illusionLAB (6/13/2018)

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"let's go with the idea that you need 16 bit to eliminate banding"
It's not an idea it's a fact.  There are, however, ways to minimize 'banding'... like adding noise or dithering - usually "a process" when creating the rendered file.

The effects that produce the most banding in iClone are essentially 'real time' post effects, so I suspect they are calculated as 8 bit to maintain 'real time' performance (they could actually be hardware provided from the graphics card... so there's nothing RL could do to change it).  If they were calculated at 16 bit during final render it would pretty much solve the issue (at the expense of render time).  The upcoming addition of iRay rendering will improve things, as it's 32 bit it should substitute iC glows, lighting etc. with it's own (converted, like indigo did).  I amended my guess at iClone's architecture to 32 bit as it does handle HDR - but, just because the environment is 32 bit does not mean all the calculations are made at 32 bit... this is probably true of all the game engines, as they wouldn't possibly be able to offer real time.  It's common practice to dynamically assign bit depths 'where they're needed' - you can get away with 8 bit for most things... like texture maps.

Also, it's absolutely possible to see 'banding' on 16 or 32 bit images... like I said before 'most' computer displays are 8 bit (the higher quality the better the 'interpolation').  My setup is optimized for colour grading, so I've splurged for a 10 bit (30bitRGB) monitor... driven by a 10 bit Quadro card.  All 'gaming' cards, like 1080s, are 8 bit.  My theory is iClone actually uses the images generated by the graphics card for renders... which would ultimately mean the PBR renderer in iClone will never produce a 16 bit image.  Again, this is why iRay (or other 3rd party 'non real time' renderer) will be the only option for 16 or 32 bit depth images.