You definitely cannot transfer particle FX from Maya or any other 3D app.  The iClone particle system is sprite based and proprietary inside of iClone.  At present there is no way to import or export such data.
As to lights and indeed cameras there is also no support for this in 3DXchange.  When you export to iClone any FBX cameras and lights get stripped out of the final file.  I would love to see this feature with proper FBX or Alembic transfer for more than just geometry.  There are tricks to getting a camera and/or light position from outside of iClone into your scene and visa versa by using animated props and then attaching iclone lights and cameras to those imported props, setting them as dummy objects so you can hide them of course.  Convoluted and painful but that is iClone for you, it is amazing at somethings and way behind in others.





Alan M

"Getting a camera and/or light position by using animated props"  Great suggestion!! Sounds like linking the light position to a null object in After Effects. Wow! I wanna figure out an easy way to do this. I'll try. Thanks!!!

Re. Video 102-03:16: It seems to show the same attaching example twice: A) 3:01 -  5:51 B) 5:52 - 8:43

Thank for the notification, I will check into that and get back to you.

Appreciated.





Alan M

I've watched your courses twice by now, one by one, step by step. Now I can make an animated short movie all by myself, thank you Master Marques!! Only one question remains: How can I get a fantastic render quality in iClone? I tried the indigo plugin but it takes days (even weeks) of rendering time. I know iClone native renderer is way easier to use than Maya. But I just wanna know: when iClone gurus (like you) render out a movie, which one is your go-to solution? I still use Magic Bullet Looks (a AE plugin) to adjust the colors and skin tone, I know it's a very non-professional way of doing 3D animation. Sounds pretty awkward. I need your guidance. By the way, can I use those assets I bought from Daz to make movies? Thanks a million!!! 

@RagingKylo,

At present, and possibly for the foreseeable future, there is no alternative outside the iClone renderer for doing a film. That being said, iClone offers a selection of output options. Mpg and WMV are, IMHO, OK for quick and dirty stuff. Uncompressed AVI produces excellent quality for ingesting into an NLE, and PNG video sequences offer top quality with the ability to modify even single frames in PS or AE.

On a good system Indigo/Indigo RT is great for single frames - in almost unlimited formats, but is totally useless for any animation work. I've never seen any animation clips rendered in the software demonstrated on the Glare Tech site - and there must be a good reason for that, although they do state that several Render Farms will do contract work on Indigo files. The RL exporter is totally unusable at the moment for any animation exports, and there are various posts on the Forum listing the reasons.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

All the best for now





Alan M

Sorry missed that last question,

Yes you can use your Daz assets.  The Daz license agreement allows for the rendered movies that you make to be your copyright or IP.  What you cannot do is sell on the actual 3D asset or model.  That is illegal.  But the whole point of the Daz store and the iClone market place is to provide content that you can create you own movies with, in other words the final 2D image.  Although you can make a Stereo film also that is not 3D in the sense that I mentioned earlier.  It is this movie that is your intellectual property, so you can do what you want with it, sell it etc etc.  Keep in mind that your movie images may be your own copyright but if you slap on some known commercial music or sound track then that is not OK.  YouTube will for example take down movies with copyrighted sound tracks.  If you want music then you need to make your own or license library music.  You can also get completely free music online too.  





Alan M

Wow!! I'd like to say, you just helped me save $99 and I'll put that to good use for some turely efficient contents or plugins. I'll stick with iClone's native features and not touch Indigo. Would you recommend some iClone contents/plugins really worth the money? What I've got by now is Professional Outfits Cloth Base and it's not that fancy. I would have followed your shopping guide if you joined the forum earlier. 

I don't like to use movie soundtracks, I always use Pro Scores bought from Video Copilot. Because of you now I'm an amateur "film director" and can't wait to render my first short film. So exciting!! Can't thank you enough!