While I posted it elsewhere, perhaps it would be appropriate to at least talk about it here: one of the drawbacks of using Anima 2 with iClone is that, because there's no plug-in path and we are kind of "patching and working around" things to use it, there's no easy way to allow the use of background scenes in Anima 2.

There are two issues -- Anima 2 allows for import of fbx files, which is well and good and at least my version of 7 can produce them.  However, I don't know that it won't require the pipeline of XChange in the future, which is a big hit for those of us who otherwise don't need this version and thus will have to buy it again at full price (no upgrade path from Pro).  Even worse, some assets will be protected and, again we don't really need them other than just to have the outlines but it will be a major pita (although you can work around it to some degree by placing cubes in their place).

Given both of these things I'm now rethinking even buying Anima 2 and perhaps waiting for that magical day when iClone might have similar tools (yeah, I might well be dead by then but in the meantime I have a lot to occupy me).  At the very least it has cubed my enthusiasm.

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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

You can load a terrain in FBX or OBJ format. Just right-click in the main window, and a menu will pop up. It ends up being pretty expensive for the casual user though. Quite affordable if your serious.

My first terrain test was the "River Forde" that I sent to 3DX and exported (default content, so no license needed). Getting or creating terrain that is not iContent is pretty easy to do as well.

Terrain isn't my main concern (and one I'm not really worried about much at all).  I'm mostly thinking about buildings, both inside and out, that will require folks to avoid things such as lampposts and, well, the buildings themselves.  And walking up stairs, etc, that Anima does really well IF you have the fbx or obj file that contains those objects.

It would cost me a TON of money just to start doing this -- I don't see it as less than 1K and perhaps far more once I started paying for the export license fee stuff.  Just can't justify that for getting some folks around.  It's too bad iClone doesn't allow a simple fbx export of non-proprietary content (like cubes) or I'd be okay, but other than that the only way I can see to make this even slightly doable would be to create my basic environment "map" in, say, Max, import it to iClone to line up buildings and stuff, and then use the Max map in Anima.  A lot of hoops to jump through that tames all my intial excitement.

Oh well, too much other stuff to play with and it's always a good excuse NOT to spend money <g>.

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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 would very much like to see this functionality right in iClone as well. :)  Maybe some clever python-coder will come up with something.

Well, I AM a clever programmer (not versed in Python but have spent years with Lua which is very similar, and have even written programs that are being used by some major companies).  I suppose it's one of those things I could look at -- it *does* interest me, particularly AI modes allowing characters to do unscripted behaviors.  But as an old man (programming is a young man's game) it's not something I look forward to attempting.  I guess we'll see (the one thing I've found in life is there is no way to predict what course it will take -- just going with the flow is the best I can ever do).

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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