Getting the look you want is the important thing, Rogue, and I'm glad you took no offense.

That's really the bottom line here -- trying to achieve what we want to get, using whatever tools we can find.  My main concern is that RL doesn't spend a single moment worrying about accommodating outside renderers when they have a LOT on their plate that still remains (although, honestly, if they get facial mocap, Python Scripting and Curve Editing done this year, as their roadmap indicates, then as far as I'm concerned they can go off and take a vacation for a few years and I wouldn't care.  Well, if they WANTED to spend some time on mirrors...).

For your sake (and any others who need/want it) I hope that after 7.1 is released they turn to satisfying those needs.  But no one should ever let the lack of tools stop them from their vision.

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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

Indigo plug-in for iC7...  Isn't that planned to reappear?  I know it wasn't available in the pre-release copy, and maybe not in 7.0, but I thought was mentioned that would still be supported (maybe 7.1?).  Can anyone support or refute that?  [ADDED... D'oh! The pictures in this thread might also have been a clue.  They probably didn't come from iC6.  ]

As for iClone vs Indigo vs Octane vs whatever...   Anyone who feels the need for a "look" that, today, requires minutes or hours of rendering per frame, then by all means go for it.  Some people love to mention rendering farms too (in other threads), but the vast majority of iClone users are individuals working at home on their mid-to-high-end PC.  I'm sure iClone and other software (and especially the hardware) will continue to get more capable and faster each year.  Nobody would vote against that.

Even the ones who use it professionally (that we know of) aren't involving large teams and spending millions of dollars on their iClone-based animation projects.

For me and my videos, the greatest limitation is... me.  
That was true in iClone 6, and even back in iClone 5.
I look forward to being more proficient in iClone 7.  I know how to work most of the knobs and buttons, but I need to apply them effectively on a video project where it all comes together.  My time is much better spent working on lighting, animation, the sets, and camera that waiting for a better render to finish.



P.S.
I had assumed/hoped that other plugins to external renderers would follow the Indigo plugin.  Doing the first one is usually the hardest.  Now the architecture is in place, and lessons have been learned, so the 2nd and 3rd ones should be easier.  Iray, Vray, Octane, Arnold, etc. should all be possible.  Maybe their "lesson learned" was not to do it?  Anyway, with the massive improvements in iC7, I'm less interested in them.  If I get to the point where the limiting factor is iClone instead of myself, well, by then iClone 12 will be out.  

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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I am a filmmaker and got into iClone to do PreViz.  Trouble is, it's doing so much else these days and with such immediate feedback, as a filmmaker, I'm excited about the prospect of being able to stay in iClone for more of the process. Having the "option" to take all your hard work "to the next level" does not impact the purpose or functionality of iClone if it's handled by a 3rd party renderer.  They already have the Indigo plugin, so that seems like the least troublesome way to go - especially now Indigo RT4 will support GPU rendering etc.  We were all disappointed with Indigo once we realized how much commitment it required to do the smallest of animations, and now consider it for 'stills' only - so, no we don't really need that - we can just use DAZ if we want nice looking stills.  Asking for iClone to do real time mirrors, motion blur and better depth of field are requests that appear regularly - any one of those features is going to choke your system, and if they are added as "post processes" when rendering, the rendering times are going to get much much longer (not to mention Reallusion having to rewrite their rendering engine).  We were all thrilled by the improved realism with the new PBR engine, so clearly we do want our work to look 'more realistic' - 3rd party rendering whether it's Indigo, Octane, vRay etc. as an "option" means you don't have to agree with it or buy it (but you probably would!)

For the record, the Indigo plugin has been updated to work with iClone 7... the still I rendered at the beginning of this thread was my test. (and yes it took far too long... 4 hours I think!)

This post is almost a clone of the iClone 7 vs Octane one!...LOL
https://forum.reallusion.com/333440/iClone-7-PBR-vs-Octane-Render-FIGHT

Same thing, starts with a comparison of iClone 7 default native vs Raytracer, in this case Indigo.
To anyone wondering, I have Indigo plugin for iClone 7 and it works just like it did in 6, and you can use multi GPU since V4.  
What I have found, as it is now, is that by using indigo/Octane as a reference, you can work on matching your lighting levels (as far down as per-material) to give iClone 7's renders a more 'Indigo/Octane-look'.  In the iClone 7 vs Octane thread you can see where I took my comparative images and tried to bring the default iClone 7 PBR scene closer to the 'Octane-look'

That first image in this present thread, with the motorcycle jacket, look at the differences between the 2.
At this point you can start adjusting your iClone scene to match the levels of the Indigo render (ie - light, metallic/roughness light reflection, hue, saturation, blur-vs-sharpness, etc.)
I wouldn't doubt that first image could be Indigo'zd to the point where it resembles much more of what you would like to see.  I feel this is the undiscovered potential of iClone 7, that it can 'emulate' or 'fake' ray-tracing.

Only issue is that you then have to rely on your own work for scenes vs an actual automatic computation of light by a renderer, which is what some of us would want to have.  I know I do....!

