I know we, its current users, know it as a storytelling tool, but I wonder if it would serve well to bring in a user base interested in game making who could benefit from its immensely powerful asset toolset and character creator.
It would have a huge leg up on Unity, Unreal, and CryEngine for "Cut Scenes"...
Would it take a lot to add in the game maker elements?  If iClone picked up all the visual elements these other engines have, wow! 

I could imagine it could, however I'm sure the ones who use iClone for movie making/animation  wouldn't like to see the forums inundated with requests for game function capabilities to the deference of what iClone was/is intended. That said I'd like to see the implementation of scripting (promised so long ago I forget) to automate animations etc. Perhaps I'm just a diehard iClone user that likes to keep gaming separate (Unity).  

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Nope, it would need a lot of resources to develop the engine for games and then some more resources to develop the visual candy, plus that would destroy iclone's identity as a product and its purpose

Tony, you actually have it backwards. It would take less and make a lot more sense to put Iclone-like tools in a game engine. Cut scenes are one aspect of a game. What you'd have to squeeze into Iclone to get all the other aspects would be too much. Not to mention, one of Iclone's biggest weaknesses would be a huge hurdle: Memory management. 3D Game engines that produce AAA games, the kind of engines that Iclone is following the look of with PBR, Popcorn effects, etc, are ridiculously memory efficient. It hurts my head when I run huge outdoor scenes in Unreal and then think of what it'd take to run that in Iclone.

Dr.Nemesis,

That's very true. Complex outdoor scenes, especially with the new goodies of IC7, can be a headache to work with. Adding a lot of trees seem to take a big chunk of the available memory.

This needs addressing IMHO. Generally, the way IC7 uses memory needs to be readressed to become more efficient.


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I have never owned, or played, a computer game. To each their own, but I am a firm believer that there are enough affordable resources available on the market for game developers and at the moment very few affordable resources for Animators/Film makers.

The Forum is already overfilled with questions regarding getting RL assets into the one or other Game App, and is slowly, but surely, drifting away from the core use of iClone - Animation. It's not only full of questions, it's also full of complaints about getting assets from product XYZ to iClone and back again when the cause of the problem is not the responsibility of RL, but due to the fact that the latest version of XYZ has made fundamental changes to file handling that aren't yet supported in an RL product that was released months before said changes were made. :alien:

My vote is for iClone to keep the main focus on animation, with export possibilities available for those who don't want to animate.


Gerry

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I think we are mixing two very different things:

1. creating a movie
    To make a take (shot) for a movie means to build up a scene and "statically" render it according to the camera point-of-view.
    Complex scenes, which can virtually take quite a lot of memory, can be optimized with some techniques, because at the end of
    the day, the items to be shown and their positions are fixed once the camera has been placed.
    For example, filling a high number of trees is not an issue if one of these techniques are applied: I was about to make a tutorial 
    about this, but unfrotunately right now I have no time.

2. creating a game 
    To build a scene for a game means that the whole scene can be navigated: that´s a world of difference!
    Here there is not a fixed camera, but the point of view of the player changes continuously.
    Taking again the example of trees, they all need to be there, if the game playable area foresees that the player moves through them.

Hence, if the OP refers to have a game engine extension for iClone, well.... they will have to compete with Unity3D, Unreal, Lumberyard... not sure what RL MKT thinks about this.
Vice verse, if the OP refers to have a better memory management in order to build complex scenes, again, several techniques can be used to optimize the memory resource budget.

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   Roberto

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As a business model, RL could offer more content and capitalize on a uniformed one-stop platform for both (1) game making and (2) video creation.  And they needn't be exclusive.
They could offer more content and hire more staff , in time, and grow that newly added game-making part of the business, bolstering its existing business as well.  So it wouldn't have to be that it diverts attention away from the traditional iClone stuff, it would just add other development stuff along side it.  And as a business, it would be a very good thing to have more and more users cluttering the forum, as more user base = more exposure = more $$$ potential.   

Now, if computing resources would be too heavy as is, I am thinking they could morph the current structure to be more like that of Unity/Unreal/CryEngine to where it is very memory friendly?  
Like if they had the flexibility to optimize the current paradigm they could then easily integrate in anything new?

As far as how it would be introduced, I am imagining they would start out adding a playable level where you can control your avatar in your geographic scene.  Take actions via controls and then development expands from there.  The actions could also be recorded into the movie, to make for some very interesting movie creation as well....like an augmented-reality ("AR") infused movie making tool.
To accomplish this, bring in a handful of people to design that who have experience in gamemaking and AR, and then as it develops you are off to the game making arena, with a new spin on game creation.

No to everything you said.
All the things you've mentioned are huge in complexity. Summarizing them with a sentence like "They could offer more content and hire more staff" is an immense oversimplification of what would be needed.
In the same way as I could say "I'm building a rocket and going to the moon". Short and simple sentence but omits the thousands of intricate details and complexities involved in actually achieving that task.
I worked on 4 Frostbite games while work was being done to suit the engine to several studio's needs. No offense to Reallusion meant at all when I say this, but I don't think they have the money it would take to make a competitive 3D Game engine.

At present Reallusion is still trying to make Iclone a truly viable tool for studios. Releasing an update that doesn't have significant bug regression or breaking of existing features still seems to be a challenge.
And I haven't even gone into ANY detail at all about the programming requirements for an engine, along with designer and technical tool that would also need to be made for putting the games together. 

RL would only need to see it as a business opportunity to move forward with it, it needn't be based on our own past experience.  I mean, I myself never made a game but that doesn't mean that RL therefore wouldn't have the potential to expand their business.   If you or I, or some other organization, do not have the expertise to have done something properly in the past, that doesn't mean RL would therefore as well replicate our mistakes. 

And just because there is complexity doesn't mean it is impossible.  Equating cost and complexity of space travel and game engine development is the oversimplification.  As a matter of fact there are private industry actors who are pursuing building rockets and flying them into space.  So this only tells us that such ideas are not only doable, but maybe less complex than we envision it to be.  In fact, investigation of the complexity would yield new opportunities and solutions for great things.  

I would think this.  First, they create, much like Kinect or Perception Neuron, a controller interface which allows you to control the character in the scene.  Perhaps this could be done in a 'game mode' optimized for memory. Next, you would have a plugin or tab that would contain the rule set for such character navigation.  You would only start by creating the playable character in the scene.  This would be a developmental process. You could expand out later to an actual rule set of interactive player to challenge rules.  One step at a time, not like "WHAM - full game engine!"  So the complexity is broken apart to little parts and then each functional piece is added in time.  Each step of the way RL optimizes and makes it more.  And, they add content packs like playable characters, stages/scenes, rule sets, etc.  What people would learn is that there is the full suite of movie making 3D PLUS game making elements, would be very promising and interesting!