iClone's output 8-bit right now, as in, anyone know what exactly is the iClone output spec

As iClone can use .HDR files the "engine" must be at least 16bit - most likely 16bit half float.  I very much doubt we'll ever see anything but 8bit PBR renders from iClone's realtime engine... which is why implementing an iRay workflow will solve a whole bunch of limitations - quite possibly offering 16bit output as well (although 99% of us will be using 8bit textures - 16bit would help with lighting - especially banding on the glows).

For me, banding and Moire are the biggest issues I run into now. Whenever that occurred with iClone's old renderer, I could just add some noise to the Diffuse texture, but that doesn't always seem to work. So, overall the output looks much better, but I also encounter more problems I have to work around.

---

actually the png image sequence format is 32 bit.  That's really the proper way to render the best HD formats for commercial / big budget release. Any other format is just trying to find a shortcut with codecs. 

You can actually go up to 32bit 8k in iclone png image sequence. - but prepare to eat up a ton of drive space, long render times, and work with proxy formats during editing then wrestle with the encoder in post production.

• My Spotify  My Twitter  My Virtual Art Gallery
  
• My NFT    My Marketplace My Blog
  
• Music Sync Licensing

☯🐉

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

Forgot to mention that Eevee now supports particle hair, yes, real hair, and there is a new Cycles/Eevee advanced hair shader in the making as we speak!

"actually the png image sequence format is 32 bit"

Not true.
What we call 8 bit, are actually 24 bit files.... that is, 8 bits for channel R/G/B (8+8+8=24 bit file) .  PNG supports an alpha which adds another channel of 8 bit depth making the file total 32 bits.  When we refer to 16 or 32 bit files, they too are calculated "per channel" - so a 16 bit file is R16,G16,B16,A16 making the file 64 bit.  There are only a handful of 32 bit depth formats... PSD, HDR, EXR and TIFF are the most used in production (PNG maxes out at 16 bit).

This graphic shows an iClone spotlight rendered as PNG (8 bit) and a similar spotlight in Fusion rendered at 16 bit.  They appear similar, but the histograms clearly show the 256 'steps' from black to white on the 8 bit resolution, versus the highly compacted 65536 'steps' of 16 bit resolution.  8 bit can display smooth gradients, but manipulating the colour and contrast soon shows the 'steps'  which is why it's prone to "banding".

It's exactly the same as audio format bit depths... a 16 bit audio file has 65,536 integers to represent one sample, where a 24 bit audio file has 16,777,216 integers to represent one sample (that's 255 times more resolution!)

So, iClone is somehow prevented from ever rendering out true-32 bit, due to some fashion by which it currently operates?
On a side, I am using Unity....man, you have to rebuild every single material.  Even if exported out properly, you have to go in and tweak.  
I am not giving up, but I have seen this with UE4...It gets to the point where you get done, and then you're like, "the avatar  looked better in iClone to begin with..."
However, for backgrounds, environments, and effects, the are better than iClone's PBR.  Like, iClone has better character PBR,and the game engines have better environment PBR...at least for iClone characters.

Rendering with iRay may offer a higher bit depth for output - as iClone can work with HDR format, which is 32bit, (not 16 bit or 16 bit half float like I mentioned earlier) then it's most likely capable of rendering higher "bit depth" formats.  Obviously, it won't improve your materials if they are all 8 bit jpeg/png/targa... but at least lighting falloffs and glows could render without banding.  Hopefully iRay rendering will also give us access to "passes" like z-depth, diffuse, reflection, uv etc.

You know what is interesting, whereas iClone's Post Processing Bloom gives you banding, Octane Render can output Bloom, as a Post Processing effect, and it lets you render 8 or 16 bit PNG, and EXR. 
But on a 16 bit PNG, there is no Bloom banding. (I never use Octane's 8 bit so I don't know what is case in that instance).  Meaning, EXR is not required for an image without Bloom banding. 
And then in Unreal Engine, its Post Processing Bloom also produces no Bloom banding.

So aside from not meeting a Netflix requirement, iClone's Bloom just looks bad.  Probably the design of it somehow...
So, as (1) Octane and (2) UE4 can output a standard 16 bit render *without* Post Processing Bloom banding, I think it is in fact an iClone 'bug', and not something that would be solved actually by a higher quality output.

I say bug, because: 
(1) Q - YES or NO, is the intent of iClone's HDR bloom to produce banding?
A - NO
Thus, iClone bug.

(2) Q - Do Octane Render or UE4 require 32 bit image processing in order to achieve Bloom without Bloom banding?
A - NO
Thus, iClone bug.

I think if you could output to 32 bit in iClone, as is, you would in fact just get a higher quality Bloom banding.

Dupenheimmerspeilichtenzuckht

Here is a short video showing Blender Eevee capabilities at the moment, pretty amazing, and Blender can output 8 or 16 bits, even full float OpenEXR images, doesn't get any better than that IMHO!