2026 Reallusion 3D Character Contest - Zodia (Water People)
Zodia of the Water People, an original aquatic character for the 2026 Reallusion 3D Character Contest, built entirely with traditional 3D craft in Character Creator 5 and iClone 8.
CC5 Headshot 3 workspace establishing the base sculpt. Face built/morphed by hand.
Early proportion pass on the CC5 HD Neutral Base, the lean free-diver frame locked in before any aquatic materials were applied.
Sculpt refinement, profile view dialing in skull, jaw, and brow by hand in CC5's sculpt tools.
Motion test clip, early pose pass in iClone.
Mesh topology check, side view confirming clean deformation loops ahead of rigging.
Mesh topology, front view, full-body topology pass before materials and rig.
Counter-shading zone map, planning the coral-crown-to-sage-jaw color transition before texturing.
CC5 RTX Beta render pass, first look at the finished scale material and counter-shading under ray-traced light.
CC5 RTX Beta render pass, back view, motion test pose.
CC5 RTX Beta render pass, action stance test, checking silhouette and gear read in motion.
Pose test, neutral floating stance for reference.
Pose test, dynamic leap, checking wardrobe and hide readability in action.
Pose test - side profile float.
Pose test - back view, arms extended.
Pose test -diagonal dive, previewing the underwater descent.
Close pose test - checking facial read and gorget/forearm-wrap detail up close.
Hero concept still - Zodia in his element. Rendered character was fully designed in CC5; the design and images are 100% traditional 3D work.
Hero concept still 2 - Zodia in his element.
The Character
From the pressure-dark of the deep comes Zodia, tall and long-limbed, his hide the colors of a reef at dusk, carrying the stillness of something that has never needed to hurry.
Zodia is a sea-dweller, one of the Water People, a people adapted to the ocean. He reads as calm and capable, an open-water presence built for speed and endurance rather than brute mass. At 6’5″ and 220 lbs he is tall and powerfully lean, a free-diver’s build, long-limbed and tapered; his quiet is the quiet of deep water, not of weakness.
Aquatic biology is the design’s spine. His hide is fish-type scaling, smooth overlapping cycloid plates with a wet, pearlescent, faintly iridescent sheen. The coloration is functional counter-shading: warm coral-orange crown grading to sage-green limbs, with a luminous pearl-white underside. Dark above, pale below, the camouflage of an open-water predator. This gives the colorway an in-world logic that becomes a talking point in the WIP.
Process & Pipeline
Zodia started on the CC5 HD Neutral Base, sculpted by hand, proportion first, then a profile refinement pass on skull, jaw, and brow, checked against clean mesh topology before anything else moved forward.
Coloration was planned before it was painted: the coral-to-sage counter-shading was mapped in zones on the sculpt itself, so the "dark above, pale below" camouflage logic had a plan behind it rather than being applied after the fact.
From there the character moved into CC5's RTX Beta render path for the first ray-traced look at the scale material, then into a round of pose and motion tests in iClone to check how the hide, gear, and silhouette hold up in action, including an early diagonal-dive test that became the seed for the final hero concept.
A course correction, documented honestly: an earlier pass on this character read heavier and more armored than the sculpt actually is. Going back to the source frames caught it, Zodia's true build is lean and long-limbed, a free-diver's frame, not a heavyweight's. The spec was corrected before anything locked. Visible process means showing the fix, not just the finish.
Tools & Pipeline: Character Creator 5 (sculpt, RTX Beta render), iClone 8 (pose/motion testing), Blender (topology and prep work), Unreal Engine. All character modeling, sculpting, and final asset work is 100% conventional 3D craft.
