Not many will use your software without proper documentation. Tutorials are nice sometimes, but nobody will make paid tutorials unless there is a user base. I don't really need tutorials as much as I need the documentation to be accurate, complete, and up to date.

Reallusion's tutorial pack is not any better than the free, I've seen a few already randomly on youtube. There isn't much out there at all. CGCookie doesn't cover iClone. 

That's the problem, the tutorials are wrong. Your explanation makes sense though, thank you.

I saw no reason why FK isn't possible with a reach target as explained, but they conveniently leave things out in the documentation and the tutorials. They only want to show the easiest example of how to do things. 

Just exporting to CC from Blender is not documented anywhere for example. There are 10 different things you must learn by trial and error to go to the ZBrush>Blender>Substance>CC. Blender renames materials, substance to Blender to CC screws up UVs, Blender fbx export randomly corrupts files, you have to use a specific version of blender, and specific plugins to unwrap UVs. I think there needs to be a wiki documenting these processes in addition to the documentation. I'm happy to add to it. I probably will forget next week how to do it myself. 

Blender with prop in hand seems to be the best way to do this. It's pretty annoying. I tried everything, 

Do you know what bone-based animation is?
Can you animate a character (swinging a golf club) using bone-based animation?
...shouldn't take more than one minute. :w00t:



Yes, this works, but then you still have to link objects to have them behave normally in iclone when they collide. Any idea why reach targets hate motions so much?

I can unfortunately report that mixing reach target and linkage/attach doesn't work for this particular problem. Reach target just behaves so weird. 

One thing that works well with just linking and mocap is clubbing someone to death like Michael Skakel. IK seems to work much better if it's just one arm.

I tried that last night, but got distracted with another method. I am going to try this now. I think this is a good strategy. The question is which hand would be better? In golf, the right hand does almost nothing like shooting a basketball. You can hit the ball nearly as well with just the left hand if right handed. 

 I can do it in blender, but then it is a non-standard character. The interchangeable nature of iClone is a huge plus because once I make an asset it is there. Unfortunately, the allembic import/export doesn't work very well in iClone or Blender, and you can't wrap up an entire scene from iClone. Blender is a time suck, but everything is possible.

I personally never liked 3D animation in particular because I can express the same ideas in less time 2D. Any long running project needs 3D these days however, because you can scale up with other animators. In 2D you will not get very good results because there are exceptionally few capable artists, and even fewer that can match a style easily. Dealing with artists is also a lot worse than dealing with procedural minded staff who can place assets around and follow rules. It's why a lot of animation has gone to Korean and Filipino houses. 

iClone won't render anything feature film like, but youtube currently is about fast turnaround and medium quality. The attention spans are so short that volume is far more important than maximum quality for most projects. I'm definitely not worried that the golf swing looks exact, but I would like to do it as quickly as possible if I know my best result is medium quality anyway. 

Might be a better idea to attach the club to the back hand then, and have only the forward hand using a reach target. That way the swing is guided by the avatar's hand, but the other will follow nicely.

Oh yes, this was first thing I did.  :-)

What is weird is in iClone real time Mocap , it is impossible when attached (not a reach target) to have the club not be in the air, even rotating the club to compensate. The IK doesn't behave normally in the arms no matter what. There are some issues with this motion. Keyframing does work, but it's very difficult to do well. 

I'm really not sure how I got the wrists to stay a bit more natural, perhaps it was the order of operations. One thing is for sure, that bringing the club to the top it still becomes a clusterf--k. 

I wish there was a way to do Mocap with reach targeting. If reach targeting made the object reach for the hands, instead of the other way around it might make more sense.

I wasn't talking about blender I was talking about fixing it in iclone.    

I dont even know (i can't remember cause i pretty much own all my own stuff and make it myself now so can do whatever i want with it) if he could export an object intact to do that without paying for an export license.      I am also assuming he isn't using blender.... 

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"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Dr. Seuss

swoop you can get precise with the pivot its just i find it often doesn't work (depends on how the object is made) if he is using something he purchased or whatever sometimes you need to make do.    So sometimes you need to work around that so just use spheres (or balls) i like spheres and move things around by the spheres.   It works its not pretty but it works i guess this would be the same as using some sort of external rig in your software same idea.. .     

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"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Dr. Seuss