I was able to import a pretty big crowd when I used the 4 Gig patch. Yes, it does work with the latest 3DX as well ;) It took forever, but it was a huge crowd. Remember that your files will be bigger if you can save more than 4 seconds. So in Anima use 12 FPS, and export your textures at "very low" resolution.
http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

You just run it from wherever you unzipped it and select the application that needs patching from the dialog it opens. It even makes a backup for you.

Even if RL doesn't want to create these tools it would be nice if they could work with AXYZ to add plug-in support for this, like it's available for Max, Cinema 4D and something else which escapes me at the moment.  The obvious shortcut would be not to have to use XChange to convert these (and, truthfully, the only thing that worries me is that XChange will bump up against some memory constraints -- that's the one thing I can't really test well before I purchase, although I am going to try adding as many characters as I can just to see).

And, yes, ALL of this stuff, great iClone 7 stuff (not to mention the 7.1 things which REALLY interest me, and which got me back into iClone in the first place) are ways of diverting our interest from Real Life.  The good news in my case is that I AM retired, with time on my hands, but the bad news is I am in no way young enough to have the years left I want.  Still, I'm SO happy I've lived long enough to see all this.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

I hear you KT. Slightly different issues in my case, but yeah, the rabbit hole is deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep! ;)

I do hope to one day see tools like this right in iClone.

Ah crap.  I found out how to get your custom walks to loop inside of Anima.

I am NEVER going to have a life anymore.  Why didn't this stuff come out when I was younger (and/or working, so I could fool around at work with it :>).  This is God's way of not allowing me to get any more sun.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Oh, this may well be the rabbit hole from which I will NEVER emerge...  Sigh.

Here's my sample using my own characters and animations (both from Mixamo).  It is distressingly easy to add your own characters and animations to Anima, which makes it all the more likely I will never see the light of day anymore.

In this clip the first zombie cop has his feet wrong -- apparently a lot (all?) of Mixamo rigs come in this way, but luckily it's easy to adjust and I did on the second one, which has a zombie animation added to one of the Anima characters.  The only drawback/problem I see so far is that walking animations (ones that follow paths) have rules that prevent some (most?) animations from working with them (they require four steps, which makes sense I guess in that they require one last step to move along that path.  This isn't a deal breaker for those animations you can edit, but since I was hoping to just use some canned ones AND since I don't have the full version of XChange to completely edit things it might cause a problem.  Then again, I can always break out Max or Motionbuilder if I'm feeling a need to add a lot of my own walking stuff).

WAY too much fun.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

All interesting finds in this thread.

I redid my render test in IC6 so that it could be shared, and it shows (in this case at least) that exporting/importing at a lower FPS (e.g., 12 versus 30), gives a better result.

In the clip the first 4 sec is the 30-FPS version, which is then followed by the 12-FPS version. Note the woman on the far left in particular,

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Found it!

After a nice head-clearing bike ride, I figured it out. I new the skeleton was standard humanIK, but was not sure if bone names mattered. They don't. Anima even let's you re-target your imports.

Check the picture. You drag the bone from the left to the dot on the character, and it shows the mapping name-to-name on the right.



This means you can use your CC characters in your crowds!!!!!!! Provided you have 3DX Pipeline, of course.

Here's the page on doing it all. https://docs.axyz-design.com/article/importing-characters/

Oh, and again, I'm trying to balance this with what I could import into iClone.  Obviously there will be limits, and I don't want to bump up against them immediately.  I also don't want or need a crowd of thousands (unfortunately, what the OP wanted IIRC so this may not be helping him any <g>) but a few hundred unique looking folks (or unique enough -- let's say we have 50 completely unique ones repeated once or twice) would be plenty.

But it's fun -- I remember playing with it back in version 1 and thinking it had great potential.  This doesn't even touch the surface because there is an API and I suspect (haven't looked at it yet) that it allows you to tailor behaviors so you could have, for example, fights break out among folks, etc.  This could be another rabbit hole I never come out of again (sigh).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

No, the docs say you can import your own models, and they tell you exactly how to do it in Max, but I'd rather not fire up Max (I kind of hate rigging in Max anyway).

It also says you can take their own models into Mixamo for output (to then reinput) so the implication, at least, is that I could take a Mixamo rigged model into their program.  I'm waiting to hear from them to see if this is possible in the lite version but even if they just say it's possible in paid I'll be fine with it.

Mixamo just makes rigging SO much easier and for a crowd I really don't want to be getting back into rigging (but I don't want to use only their stuff and I certainly don't want to buy their characters, which are way overpriced).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

The "Lite" version only allows 5 unique characters, but does allow them to repeat for as many as you want. The "Pro" is supposed to use the entire character library, or sub-sets you choose. You can also buy more characters, I think. So have a look at the character library, and see what you think. It looks like there are 24 by default.

There also is a character editing mode that is not fully functional in the Lite version. 



Just like CC, it needs specific models, I think. So I wouldn't count on importing your own creations.