Wonder Studio gets new Blender and Maya plugins

Wonder Dynamics has released new Wonder Studio add-ons for Blender and Maya.

The new character validation plugins streamline the process of preparing custom characters for use with the AI-powered online platform for inserting 3D characters into video footage.

Automatically replace an actor with a 3D character in video footage
Launched earlier this year, Wonder Studio processes single-camera source footage, tracking the motion of an actor, generating roto masks and clean plates, and replacing the live actor with a CG character, automatically matching the lighting to the background.

As well as the rendered video, users can download clean plates and alpha masks for the actor, both exported as a sequence of PNG images; motion-capture data in FBX format; and for Blender users, a complete Blender scene file.

New plugins make it easier to get existing 3D characters to work with Wonder Studio
Wonder Studio has quite strict requirements – for example, when it comes to the naming of bones and blendshapes – so existing 3D characters don’t always play nicely with it.

The new character validation plugins streamline the process of preparing 3D characters that haven’t been created specifically for Wonder Studio for upload to the site.

They guide the user through the main steps for configuring a character, resolve any fixable issues automatically, then generate a detailed log of issues that need to be resolved manually.

You can see the workflow in the videos above: the process is still quite involved, and requires work on the user’s part, but the plugins do make it a lot clearer why a particular character isn’t compatible with Wonder Studio, and what needs to be done to resolve the problem.

Price and system requirments
The new character validation plugins are compatible with Blender 3.6.2 and Maya 2022+. You can download them for free via the links in the Wonder Studio documentation.

Wonder Studio itself is browser-based, and runs in Chrome or Safari. It does not currently support mobile browsers. Pricing is credit-based: you can find more details in this story.

Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.

Wonder Studio gets new Blender and Maya plugins

Related Posts