No problem - happy to help!  I know you're keen to keep the work in iClone, but honestly as your project grows and your 'creative conscious' wants "more" or "better" (not to mention speed... iClone will soon bog down with a bunch of animated texture layers) you'll start looking at a external compositing program to finish the work.

I've said it many times on this forum, but Blackmagic's Fusion 9 is an absolute gift!  It may look intimidating compared to AE or HitFilm but, in fact, as it's "node based" it's far easier to learn - which is why ALL the industry standard systems use nodes... in fact, I find iClone far more difficult to master as the ergonomics and workflow is incredibly convoluted - for example, "adding a QT of dust" into your scene ;-)  eg. in Fusion... load render and dust footage - merge dust over render with "screen" blend mode - done! Render new "comp clip" in one of the dozens of available formats.

i'm learning animation through iclone ....and from my perspective,  all other softwares elaborate on the basics I've learned in iclone.  From my view it's pretty intuitive as now in retrospect having learned more ...it's the basic elements of animation.    From your perspective tho,  I can imagine how it seems convoluted,  because iclone is basically trying to summarize all the advanced options in more expensive softwares in just a few sliders.  -  basically for me,  other softwares explode what iclone is doing,  but from a software like say...modo,   iclone is summarizing some of the things I can do in modo.

I find when I think of iclone as a type of compositing tool -  it lets me get more creative being that I already know things I can't in iclone..-  strangely enough understanding iclones limitations actually opens up far more creative possibilities.   I was reminded of this after reading illusionlabs post about using a b/w video as an opacity map.... i started experimenting and came up with a few new ways of composing unique effects that i couldn't do as easily in a video editing software.
ie -  taking a facial picture ....a b/w fire as the opacity map on a facecam billboard.....using a grunge video map in the blend ....then a few interactive particles in the background.  - you could make it look like the face is coming out of the flames like that in 3D. as opposed to just doing a video cut out in compositor.  iclone is deceptively simple and complex at the same time.

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"To define Tao is to defile it" - Lao Tzu

I think that there's more than one way to tackle any project, and the way a user approaches their project will depend on:
● the person's background, (experience / what they've used in the past / what they've been exposed to).
● the way differing tools 'resonate' with a particular person.
I've had nowhere near the experience in 3D than say Illusionlab (I can tell he's very experienced) and there's many others as well - not just in 3D - but photographic/cinematic/graphic/audiovisual/production/editing/artistic etc.
Because of these differing backgrounds (and 'mind sets'), I think we'll each feel more (or less) comfortable with a particular piece of software or approach.


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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1