Contest to find 3D character artists being conducted

A contest to seek out 3D character creators and to promote a particular piece of 3D character-creation software is being conducted through Oct. 16. Prizes include $4,000 cash along with 3D hardware, software and content prizes.

The contest is being conducted by the companies Reallusion and Polycount. The contest seeks artists to create their own 3D characters. These can be any fully-rigged and animated 3D humanoid (biped) characters. Participants need to submit a 30-second video to show the personality and detail of the character.

According to the release, "The 2016 3D Character Design Contest aims at tackling this challenge by providing 3D artists with pre-rigged, universal morph-ready quad avatar designs that allow artists to turn their 3D sculptures into animatable 3D characters. These new characters are ready for thousands of motion assets, facial lip-syncs, look changes, body shape morphs, multi-layered outfits, and dynamic textures, all while be easily retargeted and exportable to external 3D tools."

The contest is being conducted to promote the software iClone Character Creator Pipeline. Additional contest sponsors include Renderosity.com, CGTrader.com, 3D.sk, Humster3D, Sketchfab. Media partners include Polycount.com, ArtStation.com and 3DTotal.com.

Reallusion is providing a free 45 days of iClone Animation Pipeline Pro for all contest entrants new to Reallusion and interested in exploring the capabilities of iClone. The iClone Animation Pipeline can import and export 3D models and animations for Maya, Max, Unity, Unreal, C4D, Blender and more.

Contest rules are available here.