I must acknowledge this idea came about by Alley's intuition and marketing understanding. Her experience about the iClone user needs is invaluable, not to say her ability to create very realistic and artistically conceived textures.
I have worked dedicated to achieve the best possible LOW POLYGON COUNT mesh, which would still perform correctly.
Characters are truly 2 layer, and some others ready to be presented are 3 layer as well! We decided to use the earlier head design from G3 characters, because those heads use a substantially lower polygon count, still being able to perform all the Puppeteer motions, LipSync to audio, Morphing and Facial alteration.
This of course means if users want to create custom faces for their Casting EXTRAS, they will do better using iClone 4. Surely iClone 5 can be used to characterize the heads but it will increase the polygon amount by more than 3000 extra polygons. There is no need to do that!
Iclone 4 faces are good, mainly when Extras are supposed to work in the background or doing very short appearances in a scene.
Another important fact is EACH Casting Extra has his VERY OWN CLOTH MATERIALS! This really means they can be characterized independently, providing total differentiation between extras. By simply changing the material characteristics of each avatar, like Hue, Saturation, Brightness, etc. each avatar can be made to be an original in itself!
Users able to work with Photoshop can also alter each individual to his particular interest by adding texture overlays or doing painting changes! And these changes will not propagate to other members of the crowd! Of course Alley will also release more textures for each pack, expanding the Cast versatility!
No more empty scenes with few actors! Apparition-Alley Casting Extras are full fledged actors and actresses capable of doing all things normal resolution avatars do!
Enjoy and don't miss this new addition to your Casting Resources!
Mike Aparicio-Reallusion Certified Innovative Content Developer