Indigo plus:
-renders natively from iClone 7
-can include almost all elements on the screen in iClone, be it SpeedTree props, effects
Indigo minus:
-only exports image mesh, not the scene itself
-takes a long time to export out the image-mesh data, these files can be huge (~10 GB for a 600 frame/20 second render @1080p)

Octane plus:
-Scene mesh itself can be accessed in 3D, positioned and rendered however you want
-Can be combined with anything else in the Octane ecosystem
Octane minus:
-not native export, requires work with materials, images, and positioning to get everything set up
-can only include those props, characters, that can be exported out via Alembic/FBX 

iClone character in 3DS Max scene, but you could probably recreate with a Sketchup Prop in 3DXchange, directly in iClone 7 (although at the cost of iClone 7's PBR engine slowing down to a crawl, which is a big fat minus for iClone 7 right now...)





 

Here was a quick try at Indigoing a scene.  I used the Indigo scene as the benchmark, you can see my results before and after in iClone 7:

iClone 7 native display


Indigo Scene


iClone 7 Post


It doesn't match exactly, but it gets to an Indigo-look.  I would have no idea how to light the scene otherwise, so I find this method a more efficient way of lighting!

we dont need indigo, is a fact, we need our comunity LEARN iclone 7 and start publish descent work with that.

i have 3 workstations with 8 gpus actualy running on octane render and i migrating to iclone 7 and yes i know all iclone 7 limitations and i can deal with that
indigo... lol

Agree, but I think it is more a fact of learning iClone for the benfits that it gets and integrating it into pipelines that studios use. Whether or not people use iClone's renderer is irrelevant to it's wider adoption by the industry. It is the quality of the animation and the quality of the character design that turned off many professionals. You see a lot of iClone animation with characters that look a lot like the stock male/female characters and clothing and a lot of floaty animation (which was hard not to get because of the lack of a curve editor). 

If Reallusion fills the needs of previous studios and pluses it up for virtual set work and continues to fill in the gaps that keeps it out of studio pipelines then you will see it start getting adoption for more professional work and as that happens you will see more high quality pieces produced with it. 

Even with 7 and the upcoming 7.1 there are gaps to fill like full scene import/export, pose based correction, timeline frame rate settings, etc. For Character Creator built in rigging/rig adjustment, much better topology with better symmetry, etc. But we did very high quality work with 6, certainly up to par with most of whats on TV. But iClone can't do it all by itself. It has to be a very pipeline friendly tool or it will stay a niche product. iClone 7 shows that Reallusion gets that and we can all hope they continue of that path with 8 and beyond. They are not the only player in this market but are currently the best set up to take advantage of it since Filmengine has been delayed for 2 years. But Unity and Unreal and moving more and more into the same market. Right now it takes herculean effort and losts of code for those platforms (my friends company just built the virtual set system for the live action Lion King movie on top of Unity). 

They are in the right niche as realtime tools are growing and growing and game engines are becoming more and more a viable final render solution for many projects. It is all just knocking out those gaps and gaining mindshare. Reallusion would be smart to be giving free licenses to studios that are willing to test it in their pipeline and giving them development support. I have high hopes for the Reallusion tools as it is a great ecosystem and over the past year and half helping us on our project they REALLY showed their development chops and listening to their customer. SIGGRAPH will be a very good showing for them. 

Free Range
My IMDB

I'm just as disappointed with the implementation of Indigo - maybe it was too much too soon, if I had known that it was exporting the entire scene and materials for every frame to make animations I, and I'm sure most of us, would not have bothered.  Indigo will carry on whether we like it or not - and as it happens the quality is far beyond the $99 we paid for it - if you have the time ;-)  I've got all the toys needed for live action and animation (yes, Octane too).  I've tried all the "off the shelf" PreViz software and hated them all - except iClone.  Speed is the absolute selling point for the software, and by trying to turn it into a 'full production' system - like many before them - they will slowly cripple it while requiring higher and higher spec computers to run it.  Ideally, Reallusion will finish the curve editor and face capture and then concentrate on refining the ergonomics, customization and expand the pipeline features needed for "Pro" production - like being able to export/import lights along with geo and cameras.  3Dxchange is a handy tool... but it's not doing anything that iClone itself should be able to do - that was a head scratcher for me when I got into this system - especially as it looks and feels like it was created in a different decade by another company!  I digress. In response to "we don't need Indigo"... I wish I could export an iClone scene to the Octane renderer, or better yet have it run as a plugin within iClone - but until then, RL have already done a ton of work to offer that power to the Indigo renderer... export an entire scene, including things like Speedtree, auto texture conversion, lighting, cameras, props, and animated characters all with full dynamics and physics - we do need that - yes, most people may be happy with the results (and speed) of the PBR renderer but occasionally we may create something that is worthy of a long render and would like accurate lighting, reflections, motion blur and depth of field etc.  My point is that it's an option that already exists and therefore would be the least time/money consuming way of offering a high quality 3rd party renderer (especially as the latest version runs substantially faster and can use multi GPUs) - providing the 'way' it works changes radically.  I'm actually hoping that Octane will create a plugin for iClone... they've done just about every other 3D program.