How are we supposed to improve upon a character and their animations when exporting to software like Unreal or elsewhere?

I made a character in character creator, made 5 animations in iclone 7 for said character and used 3dxchange to import into Unreal Engine. 
In total I saved the 5 animations and the avatar as both iclone files and fbx. 12 files total.

After testing everything in unreal I figured I had to go back and add some collision and cloth changes to the character.

No problem, I went back into iclone 7 with the same character, changed the cloth, added weight maps, collision boxes and breast springs.

Now here comes the issue. Even though I saved all the animations/facial gestures I had made with the same character, I have not been able to rerig them to the updated character.

For starters the updated character's FBX file does not work with the animation FBX files in unreal.

More importantly, the animations are not detected when imported to the FBX of the updated character in 3dxchange. The animations will not sync to the Avatar in iClone 7 when sending animations through 3dxchange into iClone.

How in the world am I going to make progress now and in the future without the ability to reuse animations I made.

Is this a known thing? That you can't go back to and edit characters or previously made animations or you lose all your animation work for that character?

How can I going to go back and edit the animations and build upon them? This seems like a joke. I thought there was supposed to be compatibility!!!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------
liebe Grüße vidi

meet us here

If you created your motions in iClone, then you should use those. There is really is no reason to re-import the same motions you just exported. 

Is there a limit to how many motions you can save in 1 iclone project per avatar?

I did not save the iclone project this time (I'm still learning) because I figured exporting the avatar and exporting the individual motions would be enough as well as organized (they are in folders related to this character).

I'm very confused and I'm trying to set up a process for myself so I can actually get some work done.
Please help me understand the best and fastest way to go about this for larger scoped projects when characters/animations need to be consistently tweaked. I really could use solid advice on the process here. I want to save time.

For example - Say I want to make 10 characters with 30 animations each for Unreal Engine with Character Creator, iclone and 3xchange.

What is best way to go about saving all 300 animations and 10 characters for future use?
Should there be 1 iclone project per character? Should there be 1 iclone project? No need to save iclone motions files individually?

Clearly I will need to be making 310 fbx files when exporting to unreal, but after testing things in unreal and deciding I want to update a character and their animations, what is the fastest process for this? 

Say character A's appearance or collision needs to be changed in iclone and the personality through the motions seems off. What's the best way to do this?
This is what I'm guessing has to happen everytime.
1) Delete the FBX character, delete the 30 FBX animations associated with it both in Unreal and in saved files (unless you want an outdated archive). 2)Then also delete all the animations blueprints and material edits I had to make for the character in Unreal. Reference to tutorial for blueprint and material editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eLT9o8SPZs
2) Open up the iclone project for this specific character? Go through all of the animations by clipping them individually 30x and exporting to 3dxchange?(seems like a ton of redundant work, this is why I thought saving iclone imotions would save time) Export to unreal from 3dxchange 31x (1 for each animation, 1 for the character)
3) Redo the material editing, redo all the blueprints and blueprint sequences (since the animations are new files)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eLT9o8SPZs
4) Redo the clothing editing and hair editing in unreal (for shaders and nvcloth)

Seems like a shit ton of work and time for slightly tweaking 1 character before getting to test everything in the unreal engine!!!

Thanks will try this for this specific case!
I wrote a response above this to figuring out a faster work flow process if you have any additional insight.

You should be able to recover those motion files by importing them back through 3DX and characterizing them. You can do it in bulk, as they share a common bone skeleton. You import one, characterize it, and then add the remaining in the motion section. It'll prompt you for a profile. Select use current. Once you have them all imported, add them to the "Perform" box. When you export to iClone, make sure to check the box for animation. You can un-check the mesh box in this case, as you do not really need.

When everything is on the iClone side, it is interchangeable. I think keeping a folder of each character's motions would work well. Or you could just name them with the character's name.

When you send a character to 3DX, you can then drag-and-drop the needed motions from your iClone Content Manager into the Motion panel in 3DX. Add them all to the perform and export.

See if that works. :)

How do you convert to non-standard for iclone? It doesn't give me the option and I don't know what to change.

Any character you characterize is a non-standard character.

You found the panel, so now you can see if any of the presets match the skeleton of the character you imported, or you can choose each bone in the diagram and select the corresponding bone on your character.

See this:


And this:


And this:


Hopefully those will make the process clear. :)