Two critical improvements.

1. Iclone exporter should not create temp files for textures per frame. I understand the mesh per frame but the textures in a scene should be collected into a single folder. They're just duplicates.
The exporter/parser could just point to a single folder. I suspect this is one cause why Iclone crashes trying to export.
In other indigo plugin exporter it was mentioned that creating temp files was not necessary at all but I've yet to test it.

Also when I used Indigo's packaging command the textures and mesh collected was 1/3 of the original size from Iclone and neatly packed in a PIGS file. 3 gigs of a simple 100 frame animation became 1 gig.



2. Camera matching - the conversion is off by a few decimals.

We also need access to F-stop and Exposure from within Iclone. And the white point.
Adjusting this in Indigo renderer one by one per frame for an animation sequence is not ideal.
Its not possible to adjust these setting on Indigo renderer for an animation sequences en masse afaik.

that makes sense, with the ability to animate the settings....but how would you monitor the results in iclone to animate it appropriately ?..... - I would imagine taking test shots through out your scene where the lighting changes ?

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Yep single test renders at different frames would be enough. :D

The problem right now is Iclone exports a default f=stop, exposure and white balance setting afaik.
They're not practical in all situations so we need them accessible in Iclone so that when we export a sequence, the settings we want are carried over to each iqs file.
The iqq file is just a batch file so there's no ability to adjust all iqs files en masse from indigo.

Not two requests anymore :D

When using indigo sun sky with Iclone to get that look, the settings in Iclone are not really helpful since they don't give feedback on the Iclone viewport anway.
I rather tweak the sun sky setting in Indigo to work with the camera pov I have. Problem is when you get that look in indigo its not fast nor intuitive to transfer those settings from Indigo to Iclone. The direction and angle settings in Iclone took me a while to test and get the numbers I wanted. A lot of guess work which in the end I just created a chart to sort of match the Indigo settings to the Iclone settings.

I don't really see how useful the Iclone indigo direction and angle settings are if you need to export all the time to test lighting. That's slow. Its better to test within indigo with its sun sky settings adn get instant feedback while rendering, and transfer those azimuth and zenith settings over to iclone if it were there.

hrmm, maybe even a "get settings from indigo" would be nice.


I usually don't bother with any settings in iclone, in fact I turn everything I can off to avoid interference. With the points you mentioned Re: animation and changing settings over time, it might be good to have a get settings from wherever you are in the timeline so Iclone automates it ? not sure if it will be possible though because you'd have to save a file to be read, unless they can copy it right from mem.

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Get settings function would mean you would have to point Iclone to where to get the settings from everytime.
Iclone has no idea which one to get from if you have multiple indigo test frames going on.

The entry is there.



Probably easier to copy the azimuth and zenith settings from Indigo that you like then paste them to Iclone(if it had azimuth,zenith) and then export all the frames for the igq batch file.

The indigo video tuts from RL shows doing test renders and needing to export everytime. Slow workflow.
Not a problem for simple scenes. But for big scenes one frame export could take minutes just to do test render. Better to tweak in indigo.

I was going by the discussion we had on how to adjust lighting over time in the animation...

was thinking ..at frame 1 ...you set the scene in indigo, press a get settings button in the plug in, and it plots that setting on the timeline....then you forward to the part of the scene where you want it to change, export that image to indigo - adjust settings accordingly, go back to iclone get settings again, then places the new settings on the current spot of the timeline.

But i think you might be right that copy and paste might be easiest as I can't imagine how those lighting settings would tween over time, and even if they did, it would be pure guesswork.

every time I try to figure out solutions for stuff like this, i remember why I really don't want to go very deep into animation, it seems like an endless adventures of work arounds lol

My ultimate work around, make a hit song and hire someone to watch me go "pew pew" while they take notes for how to animate it, i already did my time of getting tapped on the shoulder ruthlessly by producers who thought I was a human start stop button -shows finger scars on shoulder- :pinch:

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I think its possible to do the "animation over time" with the align to light in Iclone indigo or the sky tool in Iclone. Haven't tested:D. Camera position and orientation in iclone would have to be at default to match the sun sky from both I think. Moving the camera anywhere else would be guesswork to match iclone and indigo sun sky.

I just exported 100 frames with that house and speedtree. 11 gigs :w00t:
8 gigs was duplicated textures :D
Hope RL can improve the export to indigo.

Egad :D
I just exported 500 frames from Iclone and its 27 gig and took 1 hour to finish exporting. :D
All of this I assume is because Iclone exports duplicated textures frame by frame.

There's also a bug when you've been editing a scene for a while and changing speedtrees in a scene and try to render a frame in indigo some trees are missing in the render even though they are on the Iclone scene and is visible in the viewport and scene editor list.
Don't think its memory issue since I barely reach 2gig in indigo.

Hope RL is reading this.