I agree 1-1 timeline frame to render frame would be good!
today is my first day with the software, my work around has been to set the view frame counter to show time, I then know that if I plan to output at 25fps that 1second will be my 25 frames. 4 seconds will be 100 frames etc.

Not ideal!

I got Iclone indigo for valentines from the boss, not the boss that employs me. The other boss :D

So it turns out that if you have a timeline of 100 frames and you set indigo to 60 fps. You will get 100 frames exported exactly. Big surprise there though I haven't rendered it to see if the frames are just duplicates. So it is possible to get what you see in the timeline exported out from Iclone exactly the same frame count. Not half!
I tried exporting at 15 fps but didn't work. I got 50 frames from the 100 frame timeline so it defaulted to nth = 2. So something fishy is going on.

Another issue is possibly with the indigo exporter.
If Iclone is based on 60fps and you have a frame in the timeline that was skipped by Iclone because rendering images is rendered nth = 2, this could happen in the indigo exporter as well.
I don't have indigo yet so can't tell if the indigo exporter does an nth = 2 but if it actually exports 1 is to 1 from the timeline then that means its the Iclone internal renderer that has a bug. :D

I also was frustrated to discover this fixed frame rate. I traditionally animate at 24 frames per second because of the timing and how easy you can divide 24 into 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 to easily measure beats, half seconds, quarter, etc.

MOCAPs are set at 30fps but they can be retimed to the users setting, Poser doesn't have any problem with their MOCAP's when you change the frame rate. As opposed to unwanted frame blending of improperly dividable frame rates, I need a frame rate that I am comfortable with. I want native rates and render rates of my choosing.

Does Reallusion not appreciate the significance of frame rates when it comes to animation? If I found out about this when I started I would have never known anything about iClone simply because I would have deleted out of my PC as garbage.

Till iClone changes this essential and necessary adjustment I cannot endorse this product or give my financial contribution to it. In fact people new to this place need to be warned of this major shortcoming before anything else. I am certain that many are and will be turned off by this.

There was a thread dating back to pre iC 6 saying that "a fixed FPS was not a bug to fix" that is correct, it is actually a narrow mindedness from the makers of iClone. Any significant animation software has a setting for a frame rate because it matters. Unless iclone wants to be a toy maker and not a true animation software, then don't change a thing.

How serious is this ? Will they OVERWRITE the earlier images ?

Now think for a moment. The guy in the night shift rendered like this, Another guy in the morning shift takes the rendered images through FEW BATCH PROCESSING IN PHOTOSHOP and later dumped in another directory for the NLE guy to pick up for the compositing. They are composited and passed on for the music rendering, who knows even mastered ! After all we are always under tremendous pressure to deliver !

Imagine the users around the world doing the similar mistakes and wasting time to correct them !

What does RL need to do ? Just 3 lines of EXTRA CODE !

While testing ICLONE 5.5, 12-14 months back I listed out all these issues and explained how this could create problem in a busy production environment. I also predicted this WOULD NOT BE CORRECTED because RL programmers think it to a be a VERY MINOR AND LOW PRIORITY CHANGE REQUEST while the star programmers would be busy with more excoting grapgic programming. Now I see ny prediction was correct. They have not corrected.

As I see ICLONE 6 is not an overhauled ICLONE as we would believe it to be. It just a line extension. It has inherited many WEAKNESSES of ICLONE 5 and added a few of its own.

If you guys pitch to RL, I hope they take note of it.

Oh wow!! Why is Iclone rendering frames that way???? Its renamed the sequence to start with _00000 even though that portion is in the middle of the timeline. The timeline is really not useful for reference at all for animation. If you had a keyframed event in frame 100, it will be renamed _0000:w00t:. Besides the fact that frame 100 is actually frame 50 saved in harddisk because of this nth=2 frame bug, which was the main issue. Now to find out Iclone names sequences this way. How disappointing to find this out now. This is a serious flaw.
This leads me to believe that Iclone is really geared towards rendering straight to videos, which is bad.


@animagic - I'm not really concerned with internal fps now. I'm more concerned about getting the images rendered to exactly match the timeline and not skip any frames, and making that timeline useful. Anything you do in the timeline now is not accurate. As been shown some odd frames will be skipped. Those odd frames could contain a muzzle flash, an event, etc and could be completely missed by Iclone when rendered to images on hd.

As an "old-timer" I think there continues to be a misunderstanding about "old-timers"... 

I am not going to reiterate why iClone has an internal frame rate of 60 fps. That should be obvious by now. Motion clips are stored at 60 fps. MOCAP files often even have a higher fps; some of the CMU files I have seen have 120 fps.

So the internal frame rate is there for a reason and could even be higher to have better fidelity. RL decided to make the frame rate shown in the time line equal to the internal frame rate. This has led to confusion, apparently.

Now for those that find that problematic, I suggest to provide an option so that the internal frame rate is hidden and that the time resolution is equal to the rendered output. That should make everybody happy. So make it an option, and we can put this debate finally to rest.

One caveat: the coupling will mess up your keyframes if you decide to change your render fps. Also, obviously, a frame is no longer a universally defined time slice. 

Now about rendering sequences, it would indeed be useful to be able to set the number of the first frame of a sequence to something other than "0" in order to be able to re-render a section without having to renumber the image files.

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True. I use a single frame for the muzzle flash in hitfilm.
Imagine doing that on a single frame in ICLONE !
Probability of your gun firing in ICLONE is 50:50: !!:w00t:

===

A year back, I raised this point ( Frame Rate ), but NOBODY from RL offered a reply / explanation / suggestion. Now a few newcomers have again raised this point. I am glad. I believe the old timers are happy with their 30FPS video / image sequence rendering. We in the PAL world need to wait for a solution.

@hattori

While rendering an image sequence, please stop it ( presuming some computer breakdown at frame 200). Now RESTART the rendering to the SAME DIRECTORY from the frame that was last rendered. Define the new frame range(201-500) to render. See if you face any issues?

This user encountered the issue with his muzzle flash not being rendered because Iclone would render nth frame = 2 :D


https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic223248-36-1.aspx
-Because the render is based on 30 fps and the project in 60fps , a one frame muzzle flash for exemple , is not rendered if it lights on on impaired frame.



Iclone should just render images to harddisk wysiwyg in the timeline.

Now try to get a 25FPS animation of the duration "20 sec" or "500 RENDERED frames" from ICLONE.

Set a PROJECT for that.

Please discuss after rendering.