It's true that Unreal has a huge learning curve, like Blender and iClone. However for cinematics 90% of Unreal can be ignored. I moved from Blender to Unreal because Blender just could not cope with large exterior environments. I use the Brushify packs to do landscaping and initialvegeation. They are a huge time saver. Assets and propes I create in Blender and texture them is Substance painter, or more often now with Quixel mixer, which is free to Unreal users.The part that was missing was character creation and animation, which lead me to look at iClone and character creator. 

Thanks fo the link to sketch up, I'll be investing that and the warehouse.

Cheers

Mike

I'm with you on learning Unreal Animagic. These days I need a project that has a requirement to force me to use new software or features and that is how I learn new stuff. When I switched to Blender, I actually chose one of my commercial projects to do the switch on and here I am four years later with Blender as my core DCC app. I too will still use iClone for the fore stated reasons mainly because I know it well and find it really fast to do stuff in that would take me hours in Blender, especially the character work. I do however buy very little content for iClone from the marketplace as most projects I have worked on are bespoke and I end up creating all the assets myself anyway.


Alan M

There are a lot of free assets in 3DWarehouse in Sketchup format, which you can import into iClone via 3DXchange.

Trimble has made it all a bit more difficult, because they did away with the desktop version of Sketchup, which you would need to save in a Sketchup version that 3DXchange can read (2015).

To download the free 2017 desktop version go here: https://help.sketchup.com/en/downloading-older-versions.

I've been an iClone user since 2006,so I just stick with it. I'm following what people do with Unreal here, but I think my brain is too small or too old to adapt!

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Alan M

Hi Alan,
I'm happy to report the problems and also if you like to test the fixes. 

I'm now in 104. Of course Exterior Lighting 001 will not open. The Interior Lighting 001 and Lighting Types files do open with DRM flag for Interior Lighting 001. . 
I realise that there have been substantial changes to lighting in iClone7, but the principles of lighting are the same and your course is excellent.
I will complete the course, but I'm fairly certain that I will not use iClone to build sets, or light and render scenes. It's just too expensive. I'm about to be made redundant, and at my age that basically means early retirement. With Unreal I have access to the huge library of free megascans assents. I don't need to spend more to do facial mocap. I can get Ray Tracing without having to buy another addon. I see Reallusion received an Epic Megagrant, and now the livelink to Unreal plugin is free to independents. Now Reallusion is on Epic's radar it will interesteing to see what else changes, or if they are in Epic's sights for aquisition.

Cheers
Mike

Alan M

Alan M

Well, support came back. 

After our checking, the project files in the iClone 6 Fundamentals 4-in-1 could contain some datas which are not compatible with iClone 7. 
Since these files are made by the 3rd party developer, we can not update them directly. We'll contact the developer and let him know the issue. But it's hard to promise when he can update it.
Therefore, we suggest you not to use these project files.Alan, are you able to provide the *.sbsar and associated .png thumbnail files you used between EX-Beer Garden 003 and EX-Beer Garden 004. Ground_27 is one, I think there was also a brick and concrete. I suspect they'll be available from substance source, but the names may have been changed.Cheers,Mike

Hi Alan

Thanks for the reply. Looks like I'll just live with the DRM Flags. Seems I would need to buy a pack CC_Essential_Cloth_Fabric to get the characters fixed. There seem to be other DRM issues later in the course with the buildings.. I'll be primarily doing sci-fi and fantasy work, so I've no need for contemporary styles at this time. 

The crash is being investigated by Reallusion Support. They say they can open the files in iClone7, so it seems to be a problem with my installation. Hopefully we'll get that figured out soon.

I'm still trying to figure out my pipeline, but I think it's going to be something like.

Create character in CC3
Export to Blender to create clothing and hair. 
Texture with Substance Painter
Take that back into CC3.
Animate in iClone
Create set in Unreal Engine
Record the animations from iClone in Unreal Engine.
And take from there in Unreal Engine.

Cheers

Mike

Mike greetings,

It is clear, and to be honest not at all surprising that you have run into a classic case of a product being left behind by the core application. The Fundamentals Course is nearly four years old now and of course was written for iClone 6. Initially, it had no great problem installing and working under iClone 7 in the early days of that version. Well, as we all know, iClone 7 is now up to version 7.8 and has undergone huge changes under the hood and that is just iC7! Character Creator is of course at V3.3 and has become a standalone product with huge changes also. The version released with the course did not even have a version number, effectively it was 1.0 and relied heavily on the substance engine technology. Where does that leave us? Maybe the course should no longer be promoted by Reallusion due to these compatibility issues (unless it is updated to work properly with iClone 7) Mind you I have always found it very hard to find the course on the site anyway, so, it is not exactly as though RL are advertising its presence.

The watermarks are not necessarily the actual character themselves. It may be that one of their clothing items or materials is no longer bundled with the latest version of iClone 7 and it is generating the DRM watermark. Having said that, the characters you mentioned, I am pretty sure, were created with the original Character Creator and therefore may all have a DRM issues now. The assets that are behaving very likely were created using standard iClone 6 characters which are in the iClone library and not the CC library. In fact, Haden is indeed based on one of the standard G6 avatars.

I will do my best to see if there is a fix for this, first stage is to identify what is triggering the DRM so I can bring it up with Reallusion and see if there is a solution. 

As to your question about a course for iClone 7, I have not forgotten that. The immediate answer I am afraid is not any time soon. The original course took more than 5 months to create and was only possible because I was paid a retainer to work full time on it. Until recently I have not been in a position, due to commercial work commitments, to create something similar. Having said that, I have designed a new course and laid out plans for it. Potentially, as I have now retired from the VFX industry in which I worked, I do have time to focus on something like this. However, with iClone 8 on the horizon for next year’s road map creating a course for version 7 may not be the most sensible thing. One forum member did have a good idea though, and that was to make the course modular so that parts of it can be swapped out when the software changes. This is something I have been trying to factor into the design of the new course but that in itself is significant effort to get right.

Alan M