Interesting working with Unreal Engine and comparing to iClone.
In Unreal the UI is very zippy and fast, no matter how many objects are in there, whereas iClone slows very steadily as you increase.
In Unreal no matter how much you zoom in and out ion an object, there is no pixelation, or virtually none, like Realtime Smoothing is always applied.
iClone gets pixelated when zooming around on different objects. Unreal seems to handle Bloom and DOF very smoothly in all lighting environments, whereas iClone's brings in pixelation and artifacts.
There are so many parameters to tweak, and then each of these many parameters can themselves be tweaked into oblivion.
So, the graphics and flow of the UI as far as speed and performance are superior to iClone. This gives me a different perspective on those who have for long been asking for the foundational nuts and bolts of iClone to be updated, as opposed to bringing in new feature sets, workflows, and tools. You really ask yourself, is iClone at its best potential, and for whatever reason, the answer has to be "no", because you can see a ton of things that if it had, OMG, would be insane. There are a ton of enhancements that iClone could have in its real-time PBR engine for GI.
BUTTTT...
OMG...Learning curve....Node Editor City.
You are deal with things that in iClone would take 2 seconds, and in Unreal takes 2 minutes. Changing a material around has like 5 steps, whereas in iClone you just adjust a slider. The thing is, in Unreal you ultimately do just adjust a slider, but, it is buried inside a node system that is complex as hell. If it wasn't for that I dealt with Octane Render and know its node system very well, I'd be completely lost. But even knowing it you still feel lost because the UI is in fact very different. The options, compared to iClone, can feel overwhelming too, because there are so many. So, there is a time element with this thing, which is ironic that its UI is so powerful and fast. When you see videos about Unreal, notice how they plod through the cumbersome UI. You can mess around with all the sample projects you want, it still is complex.
This is where Iray becomes very attractive, auto-conversion. Now, per my Daz experience, Iray is slow.
However, net equation - If properly functioning, very feasible that by bypassing the planning, thought, and organizing needed to re-do the scene in Unreal, you could ultimately time-wise, by rendering in Iray, beat out moving a scene to Unreal Engine.
Which is weird, because it simultaneously makes you feel like, yes, iClone's inner structure needs to be optimized, but, at the same time, Iray will be a terrific and nifty asset in the equation.
(I'm talking about average user of the software)
So, Iray is the fix for an un-optimized PBR.
But I still want it!!!!
NOW!!!!