Hey everyone!

We’ve got big news for everyone regarding the developer content submission and publishing policy. In an effort to differentiate our two online marketplaces and create a unique identity for both, we have decided to make some adjustments to the content submission policy for the Content Store. In order to enable better exposure for new, quality developer content and to ensure a more streamlined browsing experience, Reallusion will be phasing out older content with low sales and less compatibility to newer versions of iClone. Along with this change, we will be introducing several new promotional strategies to help improve sales in our Marketplace.

Clear Positioning for 2 Platforms

As many of you already know, the Content Store was our original online marketplace where iClone and CrazyTalk users could find quality content created by both Reallusion and our talented developers. Then in 2010, in order to make it easier for developers to publish their content in a timely manner, we launched our C2C Marketplace, which allowed for faster publishing and full control over personal online shops. As the Reallusion community has grown, our online marketplaces have evolved. We have seen a proliferation of content from not only veteran Reallusion developers, but also new players as well. We have also dealt with confusion amongst our users as to the binary nature of our online asset sales (i.e. why do we have two stores that sell the same products, and why are the prices and customer service different?).

Essentially, individual developers are encouraged to manage their own content creation, commercialization, and publishing for all of the assets they sell. As a result, we offer developers a higher profit share in the Marketplace. Outside of our developer community, Reallusion is continually seeking out developers from external communities who already have established libraries of content. We work with these branded developers to help them republish their content, in order to enrich the selection of assets available to our user community. Reallusion reserves a higher profit share in this case, due to our repurposing, commercialization, and republishing of the content, as well as the subsequent customer service.

	Content Store	Marketplace
Position	Official Content Store	Content Community
Content Source	Reallusion or Branded Republishers	Individual Developers
Commercialization	Reallusion does content repurposing & commercialization	Developers do their own content repurposing and commercialization
Dev. Profit Share	30-50% commission rate	60-80% commission rate
Purchase Behavior	Cash; sold per content pack	DA points; sold per item or content pack
Customer Service	Reallusion	Store owner

To summarize, our revitalized Content Store will only contain content from Reallusion and select re-publishers, as well as existing featured CCD content. There will no longer be a submission mechanism for the Content Store, and all published items will be specially selected by Reallusion from the Marketplace. If you believe you have a strong collection of content and wish to publish it in the Content Store, please contact developer@reallusion.com for more information.

New Promo Plansfor theMarketplace

We will be making some changes to the Marketplace as well in order to help developers get more exposure for their content and therefore maximize the amount of potential purchases and increase sales. One of the major goals of this move is to increase the amount of sales and exposure for quality Marketplace content. Keep a look out for these opportunities to leverage our exceptional commercialization and marketing abilities and make your content look as attractive as possible!

Developer Promo Calendar
As you may be aware, Reallusion regularly promotes different types of themed content in the Marketplace. However, there is normally very little notice given to developers regarding upcoming promotions, so they have little time to produce custom content for the specific promotion. In the future, we will be providing a Developer Promo Calendar, which will give developers notice in advance of upcoming promotions, allowing them to plan their production schedule beforehand. The themed promotions will be hosted on this page: http://city.reallusion.com/cityThemePage.aspx

Reallusion will announce each promotion at least 3 months in advance, in addition to any new upcoming developer tools or whitepapers.

UpcomingPromotions
Theme: iClone Puppet-able Cartoon Characters (characters made with Avatar Toolkit)
Time: Early June >> Early July
http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/iclone_AvatarToolkit.aspx

Theme: CrazyTalk Animator G2 Characters (multi-angle characters)
Time: Late July
http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/animator/animator_feature_pipeline.aspx

Featured Content Areas for Vendors and Buyers
With the new changes to the Content Store, the Marketplace is set to be the center of our content community, and as such we plan to develop new areas for vendors to publish interview videos or tutorials to accompany their content. This allows vendors to provide additional value to their content, as well as help buyers understand exactly what they’re purchasing. We will also provide an enhanced mechanism to allow buyers to provide input via content reviews, and share their experience with the rest of the community.

Certification Program in the Marketplace (Reallusion Select)
Previously, we required content creators to successfully publish to the Content Store in order to become a CCD, or Certified Content Developer. While this certification is still available, it is now handled through a form submission once your content has already been published to the Marketplace. If your submission is approved, it will be placed in the Reallusion Select section of our Marketplace, and you will be given CCD status. In addition, content from CCDs that we certify will be given a “Certified” label to make it stand out from the rest. The more certified content you have, the larger your collection in the Reallusion Select section will be.

