Hi all, 


just wanted to give you an update on this. In earlier threads I was describing, that if you export animated scenes +100 frames through the plugin to Indigo you will get a runtime error from Iclone. Reason is bad memory management and the computer runs out of memory (RAM not Full Harddrives). Roughly 3 months ago I had a case open and Reallusion did confirm the bug and that the fix for the plugin most likely would be released in 6.5. Now with the announcements of beta-testing for 6.5 i was opening another case with RL to ask for the status. I got a very fuzzy answer back, that it would not be in 6.5 as Reallusion needs to do more investigation whether the bug would within Iclone or Indigo. This answer is totally strange for one reason : WHILE THE BUG HAPPENS => only Iclone is running - packing its files for Indigo. So Indigo is even not running.

This leaves me with 3 findings :

a) Since the release of Iclone6 and the extra-sales for Indigo RT and the plugin there is a bug, that does not allow real animation output to Indigo. I spent several 1000 Dollars for buying a little render farm and Indigo Licenses, that I can still not use, as the export in Iclone keeps crashing and Reallusion is not making the effort to fix it.

b) It is just not a good customer support, when you get answers like that saying, I should use feedback tracker if I still have an issues : RL, your software has a major bug, you know it. How often shall I give further feedback to a broken software, that is knowingly crashing?

c) It is hard to believe that RL invests in VR and other fancy stuff, instead of fixing, what you sold to me nearly 2 years ago, and it is still not working.

It leaves me also with the question :

a) most likely 6.5 won't get PBR - which high class render shall I use now ? Alembic ist not an option
b) shall I buy the upgrade for Indigo4 (which is for 6 rendering licenses 300 USD) or is this a dead end road, will the bug ever get fixed?
c) shall I migrate my 3d projects to the other upcoming real time tools like film engine, unreal, DAZ? Knowing that customer support may be
    same kind of unpleasant ? And not everything that shines is not Gold either?


Sorry I have to vent, but this is frustrating. I think IClone is a great tool. CC is fantastic.... still this needs to be talked about

Steffen




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

Hi all .
we are using Iclone 5.5 and Iclone 6.4 .Now we are using indigo RT for better render quality .But we are facing problem in rendering timing . Indigo RT taking too much timing in rendering . So i want to know that how can i save my rendering time in RT . For example i started a shot of 100 frame with one character and interior BG and file size is 256 MB in iclone 5.5. And it will take 1 hour & 6 minutes to complete . So please let us know that is it correct time for render according to the file and its size . Waiting for your suggestion .
Hope to hear from you soon .
Many thanks in advance .

Are you talking about Rendertime in Indigo or Iclone. In both cases the answer is : better HW.

For Indigo I can say :

Version 3 : 
I bought the full licenses and have 6 Machines with network rendering behind it. Version 3 of Indigo renders on CPU basis only, So every machine has 12 physical Intel - Cores, so instead of 4 Standard Cores (e.g. Intel I7) I have nearly 70 Cores processing. This ramps up speed for rendering massively. 2 Problems : a) you need to invest into more HW, b) energy cost is not to underestimate. If you have 6 Computers like that running fully speed, you need 3000W per/h which is roughly 80Cents USD per hour of rendering, That makes already 16US per day.


Version4 (beta):
Indigo is in beta. The improvement to render with GPU is massive. Disadvanteges : You need to buy an upgrade from version 3 to 4 which is 50 USD per License. Second GPU accelerated rendering to Indigo is only allowing Path-Tracing which makes the Characters Eyes and behavior of lights different between how it looks in Indigo and Iclone.

And as mentioned heavier scenes with longer frames lead to an export error in Iclone. I have a new machine with 32GB RAM, which allows longer exports vs. an 8GB RAM computer. But it is always a risk. IClone normarlly crashes on the last meters. Then you have a full HD with Data you  need to through away, as the "lead-in" file from Iclone to Indigo is corrupt too, and you need to start all over.

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

This is just bad for all here.
This is the single thing is preventing me in investing in iClone. 
Btw Indigo 3 does have hybrid CPU+GPU render mode that on average speed up things +30% vs CPU only.
Indigo 4 pure GPU mode is speeding up x10 and more depending on the GPU and number of them (can scale to any number) .
With RX 480 coming at $199 this is the most cost effective way to speed up rendering.

Indigo issues have been well documented. Read some of my threads and posts about it. The export plugin within Iclone is just not good.
Too bad the beta testers didn't catch it then before releasing the plugin.
I've given up on it. And I wouldn't invest in Indigo 4. It won't make a difference with the export process from within Iclone.
Hopefully they deliver on pbr in Iclone within this year.

Related to this thread, I finally got around to entering my "Export to Indigo" issue in Feedback Tracker.
It's all about making the export much more efficient.
http://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/Make-Indigo-multi-frame-export-more-efficient-by-using-a-single-copy-of-things-that-don-t-change
Does not address rendering times, though.

I'm not an expert, but I now the "shader" (renderer?) selection in Indigo for specific materials can significantly impact the amount of time required for a clean image.
Check out one of the Indigo sample projects in iClone, the one with many copies of the same shape.
In short, you don't want to use a renderer geared toward transparent or highly reflective surfaces if you're trying to render a cotton shirt or a lump of dirt.
Sorry I can't be more specific than that.

---

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

thanks for your comments. I pretty much feel awkward to complain about something that obvious and most likely easy to handle item.

@ justaviking Obviously I voted for your feedback tracker 

with PBR coming, still I think it is not acceptable, that RL sells the Iclone Export Plugin to Indigo, knowing the bug is there. Like selling a car, where you now, the airbag doesn't work.

I will be stopping this topic now, it does not lead anywhere. Will check in, if anything changes with 6.5 otherwise I am back in a year to see what has changed. Until then, I spend my pocket-dollars somewhere else :-)




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

@justaviking
Just voted for your issue. I think of the three issues the speed it's just not to be tracked, simply it's a feature of such kind of renderer.
PBR version of iClone will provide a better biased renderer, with speed impossible to achieve from any unbiased one, but also with compromises in the results.
@sbaerman
Me too think is really stupid from RL to sell this plugin in this form, useful mostly for stills. Also thanks for sharing your experience, we can only wait and ping.

Beta tester comments do get ignored sometimes...:Whistling: Marketing forces at work, I guess...:unsure:

To be fair though, there is definitely work to be done on the Indigo side to make it suitable for animation. In another thread, PSD has linked to a discussion about this from about a year ago on the Indigo forum. Shortcomings were admitted, but nothing has come of it thus far. In my own test of Indigo 4 beta, I found that a scene that rendered fine in Indigo 3 crashed Indigo 4. I don't think that an update of the iClone plugin is a solution unless Indigo starts to take animation and data caching seriously. I suppose they sell enough to those interested in making pretty pictures.

---

All good points, of course.

About the beta testing... even *if* the beta tester missed that flaw, it's been well reported and known about before 6.1... 6.2... 6.3... 6.4... 

We've known for a long time that **Indigo** isn't very suitable to *animation* but it would still be nice to clean up Reallusion's part, though I will concede that Indigo's flaws do pretty much overwhelm any improvements Reallusion could make.  Still, if iClone were ever to expand on their external plug-ins, adding Octane, Iray, or others, we would want them to export efficiently too, so working out the logic to export better might not be totally wasted.  (I'm more impatient for PBR, but that's another story.)

---

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