hangs open.
• Loose: leaves coat tails, a skirt or a cape free for the cloth simulation, so they swing as the character walks.

A character made "dressed" wears a plain T-shirt, trousers and shoes as separate pieces. Wearing a new piece of the same kind replaces the old one. Ask the AI editor what the character is wearing, to take one piece off ("remove the hat"), or to undress it completely. The body underneath is always whole.

Fabric patterns

Clothes can be woven with a pattern: stripes, pinstripe, check, plaid or dots. Patterns are woven at a real size for the figure (a check is small, a tartan's repeat much larger) and follow the cut of each panel, so they line up the way they would on a sewn garment.

Things in their hands

A character can hold a prop in either hand: a pen, a wand, a cup, a glass, a bottle, a phone, a book, a sword, a torch, a lantern, a candle, a lighter, a briefcase, a handbag, an umbrella, a ball or a tray, or any 3D model in your project. The fingers close round it by how thick it is. Ask for a handle grip (the fist closes round it, the default), a pinch (for a pen) or an open palm, and ask the character to let go at a given moment.

Candles, torches and lanterns burn by default. A lit flame flickers and casts a light that moves with the hand.

Toon and anime shading

Characters made in the toon or anime style are drawn toon-shaded from the start. Any other 3D model can take the same look. Toon shading draws:

• the light in two or three hard bands (cel shading), with the shadow side in its own colour,
• a rim light round the edges of the figure,
• hard highlights on glossy parts,
• ink outlines round the silhouette, at a width in pixels you choose.

Ask the AI editor for the look, naming the model or not:

Draw the hero toon-shaded: 2 bands, a 2.5 px dark outline, lilac shadows and a soft rim light.
Give every model in this sequence a cel-shaded look.
Turn the toon shading off on the car.

When you don't name a model, the look applies to every model in the sequence, which keeps a whole scene in one style. Walkable worlds take toon shading too. Asking for the "physical" look turns it off again.

To fine-tune the look by hand, select the model and open All settings on the Advanced tab of the Inspector: the number of bands, the outline width and colour, the shadow colour and the rim are listed there with the model's other settings.

Related pages

• Scenes and models
• Animation and puppets
• Lights and cameras
• The AI editor