Direct Traffic from the Content Store to the Marketplace
Currently, there are no regular entry points that lead from the Content Store to the Marketplace, so traffic may be limited. To remedy this, Reallusion intends to open a prominent fixed area in the Content Store with the sole purpose of redirecting customers to the Marketplace.


Content Store Revitalization

The Content Store is over 8 years old, and over the years it has been host to a great deal of excellent content from previous versions of iClone. However, with new developments in iClone’s capabilities, that same content often loses its luster and gets in the way of our users finding the newest and most unique content. In addition, there are often various compatibility issues with newer versions of iClone.

Therefore, in order to provide a more streamlined and clutter-free browsing experience in the future, we will be doing a bit of spring cleaning. We have carefully reviewed the sales performance of all of the content in our Content Store, and have tagged certain items for removal in order to increase exposure for newer quality content.

We will soon begin this phase of content removal, however content that is to be removed will first be placed in a Clearance Page for one month to give it one last hurrah before it disappears from the shelves of the Content Store. The criteria for having your content removed are as follows:

1)Sales – Content with limited sales in the last year will be removed to make room for content with more sales potential. However, certain assets with good commercialization quality will be kept in anticipation of higher potential sales after the store update.
2)Content Compatibility – Reallusion’s products have evolved over the years, and in order to maintain peak performance with newer iterations of the software, assets from earlier versions will be removed.

These rules apply to Reallusion as well, and we will be removing 300 of our own items along with 1400 developer items in mid May. If you have content in the Content Store that is slated to be removed, you will be notified via email of which items have been marked. You can then request to join our clearance program and agree to an aggressive discount on your content for the month in which the promotion will last.

We believe that these steps are necessary and long overdue. In order to make way for the release of a much-improved iClone 6 later this year, our intention is to raise the bar for quality in regards to both software and content. We’d like to thank our users for your understanding and invaluable contributions to our community over the years, and we would like to affirm our dedication to providing you all with the best content and software we possibly can.

Best Regards
Reallusion, Inc.

Sounds good to me, might I suggest a new layout for both stores? More modern and minimalistic looks with brighter/livelier color schemes... Just a suggestion...

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My latest release for CC
   
For all my other iClone contents, click here.

shame on me I have not used the marketplace for a while
Promo Calender sounds nice to me. I get new motivation to develop for Promo events


Actually, It is so easy to manage and upload , something like that is not practice elsewhere . e.g Submission to Unity asset Store seems horrible

Thank you RL for your great work for us developer




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liebe Grüße vidi

meet us here

One comment I want to make is that although all new and fresh sounds cool, there is still older content for which there are no direct equivalents. I'm thinking about the packs with clothes for various professions, various hairstyles, etc. Movies are not only filled with flashy youngsters and I feel there still is a lack of ordinary clothing that would be worn by ordinary people that has been recreated for newer iClone versions.

Not everything useful will have high sales. There might be a unique item you are looking for that doesn't get sold very often but that would just be the thing you're looking for. Now to find the thing you are looking for can be a challenge, but that has more to do with the organization of the content.

There is a large variety of interior props that are older and have not be recreated for the latest iClone version. They are single props, so not very flexible, but I found that by importing them in 3DXchange, splitting them up in sub-props and doing some retexturing, they can still be useful.

Anyway, just some comments from a consumer perspective.

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Good point. We're going to try to keep the widest selection of content possible in the Content Store while at the same time establishing a new standard of quality. Everyone's still welcome to publish and purchase whatever they like in the Marketplace as well, so there will be little if any reduction in the overall selection of content.

With iClone developing so rapidly over the years some educational establishments have been unable to keep up with cost as well as advancement in the use of iClone for the smaller/younger user and novices to animation. In the early days iClone was sold as a tool for the "Home user" but as it has developed so much since then it has become a more professional tool. This is great don't get me wrong and Reallusion should be congratulated on their R and D.

My concern is for customers who are still using Iclone 3, 4 and 5. Content even from 2.5 can be imported into these versions. There will always be a market for such content as some establishments can't afford or even more importantly would not like to upgrade as the earlier versions are ideal as an introduction to animation where as version 5 and onwards will be too difficult for younger animators. These customers are unlikely to renew every 18 months or so and will always want older content.

KaiD has said "We're going to try to keep the widest selection of content possible in the Content Store while at the same time establishing a new standard of quality. Everyone's still welcome to publish and purchase whatever they like in the Marketplace as well, so there will be little if any reduction in the overall selection of content."

