I'm and older newbie, since I'm 62 (please be gentle!) I've been trying very hard to get some Daz avatars into iClone without any clothing issues. I believe I'm very close. However, I really don't know how to save the imported FBX as an iavatar. Up to now, I can only save the whole mess as a project. What am I doning wrong, or what have I missed? I see tons of G5 iavatars. Was it easier with 5+ iClone? Is there a way to get iClone 5? I have updates iClones 6 and 7 on my PC.

You will need 3DXChange -- that's really the only piece you are missing.  Bring the Daz FBX into XChange, and then from there it will come into iClone.

There are tutorials made by RL showing how this works -- just google "Daz characters into iClone" and I'm sure you'll get some hits (for doing facial stuff you will need a bit more work but even that will be covered).

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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

Sorry! I'm still a bit fuzzy from taking my muscle-spasm meds last night. I do get the models into iClone. However, after they're in there, I don't see anyway to convert them into an iavatar. It would seem logical (at least to my understanding) that as an iavatar, I can reuse them in the different scenes I would need these characters. That's were I'm  stuck.

Hey! I accidentally discovered how. Just like saving a prop, you need to be in the prop area, so you can get the custom plus sign on the bottom, you need to be in the avatar area, to be able to save and/or rename your iavatar. "Honey, I need more coffee!!!". Thanks!

Well, that's not strictly true.  If you want an actual avatar (one you can use with iMotions, and one that is "human") then you need to do what I said -- use XChange, bring it in and convert it to non-standard.

If you're using some other kind of thing (an animal for example) then, yes, it's a prop. But I assumed when you said "avatar" you were trying to make a human.

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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

You're right, Kellytoons. I DO use 3dXchange. In fact, I purchased the pipeline version. I may never need to import or export to other platforms, but as a bundle, I believe iClone makes some excellent bundle offers.

Now that we're talking about animals, I purchased the farm animals bundle that was on sale some time ago. My question is, can I make these animals talk? I'm trying to make a short movie about Nativity for my church, but from the animals point of view.

Thanks for all your help. I'm still getting my feet wet, so I'm very grateful for all comments.

By "talk" I assume you mean move the jaw up and down -- you are unlikely (if that) to be able to do much better inside of iClone (you could bring in other tools, like morphing software or even Crazytalk, to try and get some lip action -- with the right software you could even do what the big boys do, and super a human mouth onto the animal's).

Some animal rigs will have the jaw bone wired up correctly -- in those all you need do is go to the Modify/Animation/Edit Animation Layer and select the appropriate bone and move it (at whatever frame you want).  In the case of, say, the Animal World packs (I have Vols 1,2 and 3) most of the animations have a jaw bone that can be animated in this manner.  That will be tedious, but it's the best you can do for now (if we get Python and IF it allows such manipulation, we can program things to make this MUCH easier, even automatic, but that won't be for at least seven months and even then it's unlikely it will have the power at first to do these things -- so we may be talking years).

If such a creature doesn't have the bones you need you can try rigging them yourself, but that's way outside my pay grade (not rigging -- I can do that, but trying to take an animal out of iClone and into another program to redo the rig... I suspect you'll need to have the export version of that animal and you'll need to know more or at least be willing to do more than I ever would.  In the end you'll still need to animate that bone by hand).

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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

Okay, just experimented and fond a *somewhat* easier way to do this -- after you create your "jaw open/close" (and it should be short, about half a second or so) on the timeline save this clip and add to "Perform".  Now all you have to do is select the animal and go to perform and hit "Talk" (assuming you assigned it that name) and it will open and close the mouth.  You'll still have to do this for every word, but people are surprisingly forgiving of such animation (think Kermit the frog -- all he can do is open and close his mouth, but he does it very convincingly, albeit the head forward motion helps -- you could also program this if you so desired).

I'm not gonna lie -- you will wear yourself out doing this and as you go along your creatures will say less and less, but that isn't a Bad Thing (too much dialog is never a good idea).  Just have fun.

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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

Just did all the above and here's a quick test (it took less than five minutes but at least three or four was just in setting up the initial perform -- you can adjust the length of the perform to suit the words).

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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

Cool! Was that with Crazytalk, or iClone?