I'm having trouble figuring out how to make iClone images photorealistic, does it have anything to do with the discontinued plug-in Indigo?  Why was it discontinued in the first place? If not, how do I get the photorealistic affect in a video format? Is there a tutorial for this, I can't seem to find one?

If you bought the plug-in prior to iC7, you can download a version that's compatible and works with iC7.
See your member account page for your purchases, and download the newest version.

If you didn't buy it before, is it still available for purchase?  I don't know; I already owned it so I haven't tried to buy it lately.

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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

It should also be pointed out that the Reallusion Indigo plugin does not support PBR or Popcorn FX. Aside from that the last released version for use with iClone 7 does work with the latest full version of Indigo RT - with the known limitation that it is just about all but useless for anything other that stills.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

I am going to go on record saying, NO - you cannot make photo realistic images in iClone.
Can you make images look good?  Yes, absolutely.  Photoreal?  No.  Not without a real raytrace component.  

I think photo-realistic is overrated... 

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I tend to agree. You can make your iclone videos look better by adding LUT effects within iclone or add looks and other effects like grain, in post production editors like After Effects or Hitfilm,  to give your videos  a more 'real' movie look.

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Cancer Survivor - Retired Teacher - Geriatric Icloner still learning
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Well, that's my mantra about iClone in general -- iClone is for ANIMATION.  There are far better programs out there for stills, and trying to do photo-real in animation is a fool's errand.  No one really cares or notices all that much (I think, in general, folks spend way too much time worrying about the quality and details of their test "stills" and I'm NEVER impressed when someone shows me a still from their project.  Show me it animated or don't waste my time).

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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

If they released some Octane Plugin to augment PBR with Raytrace reflections, refractions, and ambient occlusion....fantastic... 
But, it wouldn't have to be Octane at all.  It could be RL's own system, or some less expensive alternative to Octane that is similar, like FStorm Renderer.
But, Octane would be fantastic...if it included an ORBX exporter, which would then allow integration into the Octane Standalone...!!!!!!!

THIS WOULD BE GOLD.

I've said this many times...  When the Indigo plug-in was released, I had hoped it would be followed by others.  My assumption was the first plug-in would be the hardest, but once you have the "infrastructure" in place, follow-on plug-ins to other renderers would be easier.  Not easy, but less work, and Reallusion would have lessons-learned the could leverage.  Apparently their lesson-learned is, "Don't interface to other renderers."

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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

Your assumption wasn't that far off. James Martin (I think that's his name) alluded to the possibility of alternate renderers thanks to the plug-in architecture, but it never came to that.

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