Hello Peter/RL,

driven by the fact that I am kind of blocked on the process of converting hundreds of props form Blender to iClone (in particular, a wall divided into hundreds of pieces after applying a Cell Fracture Add-on, which requires a long manual conversion process through 3DX6), I wonder whether the upcoming IC7 API are also planned for 3DX7.
Pls, evaluate also this option, because they would enable the possibility to automatize the conversion of multiple objects into props.
Surely the API for 3DX7 would be a limited set compared to what we might think for IC7, so it should not be a huge effort to enable them also for 3DX7.

Looking forward for a positive answer ;) 
Cheers

  Roberto

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Curiosly they updated the WIP video 2. Look at the facial animation features. Love what I see....
at 5min20

You are exactly right, light is the "key", a lot of peoples don't know how to properly light a scene and complain about rendering features.  Having subsurface scattering would be nice, but lighting properly a face is even more important. subsurface would be the "cherry on the cake" but you can still have convincing faces with proper lighting (and of course proper shading/texturing and texels density). And when I say "how to properly light a scene" I'm not even adventuring in the artistic area here, I'm just talking about technical lighting, having proper light attenuation, shadows, intensity, areas, etc.. There is nothing wrong in not knowing that, but then peoples should refrain yelling at Reallusion for every feature found elsewhere not yet in iClone.

justaviking (2/4/2017)

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../..It sure would be fun to have a little 4 or 5 person iClone team (or club) that could collaborate on an iClone project.  I know we could do it virtually, but it would be more fun to hang out at each other's place on the weekends.  One could focus on lighting, one on texturing, one on modeling.... sort of like a miniature animation studio../..

I'm working on something like that, I've announced it in the 2 years old thread about an alternate professional production pipeline with iClone & Co. Watch for a thread I'll soon post about "SUPERMACHINATION" ; )
If you are interested to participate then do not hesitate to tell me. More details coming soon.

justaviking (2/4/2017)

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../..I remain very excited about iClone 7.  The gap between want I could achieve and what I actually do achieve will grow by leaps and bounds.  My biggest limitation continues to be me. 

Often this can be simpler than one can imagine, it is often a question of basing the work on the right "ground" or "roots" or "basis" or "foundations". Once you are there then the apparent choices reduce in number - because all the wrong once then get excluded implicitly - and then it begins to looks like much simpler. And we are here to help each others.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

@AcidRain,

Yup, it sounds like we are in "violent agreement."   :)

I was being proactive, anticipating other remarks.  Sometimes if a person says, "This looks a lot better," then someone else will respond with, "Daz characters look a lot better," or something like that.  I think you could tell all I was doing was saying iClone 7 (and even 6) can make much better looking pictures than what I called the "mannequin example" that was given.  (Daz characters also are much more high-poly.)

Lighting is something I know I need to improve on.  I'm aware of it, but usually fail to give it adequate attention on my projects.  It makes a huge difference, though.

It sure would be fun to have a little 4 or 5 person iClone team (or club) that could collaborate on an iClone project.  I know we could do it virtually, but it would be more fun to hang out at each other's place on the weekends.  One could focus on lighting, one on texturing, one on modeling.... sort of like a miniature animation studio.

I remain very excited about iClone 7.  The gap between want I could achieve and what I actually do achieve will grow by leaps and bounds.  My biggest limitation continues to be me. 

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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Well, it cannot compete with DAZ Studio. DAZ Studio is using an offline rendering engine called IRAY. IRay can take anywhere from to 10 minutes to 10 hours to render a single image. That's why the results of Daz Studio are so good. Whereas IClone 7 and CC v2 are using real-time rendering engine which can render more than 60 frames/images in a second and have to compromise quality but in recent years due to advancements of real-time PBR, Global Illumination the lines have kinda blurred between Realtime Rendering and Offline Rendering. Well if Iclone and CC can have PBR and VXGI than it should have high-quality Shaders to benefit the addition of PBR and GI.

I don't know if it will have subsurface scattering like the FaceWorks example, but it can definitely look better than the mannequin-looking example.
Look at this Adolf's post showing what he's done with the CC 2.
I suspect he was focusing on the clothing, and he says he "converted them" with very little effort.  It already looks pretty good and I'm sure it could be improved even more.  Lighting matters!
I'm not saying it competes with Daz, but it looks a lot better than the one above.
His thread... https://forum.reallusion.com/FindPost312292.aspx
One of his pictures:

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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

Well, I am hoping for the shaders, It's also on their roadmap. Iclone 7 is coming with some advance technologies like PBR and VXGI  they must have something planned for shaders. Though I'm very skeptical about the particle system and not hoping much. 

It's not just the lighting of the scene, look at the nose and ears of the Cryengine/Unreal/Nvidia FaceWorks characters. The light is penetrating through them giving that reddish effect. And it is also penetrating through the skin and scattering inside the skin. This technique is known as Sub-Surface Scattering and Cryengine/Unreal Engine /Nvidia FaceWorks are using  Sub-Surface Scattering Shaders to achieve these photoreal and beautiful results.



You mean that IClone 7 is not released yet. Well they are aiming for March or April to release IClone 7 and CC v2.0 which gives them about 2-3 months. Well that this stage they must have almost completed all of their major features for this release.And just they must be fixing some bugs and stabilizing their products. I am afraid that they have much time to introduce new features. But they are going to show us the last demo of the Iclone 7 in March and I am hopeful that they can do something about the shaders. It's also in their roadmap for Iclone 7 as Custom Shaders:). I hope that Iclone 7 ships with a good SSS

The first 3 examples all have elaborate textures and balanced lighting. The IC7 example has terrible lighting and the texture being used can be much better, which would give a better result. I can even make it look better in IC6.

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Looks like you need to do your Research what PBR IS.You are mixing RT PBR rendering with Offline Rendering

Well IClone 7 is looking really good. But the skin shader for human characters, just say is very fake looking. RL definitely needs to make a good real-time skin shader for IClone 7 and CC v2.0  like cryengine and amazon lumberyard and unreal engine have.Well RL is pairing up with the industry standards with PBR Pipeline, Substance and Real-time Global Illumination.So they should definatley invest some resources in real-time human skin shading. Or since they are implementing different technologies from Nvidia like Phyx and VXGI. They can implement Nvidia FaceWorks

Cryengine/Lumberyard Skin Shader



Unreal-Engine Skin Shader


Nvidia FaceWorks


IClone 7 Shader :crying:


It Definately need Improvements