Reallusion Inc. was founded in 1993 and established a branch office in Silicon Valley in 2000. The company specializes in integrating creative technologies with digital products. Its main product lines include iClone, Character Creator[1]
, and Cartoon Animator.[2] In 2020, Reallusion expanded its digital content creation ecosystem by introducing the ActorCore platform, offering cloud-based animation services and positioning itself as a leading 2D and 3D crossover character animation brand.[3]
Reallusion generates 95% of its revenue from the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, and Korea. In addition to developing branded software and intellectual property, Reallusion is committed to investing heavily in research and development of digital technologies. The company also provides platforms for creative developers to sell their products through the Reallusion Content Store and Marketplace, delivering efficient retail services and a content creation ecosystem that supports fast animation turnaround, helping artists remain competitive.
Technology
Character Creator
Character Creator (CC) is Reallusion's flagship software, showcasing the company's progress toward industry-leading solutions for professional creators. It integrates seamlessly with industry tools for 3D character creation, animation, and rendering, providing an ideal workflow and simplifying the traditionally complex and expensive process of 3D character design. Character Creator features some of the world's fastest 3D creation processes for digital humans and diverse cartoon characters.
iClone
iClone is a real-time 3D animation software that combines intelligent and automated animation technologies. It offers a gamified interface for a comprehensive editing environment, enabling users to quickly achieve professional results. iClone is widely used for making movies, previsualization, animation, videos, games, and visualization. Its field of application ranges from educational and artistic to commercial and industrial.
Cartoon Animator
Cartoon Animator (CTA) is a software that transcends traditional hand-drawn animation and stop motion, enabling illustrators and image creators to animate in 2D.[4] It supports motion capture animation and automatic lip sync for otherwise static characters, allowing them to appear lifelike with expansive creative potential. CTA is considered the world's most effective and efficient real-time 2D animation software for a professional illustrator looking to become an animator.
Asset ecosystem
Reallusion collaborates with over 10,000 artists and designers to operate the Reallusion Content Store and Marketplace. The Content Store serves as the official 2D and 3D digital content store, while the Marketplace is a flexible platform for customer-to-customer content provision, offering a vast library of quality assets to a global audience. The aim of these stores is to significantly reduce production time and costs for content creators. Establishing a supply chain of digital content is also central to Reallusion's business model.[5]
In 2020, Reallusion invested substantial resources to launch ActorCore as a cloud serviced animation platform. This platform enables direct interaction with its offerings, allowing users to view and explore over 2,000 animations and 3D character assets in a 360° viewer. It is also able to export different formats to meet the diverse needs of the 3D industry. ActorCore is currently one of the world's most advanced e-commerce platforms for 3D characters and character animation.
Character ecosystem
Reallusion has accumulated several decades of experience working with global partners, establishing software compatibility and connections with industry leaders to create a worldwide animation ecosystem. This ecosystem provides a comprehensive solution equipped with some of the world's most flexible character and character animation tools.
The rising popularity of virtual humans demands tools that are both highly accessible and capable of seamless integration with game engines and 3D software. Character Creator and iClone facilitate a workflow for designing 3D characters and animating performances using motion capture devices and professional editing tools.[6] They are designed to optimize content for platforms such as Unreal Engine, Unity, Omniverse, Blender, MotionBuilder, Maya, and ZBrush. Reallusion enables a cohesive workflow that integrates a complete character system with the major tools in the digital content creation pipeline.
Industry-wide adoption
Reallusion's animation technologies focus on automation, enabling indie production houses, small businesses, and individuals, in order to avoid the high costs associated with large teams and organizations. Alongside its extensive use in the gaming, media and entertainment industry, Reallusion solutions have become indispensable in the fields of virtual reality, augmented reality and the Metaverse. Beyond entertainment, its products have seen increased adoption in educational technology and simulations of digital twins for industrial applications.[7] With recent advancements in AI, Reallusion has also emerged as a key provider of 3D content for AI training data.
Media and Entertainment
By recognizing the importance of incorporating virtual actors at every stage of production, Reallusion has been a strong advocate for integrating digital elements as essential components in previsualization and post-production, particularly in games, films, music videos, and TV commercials. Character Creator digital doubles animate using motion capture and facial animation, emulating stunts and performances, which allows directors, supervisors, and producers to visualize every shot comprehensively. Hollywood feature films and TV shows that have utilized Reallusion software include The Suicide Squad (film), Triple Frontier (film), X-Men (film), Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian. Reallusion technology has also contributed to the production of music videos for Tool (band), Twenty One Pilots, Cardi B, and more.[8]
Architectural, Engineering, and Construction
iClone crowd generation and flocking tools are designed for simulation of real-time virtual humans, facilitating their integration into virtual environments. These tools empower digital characters to move collectively, carry out workplace tasks assisted by artificial intelligence, and engage with the environment. This technology serves to democratize character animation, providing architects, engineers, and construction professionals with accessible means to incorporate animated figures into their projects.[9]
Metaverse and Social Media
Reallusion regards characters for virtual reality, augmented reality, social apps, and the emerging Metaverse as a frontier for virtual humans to offer vivid interactions and personalization with lifelike movements, facial expression, and natural dialogue. The Reallusion pipeline empowers content creators to craft 3D characters and motions tailored for platforms such as Spark AR, Snapchat Lens Studio, Unreal Engine, and Unity (game engine). Each character level of detail (LOD) can be adjusted to strike a balance between quality and performance within the Metaverse environment.[10]
In its commitment to advancing computer animation and media platforms, Reallusion places significant emphasis on the integration of artificial intelligence to enhance its software and plugin offerings. Beyond developing practical products and tools, Reallusion is actively working to make its core technologies accessible through integrable APIs. Additionally, the company is expanding its service portfolio to include Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, aimed at optimizing workflows and processes. These initiatives underscore Reallusion's aspiration to pioneer the global digital character creation and animation industry.
Product lines
3D character design software
Creator Creator - A universal character system for generating, importing & customizing realistic/stylized characters.
