I guess this is a multi part question, but bear with me...

I've been around on the Reallusion boards for a while now and I can't help but notice that very little of the discussions seem to be dedicated to the process of actually producing animations - aside from the technical "how to's" on the workings of iClone, Crazytalk etc.

I'm curious - how do set out to produce you projects? In my experience, I have a lot of ideas and concepts that I would love to turn into animations or movies, but It can be daunting to handle every aspect of the "production", from writing the story outline, to creating the script, to creating (or buying) the characters, sets, props, and then to animate it and make it into something worthwhile. And that's not even touching on things like finding and casting voice actors, post production and editing, music and audio... 

It would be pretty cool if there was some kind of community where one could collaborate in various roles - where a "script writer" would produce the script, the "crew" would handle the building the assets and characters, the director would use the assets, characters and script to "build" the movie - render it out and perhaps hand it over to an editor to refine and add colour grading as well as post effects if required. 

That's a good wish. Really. A colaboration to do a movie is nice thought, but it will never happen. Even people on this forum tried it last year and they never got pass the "talking about it" stage. Problem is, you will be invested as long it is YOUR movie. To do just a part of movie making creates not much reward in return. That's the sad truth.
But it doesn't mean that no one will help you. That's not the case. If you ask nicely, you'll always get help with your problems and needs. There are a lot of modelers and texture artists you can ask for help. On this level you will get your production done, but you must be aware that only you will do the most work in your movie ... always.

Last year I made a 15min. movie and it took a lot of time and resources. I had help from people of this forum to create this movie and overall it was a very enjoyable production time. Since several weeks I am in preproduction for my next iClone movie project. I will need some more time to have something to show and to talk about, but I will start a kind of journal soon. Stay tuned ...

Direx

Think i can count on two hands how many people produce animations with any kind of story on the forum. Most will debate a small tech question for weeks are complain about things they dont have instead of focusing on what they do have . Then when it comes to making the stuff they talk about well that never seems to happen and they offer little feed back on animations . Its where i think RL drop the ball they give no direction to the community and the forums are a mess. People have more to say about still renders than they do animations and storys, you would  think its the daz forums .

Forum needs to put its focus back on animations and give some structure given to the forums to encourage this. As it stands your better of on other short film forums are communitys if you want to discuss animation and production are get any decent feedback are ideas. Have  RL even created a decent  Animation for the launch of IC7?  Because all i seen from them is small showcases and short renders . Lots of eye candy but little substance on display tends to be the order of the day .

It's an interesting discussion, but Director said it best.  Collaborative projects seldom work -- there are exceptions that prove the rule (like the Star Trek fan films) but by and large a strictly volunteer effort is so difficult to coordinate, not due to copyright or DRM problems, but due to lack of a common vision.

My advice to young filmmakers starting off is to start SMALL.  Do a 60 second project -- if you can't tell a compelling story in 60 seconds you can't tell anything longer.  That is plenty of time to develop characters and learn all the other aspects of filmmaking no matter what the medium.  Once you've master three or four of those you can step up to larger projects, but I would ALWAYS go in stages (so after 60 seconds, try a 10 minute animation, for example).  Keeping your project and aspirations down to a smaller, manageable size, will allow you to work out your project workflow (and everybody's is different -- I've worked for large shops, run smaller ones, and done the one-man thing as I do now that I'm retired, and I've yet to see two workflows that were the same, although most follow similar processes).  

For me, since my background is writing and directing, it always starts with the script, and then the actors voicing it.  Once I have those tracks recorded I can concentrate on getting the assets together and so on.  But in my retirement I often just play around until I get a visual I like while I'm also working out the script, because I let it drive the concept.  Not a good way to work if you're trying to make money, or under time constraints, but the important thing if you're doing it for fun is to HAVE fun.  And not fall down the rabbit holes (but I could write many, many paragraphs on that pitfall).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Thanks for the info i tend to forget iclone was a previz creation. But as yous say the tools are in place to do a great deal more now

     I don't think it"s impossible to collaborate on Iclone project. But problem is looking here you find so many who want  it to be their project. It would be like asking a group of actors to take on the role of creating sound, or FX, or directing. Now a few could and would take on the Directing role because it's close to something they know as an actor .
      As to quality of productions you have to be willing to study as much about multiple disciplines as you try to learn about Iclone. But the draw back their is you end up like me studying everything but not producing anything.  The collaboration would be a learning curve, as to the asset restrictions you would have to figure away around this (legally) by doing what Hollywood has done for a long time. Have different people shoot different parts then use editor to put images together. Interestingly the new camera matching could help in this endeavor. Allowing one person to shoot background plates and someone else to shoot character shots for example and having the camera moves needed to accomplish this being exported.
      It is an interesting question though. 
     

Just commenting my view of why that died here.
If its the one I think your talking about then it got a bit further than just talking about it but unfortunately a "professional" came and killed it. At least that's how I see it?
It was going quite well and participants building fairly well up until the professional came an told us how silly the majority of us are.
It died very quickly after that persons comments which kind of proved what was said I suppose.

I for one know that I am a noob video animator but I saw it as a great way to improve. Sad it died.
How dare noob's try and do something like that.

I have considered adding some extra videos to that post but........?


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It is so so sad, I must say. I have been using Iclone for the past 5 years and I look back, since then I can't see a decent movie that was made with Iclone.
As a CG Artist I started with Blender and every now and then the community there create a short animated movie and the movies are always inspirational. It encourages people to see the possibilities in Blender.
A friend told me last week that ICLONE has made its users lazy to the extent that they want Reallusion to develop Iclone to the point of just talking on the mic and the characters will do whatever is been said.
Maya is also a decent software, difficult to learn, but the quality of the animation is always superb, that's because Maya users undergoes the nitty gritty of animation.
Iclone users can do the same if we stop been waiting to be food-fed by daddy Reallusion, and stop concentrating on PBR, Material, Substance.
I just want good animated STORY

It's always just been about the story -- you can use even single images, cross-faded, and tell a great story.  Conversely, the best software in the world won't make a bad story worth watching.

I always tell beginners to try and put together a short (60 seconds but no more then 2 minutes) story and animate it.  FAR too often I see failure when their grandiose plans don't see fruition because the will leaves halfway through the project.  I have no idea what the collaborative project was here, but I will guess it was far longer than that.  A short project, using limited resources, should be able to produce a really nice animation.

(You need to crawl before you can walk, but too often animators want to fly before they can even crawl).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley