Call me crazy, but I'm actually pleased with the price. It's expensive, yes, but not overly so. I spend about as much as I do on my daughter's clarinet stuff for the year because she's in high school band. I understand people don't have a lot of money to spend in a lot of cases, but it doesn't stop you when you want something. I see the price tag and I don't have that kind of money lying around, but I just get a jar, put a label on it for Facial Mocap and whenever I have a few free bucks, or I opt not to go to Arby's  and spend 15 dollars on a sandwich, drink, fries and a coke --I put that money in the jar. I don't have the money right now, but that doesn't mean I can't save up and get it with a little willpower and ingenuity. If I really wanted to get it faster, I might even do something like get a second job to earn the money. 

My point is is that purchasing is a choice. Reallusion gets to set the price, but I make the choice on whether or not to purchase something or not. I think in this case, Reallusion spent quite a lot of time and resources into developing a product that you can have for a quarter of the price that it can be had by the public.


With the price from Faceware of the Live Server, I'm very happy that I can get a version that will work in iClone for %75 off the list price. To make it even better, you don't have to go through all the setup that you have to do in Faceware --which can be substantial because you have to configure each character before you can use it. This means that they've done all the work for us, the user, and made it so you can get to animating your characters facial performances in a matter of minutes vs hours of setup per character. To me, that's worth the cost because I would rather spend my time animating and not doing setups over and over and over. Reallusion put all this time and effort into bringing us something truly easy to use, and that's worth something. I would, of course, prefer that the cost be $199 dollars or less; but I realize that all that time and effort costs them money and they expect to be paid for it. You have to judge for yourself whether or not the value is worth it, but for me --I've already got the jar labeled and I'm starting to work on saving up for my personal self Christmas Present.

@will2power71

Yeah- I agree. But I would like to note that Faceware had something to do with the price. Let us not all take it out on RL.

And after all, the Perception Neuron thing was twice the price.

Exactly.... My concern.  So, we have a thousand dollar plugin pack for mocap facial expressions.  Top that off with the other mocap stuff and we are priced beyond Indie. 

Will RL push us to all the expensive plugins, quit further development of those types of tools for IClone basically forcing us to professional plugins.

I suspect this will not go well long term, if that is their thinking. 

I will be looking for alternatives.

Adobe is now making headway into animation and character software. I can buy a license for $50 a month for everything in their creative suite and $30 a month on sale.

My experience with Adobe has been sketchy, but since Sony Vegas and SourceForge were bought by another company,  The Vegas Pro is just one program and it has to be updated approximately every two years has been my experience.,
I have version 13, but I don't plan to update it at the prices offered.  I can pay $50 dollars per month or $600 per year and have Photoshop, Premier, Audition, After Effects and updates are included with the subscription.  So, I won't be updating my Sony Vegas Pro hereafter.  I recently got email offer to upgrade my SV pro to version 14 for $249, version 15 just released and it is similarly priced.... and that is only one application.  



Adobe Premier is very similar to Sony Vegas so it won't be difficult move.  I can get 20+ Adobe applications applicable to my work.  No, I don't like to be locked in for $50 per month, but I really think leasing software is the future. Companies want consistent cash flows, and marketing costs are significantly lower.

Look for adobe.com creative cloud.  Scroll through the choices you will understand my thinking on this.


 

  

Well said, Will (and others).

As someone pointed out another time, take up fishing as a hobby.  Buy a boat, a trailer, rods and reels, lures... see how much that hobby costs.

I'm not immune to spending as little as possible, so I'm not being insensitive to the cost.  I limped along with sub-par graphics cards for years.  I finally have a great GPU, but my CPU is a 3rd-generation i7, while 8th-generation ones will be out in a quarter or so.  I'll probably continue to live with my CPU since it isn't a big bottleneck, and I can spend my money on other accessories or software.

Fast computer, fast food, fast women... you chose where to spend (or not spend) your money.

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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.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Haha, indeed.

I'm going to wait till I see folks making huge leaps and bounds with this software before I really start saving those pennies (er nickles in this case).  Its one thing to see a RL promo or tutorial and quite another to see the end users getting the same results.  When that happens I think I might be tempted...

the few user tests posted so far are very unimpressive.


.

Hmmm... and your eloquent contribution to this topic is where?

Dennis is spot on -- and note that most high end graphics cards (such as the 1080) can cost nearly as much as Faceware.  I don't hear a lot of folks complaining about that (and a LOT of iClone users have the 1080).

Look -- I predicted a while back this WOULD cause a divide between users here -- and was roundly pounded on by almost everyone.  "OH NO!", they all said "THAT won't happen!"  But I can see both sides clearly -- pricing a plugin for a program twice (or more) what the program itself costs is bound to rankle some folks.

So I was pretty sure what the price would be and was still a bit concerned.  I'm okay with the price myself, but I'd also like for EVERYONE to have this capabilities (I'm a big believer in putting tools in the hands of everyone).  So that part is a bit disappointing.  But I still like to point out there are at least a couple of folks here who think they can get just as good a result in iClone without the plugin.  If that's even slightly true, then no one should be complaining.

And the plugin isn't magic -- I'm already trying to define a workflow and it isn't as straightforward as I might have thought originally.  For one thing, my dialog driven animation is always between two or more people.  That poses some interesting problems that have to be solved -- they can be, and I can work with it, but it's not a slam dunk.  So it isn't nirvana and the have nots shouldn't feel like they are being left out.

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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

Free Range
My IMDB

It doesn't bother me that there are people that will buy it.  My concern is RL will retract and not continue to improve IClone, instead relying upon 3rd party plugins.   

Acceptance of these new Mocap tools may have alot to do with how indie producers use their characters.  I don't do extreme closeups, even Crazytalk is lacking, but seems right enough for my viewers.
I have the CT pipeline and can get pretty good lipsync and facial expressions on my characters.

I suspect there are many Iclone users that really want to tweak the edges of realism in their work.  Maybe the facial mocap will meet their needs.