Hi, I have been away from Reallusion for 9 month now. Great to see, that we are getting the CC. Only problem. The major issues of clone are still there. Everything still looks 2006. The internal render engine of Iclone still makes content look like in the first version of the SIMS. Any other Computer game is better today. Indigo looks great, but pushes filmmaking out of the hands for people with small budget. (Unless you can afford to render an image for 1h each), or pay a render farm.

In total Iclone is getting more and more heavy with tons of options, that are great. The foundation remains what it is. That is inappropriate. So I hold my investments back until that has happened.

Playing devils advocate : I assume Reallusion has lost the source code for the inner render engine in Iclone and they can not change it. So they are making it fatter and fatter with cool feature, hopefully every user is blinded by it. 


ICLONE needs a real make over to enable us to make movies in one go, without exporting to other software !

Until that day, i will not spend a Dollar on it, and I did spent thousands.






Machines :
MSI Gaming Laptop, I7, GTX 1080, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 1 TB HD
Acer Predator Helios 300 I7 10750H, 16GB, 1TB SSD, RTX 2070

Hmm, not sure what you've been looking at but I think the native renderer in iClone is really nice.  This doesn't look to me much like SIMS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgluKv1S_I8

And I've seen folks do MUCH better (I'm still learning).  It's all about the lighting and materials and that's true no matter what renderer you use.  I actually think, in many cases, the standard renderer is better than Indigo -- again it just depends on how you use the software..

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

2006 is iClone 1.5. If you don't see a difference between that or SIMS and the current iClone 6, you may need to invest in new glasses...

Seriously though, I don't think there is any point in raking up an old discussion. You have decided that you don't like the iClone renderer, so how do you want us to advise you? As Kelleytoons points out, it does take work regarding lighting, materials, etc, etc, but good results can be achieved.

The render engine in iClone 6 is different from the one in iClone 5 as it is based on DX11 and includes displacement, the use of substances, etc. Shadows and DOF have been improved. I am currently re-rendering several IC5 projects in IC6, because I note a marked visual difference.

There is of course always room for improvement, but I for one am not some stupid user who is just blinded by new fancy features.

If you want to keep your investments sitting idle that's your choice. I don't think it's a wise choice, but I hope you will find a satisfactory solution to realize your endeavors. Good luck!

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I agree Kellytoons.

Comparing this




With any of these let alone comparing it with the first one





Is a little harsh i think

Edit
Bruce lee came from the CC showcase yoursel thread. Its not mine

i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

He probably saw one of my videos.   

What the others said is true.  iClone can produce very nice results in the hands of a skilled artist willing to put effort into learning how, and then properly lighting a scene.

There are some cases where the Indigo renderer produces stunning results, but in many iClone-to-Indigo renders, I see very little improvement.  In fact in many cases I actually prefer the results that came directly from iClone (and that's without even taking into account the increased rendering time).

@Sbaerman - You've got over 100 posts.  Surely you must realize there are quite a few skilled people here who would be willing to help you get the most out of your iClone investment.  Show some images.  What would you like to improve?  I'm not saying you'll suddenly produce the next Pixar movie, but you'll be able to do some nice work if you're willing to put in the effort.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

I held off purchasing iClone6 PRO for the same reason as sbaerman; the internal renderer.

That said, it sounds as if PBR is coming to iClone7, and if it does, that no doubt means an overhaul of the renderer too.  I think the best thing they could possibly do is implement Unreal Engine into the iClone viewport, but whether they will or not, only Reallusion know the answer to that one.

But yup, I feel your pain, believe me!

For now, if only Reallusion would implement a way to output a depth-mask of the scene, then the possibilities of what could be done with even the current renderer would massively increase.  It would be such an easy thing to add, and so powerful, yet it's not there.  With a depth mask, all of a sudden you have the entire 2D processing world at your feet for use in 3D space.  Better bokeh, better fog, better effects, the list goes on.

For me ,there is one thing wich can change everything in the Iclone render : REFLEXIONS!!!!!!
The main street of PBR is based on reflexion. All 3D engine had focus on it because before lights, textures, animation : reflexions push the
realism....
I can deal very well with all the features of Iclone 6 today , even the "strange Fog engine" , but not with this false reflexions....
If reallusion update his bad reflexions , all improvement render will follow.

I have a method for generating a depth-pass via iclone.

dont have time to do a tutorial right now, but you or anyone interested can pm me for a quick walkthru

.

@budbundy
Would love to see it, but if it involves using the fog to fake the distance alpha, I already tried it and for some reason it doesn't look right

That said, it would be cool to see it even if it does involve the fog.  You probably made a better job of it than I did so I'd love to see it anyway, cheers
It won't fix reflections, but good depth-map output gives a lot of possibilities.

I've used the fog for creating a depth map as well. It can be quite effective.

You give everything a plain, white material and use black fog to get things darker and darker the further from the camera.