This is good to hear and will be reassuring for such schools and colleges who are looking to tighten budgets with the lack of prosperity in the economic state our governments find themselves, hence funding to schools etc. So with these points in mind I hope Reallusion takes on board these concerns when developing further versions and makes older content that users have bought over the years compatible for import future developed versions.

I agree there needs to be a "Spring Clean" within the marketplace\Content Store just as we do as users when you look back at content we thought was the bees kneees in 2006 that is filling up our hard drives. However I don't throw this content out I store it externally ( you never know LOL )

I don't comment much on threads here in the forum but I am passionate of Iclone into Education. This is what got me interested in it back in 2005 at the BETT show in London. Kids love it and you can teach not only animation skills but get over subject matter which some difficult kids would never be interested in by using iClone.

Phew!! This must be the longest post I have made over the years. Rant Over!!

Click on the link below to visit my marketplace
http://city.reallusion.com/store/popeye

Even though there is still a market for older contents...

The problem with older, outdated and low quality contents is that it can be a turn off for potential new Reallusion customers who expected today's standard quality...

For example, I have a friend who was interested in iClone because I show him everything about it and how easy it is to work with. But when he visit the marketplace to check out the available contents, he was turned off by the inconsistency of content quality. In his words, "There are some contents that are extremely well made and professional while some shouldn't be put up for sales." Yea, harsh words I know...

The inconsistency in quality drove him away and he went back to using Daz. I know my friend isn't the entire world but this is just one example of losing a potential customer. Not everybody can make their own contents, and not everybody want to buy 3dxchange to convert contents, so orginal iclone contents are what people is looking for before purchasing a new software such as iClone. And sometimes, marketplace/content store being flooded with low quality outdated contents could drive away a potentially new buyer. And who knows how many people out there thinking the same as my friend.

Most people I talk to still prefer to use daz because it has a consistent content quality all around. And that attracts them. Plus the application is free now... So that's even more enticing....

RL needs to focus on gaining more install base. It is important to keep support for existing older users but it is also equally important, if not more important to reach out for new/wider audience.

To improve and advance, one must need to step out of the comfort zone... changes are inevitable... Eventually older things becomes irrelevant and obsolete, this is common in nearly everything...

...Just my opinion....

However, as mentioned above, there are some older contents that has no direct equivalent. Until then, these older contents are necessary to keep.

And Thank Your Reallusion for your hard work and keep improving the services.

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My latest release for CC
   
For all my other iClone contents, click here.

I think that Cellygon raised the theme, very important for any online market -- How new customer can determinate which product should be take in account as possible purchase.
I think that more unbiased rating system can help in it.
By my opinion, most "clear" rating for product is how many times it have been sold in some fixed period of time (month, quarter, etc).
And for developer "clear" rating should be based on ratio between total number of publications (except free products) and total number of sales. By my opinion "ratio" will round the chances for developers with different number of publications to have good rating.
Of course any rating system will not work without support on marketplace pages, so they should include feature to sort product by rating or separate and show only product with "from-to" rating value.
Also important that this feature should be "on top" (easy to find), but not put somewhere deep in features list.
Of course it's only my personal opinion.

Vit

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	Sad mistake! You'll delete good "distance incidental props" at the expense of "close up" hi-definition quality. Make a Bargain Basement instead. I said this many times before... WE NEED a GRADING SYSTEM. No one listened. What makes iClone look appalling is..... Sloppy Animations with poor quality motion management and bad camera work along with bad lighting and appalling audio with chronic lipsynch. CRINGE! Killing good visual elements no matter how low quality adds TIME which is ££$$ to remake. Not good. Better to make a separate store for "Vintage Content -  Pre v.5 iClone."

I think a rating system based on number of sales only is not such a great idea as the demand for a particular character may be different from the demand for a certain prop. And, sometimes you make a mistake when buying something...

If new users are steered to the Content Store rather than the Market Place you will have a pre-filter, as it is my understanding that RL will play a more active role in it. However, the one other advantage of the Market Place is that you can buy single items from a pack; an option that the Content Store doesn't provide. 

DAZ has no equivalent of a Market Place, I believe everything goes through their store. DAZ's primary focus has always been content, with the software as an afterthought (although it has become better). So if people buy only based on assumed available content, they will be in for a surprise.

As to the quality of what people create with iClone or any other software, that will be difficult to control.

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