Quick Start

Inside a Geometry object, press Tab, type Reallusion, and place a Reallusion Rigger node (under JV).

At the top of the node is an Import dropdown. Leave it on USD (the default, and much faster) if you exported a USD file, or switch it to FBX for an FBX export. New to the two modes? See USD vs FBX.

Then set the file field the dropdown shows — USD File or FBX File — to your exported file.

Keep your character's textures beside its file, exactly as Character Creator exports them — a Materials folder next to the .usd, or a textures folder next to the .fbx. The tool resolves them relative to the character file.

Click the Build Character button.

The tool imports the character, builds all of its materials, sets up displacement and wrinkles where the character supports them, and creates a look controller. Then, because Build APEX Rig is on by default, it builds the rig in the same press and bakes the character's own animation through it. On our test characters the whole press takes roughly 40 to 90 seconds; the progress bar at the bottom of the Houdini window shows what it's doing.

When it finishes, a Reallusion Rigger APEX Rig node sits directly below the Rigger. That node is the animatable character, and it is now the displayed node.

Select the rig node and press Animate. You're now in Houdini's APEX animate state: pick a control in the viewport, move it, key it. The character's own animation is already there, as the BaseAnimation layer, so you're refining it rather than starting from nothing — or press Add Rest Pose Layer (the first icon in the rig node's Layers row) to start from the rest pose on a layer of its own. Exit Animate State returns you to the normal view.

The face has its own sliders, and the rig node's Face Tools and Auto Animation folders add Face Puppet, Face Key Muscle, Auto Blink and Auto Breathe. See Animating.

Your character is built in Solaris (Houdini's /stage context), and Karma reads the rig node's output, so your animation is what renders. Click Go to LOPs (in the Rigger's Render folder) to jump there, then set up a viewport with a Karma render to see it.

Create Render Setup builds a three-point light rig, a camera, and Karma render settings for you. The bright red controller node in the LOP network holds every look control: skin, wrinkles, eyes, hair, and more. See The Lookdev Controller and Rendering.