And I just noticed warlord posted a tutorial on the exact thing I was talking about there
Here

i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Here here.
Even in outdoor only sceens. IE He mows the lawn and then walks down the street to buy some beer. I would have that as 2 or even 3 scenes If I needed to see him inside the .alcohol store.
I would even take screenshots of the street scene (as an example) and use it as a background image in the mowing scene if I needed to see the street while he was mowing the lawn.
Or use the street image as a background while he was in the store.. I might even make a 4th scene of the street with cars driving along and people walking along it just so I can produce a video of that for use as a background while he is in the store or the yard.


i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Resurrecting this thread...

Another reason most people using multiple iClone files for their video project is because it is common to use multiple sets and locations.

If you have someone in front of their house, mowing the lawn, and later inside the house, watching television, you would normally want that to be two iClone files.  There is no need to burden the outside shots with all the furniture and other indoor props.  And the reverse case it true, too.

I don't remember anyone mentioning that (though after this many posts, it could be that I simply have a gap in my memory).

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

I agree 100%.... Intuitive, methodical and you can change the anims when the need arises.:)
Scenes lenght... via Complexity.... Yep.
+1 :Wow:

And JustAViking has shown some good demos, I will be checking them out more when I get home

i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

That was all done as a single project when I started to learn that it is best to split long stories up into several projects.
However, as I have said splitting up a project just because it is more than 30 seconds doesn't make sense to me.
I split them up based on the complexity of the animations and whether I think I might be likely to want to adjust it later to suit what I have done.
I tend to design my videos as I animate them rather than completely design the video before I start animating it. So it is very likely I will want to modify scenes I have already done.

That video was not so complicated so I had no problem doing it as a single project. Act1Scene2 (yes there is still up to Act20Scene??? still to be done, gotten highly involved with assert development since then so I will likely never get them done) is the one I was talking about with adjusting animations.
I did a single project with Harry walking into the house and meeting up with his aunt in the hall with them discussing why he was there. Then his cousin came down the stairs said some things then they all walked into the lounge room and did some more discussion. I then adjusted harry opening the door and that altered the animation of him discussing in the hall and walking into the lounge room and his discussions in there.

So I saw that I could split that into 4 projects Harry and aunt meeting up in the Hall, Discussions and cousin coming down, all of them walking into the lounge and sitting down, them all doing more discussion because I could merge their videos together in my video editor with scene merging effects. That is the way that works best for me. Not everyone would agree with my process but that doesn't matter, it suits me. That is why I say its worth listening to what other people say but in the end you need to find the way that suits you best. However my process still does agree with the principle of what everyone is saying. It is best not do everything in a single project when your video is long


i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

It won't be choppy because you'll put CUTS in your video anyway.

In any video you see, even a documentary or a simple interview, they CUT from one person to another.  You might cut to a reaction when the other person it talking.  You cut between wide shots, medium shots, and close-ups.

In the video editor, you can replace the audio (that came from iClone) with a nice, continuous audio track so you don't have any audio glitches.

<------  Camera Angle #1 ----------> <------------- Camera Angle #2 -------------->
<-----  Audio #1 -----> <--------------------- Audio #2 -------> <----- Audio #3------>


Make a one-minute test video with various lines of dialogue, two or three camera angles, any background music and sound FX, and you'll see it all come together.


ADDED...

I do not claim this is an example of a "best practice," but it does show how a scene can consist of many components.  I'm attaching two screen shots of my NLE.  This is for ONE SCENE of my longest iClone project.
- The top track is all "titles" that I used for closed-captioning.
- Then I have different tracks for video, dialogue, music, sound effects, etc.
- I was not rigid in my approach, as you can see some video on track 4 along with audio clips

The second screenshot shows where I used the NLE to cut between camera angles (though I did a lot of that in iClone, too).

I find every project is a learning experience.  I learned a LOT doing that large project.  Many things I would do again (sooner, and more of it), some I'd do differently, and I also found a few things I'd avoid.



You can also see where I keframed some volume and also faded out some music, which iClone cannot do.

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Delerna,

I have tried using dummy objects a little bit, a week or so ago, but I need to practice using them a lot more.  I will definitely try what you are talking about.  I watched a video animation made by Justaviking, showing motion paths using dummy objects to control the motion of the camera.  I could see then, that using dummy objects was going to be a very useful tool.  Between 'lookingat,' and using dummy objects, animating interactive conversation is going to work really well for my intended application.

Your video clip was a great example.  I noticed that it is 2:03 minutes long, how many segments did you use to make it?

I will start posting my upcoming questions as new topics.  I just did not want to chance losing you guys; you're experts at this.  YouTube is great but not as great as having living experts to answer how-to questions.  You just make the world that much better for all of us.

Thank you so much for the great information; see you in new topics...

Mark

By the way. You really should start creating new questions in new topics.

I am not complaining at you. I am only saying this for one reason.

The topic and the answers you get may help other people to find the answers you get when they are looking for answers for the same topic
Posts within a topic really should relate to the topic to some degree and this posts topic is finding someone to create a new character

i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Oh, and you can link the cube to the other character so it moves automatically with the character if that is needed in order to simplify the animations .
You can still manually move the cube to different positions and it will still follow the character it is linked to.

Your just going to have to experiment with all of this stuff in order to get it to do what you need

i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit