Funny how different folks visions are -- just from his description I thought more of this (which I whipped up myself in five minutes):

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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

Hello Delerna,

Yes, I did extensively go through Marketplace looking for the type of character that I have in mind, but I did not find anything that came close.  However, I spent many hours educating myself on the available props and characters in Marketplace. 

I was hoping to find and contract a character designer to create my crystalline female figure, but I have not yet identified a company or anyone that does that.  The two characters you illustrated are heading in the right direction. Actually, the default female character in Character Creator is the perfect female shape and face that I am looking for.  Specifically, what I am looking for is a non-sexual nude female (no nipples) that has a translucent clear crystalline form; like she is made of shimmering water.  I think almost like an angelic spirit.  I want to use her as ‘consciousness’ in the form of a female.  I am willing to pay whatever it cost to create her.

If you, or someone that you know of, can help accomplish this for me, I would be very grateful.

Sincerely, Mark Maloney

Hi Kelleytoons,

Yes, that is getting closer to what I am looking for; how did you do that?

Mark

I am still learning how to post...

As you note, the default female figure, and my first pass was just to make her skin and body parts mostly transparent (just dial down the opacity) and while that does give a basic effect I wanted more of a shimmering, so I fired up After Effects and created a video shimmer FX, which I then applied to the face and body (it's easiest to see if you make the video full screen but it kind of stops at the very end).

The drawback is you really need a longer video -- I couldn't find a way on the timeline to just extend that video (must be something I'm doing wrong, but for the life of me I couldn't see a material video on the timeline, when I can see all the other videos I put down there).  I only made about 15 seconds but if you are going to use the character in a scene you might want to create a 60 second version so you have enough time.  I also turned it into PopVideo because iClone works a lot more efficiently with that (and it's a lot smaller).

I think that's the general idea you need to go for -- there's really no end to the kind of FX you can do in AE but even if you don't have that you might find suitable video on the web somewhere.  And I'd certainly be glad to give you the video as it is (but if it's not quite there I'm not so sure I want to spend a lot of time on it, although you're lucky in that right at the moment I'm in a kind of holding pattern waiting for the FW stuff to come out.  Once that comes out I will be unavailable for almost anything).

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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

Willing to pay "whatever it costs"?  Sign me up!

Meanwhile, I will offer a free suggestion.

Expanding on what Kelley did with his model, you (or I, or someone) could create an "animated Substance" that could ripple and shimmer, without needing to apply a video overlay.  There is already a free "caustics" substance (great for the shimmering light below the surface of water in a swimming pool), or a person could create one similar to that.  I have successfully done that.  iClone 6 didn't support that type of Substance, but iClone 7 does.

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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.
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Animated Substance is a good idea -- never occurred to me (then again, I'm right in the middle of creating a lot of video textures for use on monitors, etc, so AE is fresh in my mind).

There may well be some out there for free you could use -- try doing a search (at one point I had so many I couldn't even manage them all, and got rid of most of them that I just never used).

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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

Hey Kelleytoons,
Unfortunately, I am still to new at this to understand how to apply FX or AF, or even what they are or where to find them.  I did experiment with the base figure after seeing what you did, but was unable to even come close to what you have created.  I can see that I have a long way to go in learning animation.  Fortunately, I am old and retired and have the time, I think, to learn all this stuff.  However, old age and death are closely related; bummer.

Actually, I am looking to have this particular character created for me, so I can concentrate on producing my movie.  However, if worse comes to worse, I will have to learn it for myself and do the best that I can.  I don't have much hair left, so I don't want to frustrate myself to much.  What program does FX or AE?

Old, but not in dippers yet,
Mark

You're probably not as old as I am, but the advantage I have is that I've been doing this stuff (and retired from the industry) for a long time.  But I know what you mean about death -- it's looking over my shoulder even as I type <g>.

I suspect someone here can help you out with the texture -- I wouldn't advise you to try and learn an FX program like After Effects right now (you have enough on your plate with iClone and such).  You *can* look around the web for it, though, and if you can at least find a still image that shows what you want in the way of texture it will help others help you (just post it here).

I'll look through what Substances I have to see if there's anything helpful and if it's free you can have it (or if not I'll tell you where to buy it).  The texture is just applied to the material of the skin -- you can do this in either Character Creator or iClone, and I would suggest you become familiar with at least how to do it in iClone because it will help with other things you can also do there (you will find that working with materials in iClone is an important part of getting the right look to your project).

So search around for an image and I'll post back here if I find anything that might work for you (and learn how to use textures in iClone!  <g>).  And others might jump in here as well (as I said, I'm on hold awaiting FW so I have a *bit* of time, although I'm also trying to gear up).

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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

Here's a good tut on Substances (not everything you need to know, but enough to get the basic idea).  You can do everything they do here (and more) with the textures on a character.

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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