Kelleytoons: Many thanks for that info on the eyes - and also the knowledge that the two progs are not balanced! The learning curve is not that steep if you just want to move a talking avatar around an office but when you want to light them, make them old and wrinkly with sweat, then life gets a lot harder and my poor laptop strains at the effort. Don't worry - I have read up on reducing the CPU workload - just not looking forward to render time!

Speaking of eyes specifically, the eyes in iClone are better than those in CC (and for that reason I have moved them over to CC, as I do with most "character" things).  And they are PBR which do not need special reflections.

Somewhere someone (Animagic?  This old brain doesn't remember exactly) talks about having to alter, slightly, those iClone eyes to get a perfect surface (get the reflections just right -- again, they are PBR and so "reflect" whatever is in your IBL).  I'll see if I can find and link to it here.

Sigh -- can't find it, but perhaps if Ani (or whoever wrote that) is listening they will chime in.  Anyway, the eyes in iClone have PBR correctly applied, with AO and such, and are so much better than the CC ones.  I'd recommend using them.

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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

Thank you all for the clear responses, and aid, to matters I generalise about! First, the matter of creating in one program and ‘editing’ in another – which Kelleytoons also neatly elaborates on. As newbie I don’t see the obvious, and really important,tutorial or advice about planning your project from the very outset. Kelleytoons would agree with me that the character leaves (should leave) CC –the dressing room, if you will, ready for action – iClone being the studio. On that thought maybe Reallusion should consider a name change; ‘Dressing Room’and ‘The Set’ , or at least refer to them in similar terms in tutorials as there seems to be a bit of confusion!
   Therefore, avatar setting up is done to the same lighting (background photo) etc as the intended‘shoot’. I have been building a character in CC with the default outside lightsand, I presume, the default reflection in the eye of an interior (!).  This character will be both inside and outside, but, following Kelleytoons advice, I will make two, rather than edit eyes in iClone. I take it I can alter the eyes’ reflection in iClone! As it is, the avatar is not leaving the dressing room 100% ready and does need a bit of fluffing up once on the iClone set. Newbies, such as I, be warned!
   It would be interesting to see if Reallusion starts to reduce the character building aspects in iClone and focuses its role more on the actual set building and ‘movie’ making. In other words; the avatars, and clothes etc from a future iClone 8 would automatically appear in a future CC3. 
   As for my disappearing wardrobe: had to reinstall it, and others, as it must have gone missing when I upgraded to iClone 7. A worrying reminder that all is not perfect in file building in Reallusion!I thank you all for your time and as I am working on my first project, no doubt you will hear more from me as I flounder my way along…

I went through and completely reorganized my CC and iClone stuff precisely because of this.  Now when I go to Clothing/Shirts I have a folder that says "Long Sleeve" and "Short Sleeve" and the T-shirts are in the short sleeve folder (along with a lot of other short sleeve shirts).  Did the same ALL across all of my various purchases and now I can actually find what I want quickly and easily.

Even better, I did this across iClone because a lot of content gets added in very odd places.  If you buy the UN Pack, for example, the hats (backwards caps, but they can be used forward by just rotating) don't show up in CC (other stuff does, but not those hats, as they are ONLY installed in iClone).  So I went to iClone, moved them over to my "Hats" folder in CC and renamed them ccAcc (from iAcc).  Now I only have one place to look for hats, thank God.

Everyone needs to decide what their workflow is (some folks like to add accessories to their characters in iClone, kind of like you'd dress someone up after they "woke up", but I like my characters to be fully rigged in CC and I can always change the clothes by just sending them back to edit them there -- much easier to only have one place to look for all the accessories I have).  But once you decide how you want to work, just go through and organize and you'll be SO much happier.

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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

garry: Also make sure that in iClone the project is set to PBR and that all materials are set to PBR as well.

To be compatible with earlier versions of iClone, there is a Traditional shader system, besides the new PBR system. This can be confusing even for long-time users...:unsure:

So if things don't look right it's good to check the PBR settings.

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It does seem to make sense. As you have just shown; elements are not really completed until they get to iClone, I feel this could be a weakness overall, but I sort of get the same with After Effects - you do the clever, tricky bits then have put them together in Premiere or another editor - however, they are complete and don't need re-tweaking. What doesn't make sense, and I think I have muttered about this elsewhere on the forum, is trying to find things! I am sure I have bought 'T-shirts', in fact have an 'essentials' collection somewhere, but can I find them? No! I see repeated files and folders as I wade through past and present versions of iClone... ho hum. back to 'downloads' and see where they went! 
I digress: thank you so much for solving my immediate problem!

Assuming your character has pbr textures, adjust the roughness value until it isnt plastic looking.

Hang in there, its a steep learning curve but it soon starts to make sense.

Homebuilt computer - Windoze 10, INTEL i9 9900 k @ 5.1 GHz, EVGA RTX 2080 TI XC ULTRA, 16GB 3100 MHz RAM, Asus  Maximus Hero XI motherboard, Sound blaster Z series. iClone6 & 7 Pipeline, Crazytalk 8, Crazytalk Animator 2, Facefilter, Pop video 3, Hitfilm 4Pro, Cubase 8.5 Pro,

Yep! That worked. Thanks. As a newbie though I have just seen the next problem - the time spent on creating in CC2 seems to be wasted - in iClone 7 the character now looks really plastic!  

Ah! OK - so not in CC2! Had sort of movement using 'conform' but didn't work 100%.

Adjust shadow bias in iclone in the visual settings pane.



Homebuilt computer - Windoze 10, INTEL i9 9900 k @ 5.1 GHz, EVGA RTX 2080 TI XC ULTRA, 16GB 3100 MHz RAM, Asus  Maximus Hero XI motherboard, Sound blaster Z series. iClone6 & 7 Pipeline, Crazytalk 8, Crazytalk Animator 2, Facefilter, Pop video 3, Hitfilm 4Pro, Cubase 8.5 Pro,