There is a free version that I have played with quite a bit. It works very well as a companion to iClone. It can even use CC characters exported as FBX to generate the crowds. It's a standalone program.
https://secure.axyz-design.com

Damn you, Rampa, why are you making me spend money?! <g>.

I can't find anything on that site that says what is new in version 3.0.  Do you have a link anywhere?  I'd be real curious why this is a whole version upgrade (there are a couple of things about 2.x that kept me from ever pulling the trigger, but if they are fixed...)

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Looks like PBR and a UE4 plugin. A few other bits that probably don't matter. Watch the whole video when the page loads. It covers it.

Yeah, I saw it... and, of course, bought it (software slut).  I'm not sure I'm friends with you, Rampa (you cost me WAY too much money).

I had been going back and forth on Anima for quite some time, but the reduction in price convinced me -- hopefully PBR will work across into iClone (we'll see).  The good news for me is I was able to get the new Substance Painter for only $80 (and the new release today) so that saved me enough to pay for all this.  Yeah, right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it when my wife asks.

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Yeah, see. I saved you money!

Thanks Rampa, I'll check it out.

Hi Rampa, do you use Anima or  AXYZ Hub for your Crowds creation? could you please give us more explanation what you mean exactly?
I was on the side but there is so much informations.

Yeah, reminds me of the old Burns and Allen show where Gracie kept "saving" money on appliances she was buying and then she turned to the appliance salesman and said "Tell me when I've saved enough money to pay for all these."

Just a quick test to see how the crowds actually work in iClone (prior to this I could only do some very limited 4 second animation testing).  High quality textures are going to be limited to around 30-50 actors, although it will depend on the scene and what different actors you have in them.  This particular scene I "cheated" by cutting it in half and exporting both halves (and easily rejoining them by just importing them -- they lined up just fine).  The big issue is XChange -- this points out more than ever that it is LONG overdue for an overhaul to a 64bit program (I have zero faith this will ever happen -- folks were complaining about it 4 years ago and still no movement).  With all that is happening with iClone it may well end up being the weakest link (because iClone itself has no problems with a lot more folks/textures due to being able to use more memory).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

I don't think Rampa has Anima, but in any case I can tell you there isn't any "Hub" program that I know of, unless it's for rendering (which you wouldn't use with iClone).

The Anima program produces an FBX file, containing the people and the animation of them.  You can watch their demo videos to see how easy it is to generate the people and their behavior (last year, when Rampa and I first started looking at this, I was able to play around a bit and it was fun).  You can even bring in your own assets -- I had zombie crowds, for example.

You can export your iClone scene as OBJ and bring it into Anima so you can put the people around it.  The biggest problem, as I noted above, is that XChange can only handle a certain amount of memory (FAR below what iClone can handle).  So you may have to either limit the resolution of your textures you export from Anima, or you can do what I did above and split the scene into various parts and recombine.  I would hope that SOMEDAY RL would fix XChange, but it won't be in my lifetime.

If you need crowds there really isn't any good alternative, and at around 35% off this is the best time to buy this program (which I did).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

I have the free version 2 that is limited to 4 seconds of animation, but I was able to import a crowd of 50 - 100 people in 3DX. You do need the 4 gig patch for 3DX. As KT mentions, you don't need any sort of hub. The program is standalone. You can get extra rendering nodes if you are using the program for Archviz without exporting, but that's not how we would use it.

Another interesting way I found to use was for generating complex walk paths for a single character. The paths and stairs work quite well, and if you export a one-person "crowd" you can characterize that character. It uses the HumanIK skeleton. So yes. It is very versatile!

Version 3 has a UE4 plug, so maybe AXYZ would be interested in an iClone plugin as well.