Realtime rendering is the future of computer animation
But to achieve professional results we need to make heavy R&D. I'm using game engines to render animation movies. In this thread i'm going to share the progression of my researches. Iclone and CC2 are in the center of my character design and animation pipeline because i love them.
I'm making this thread here may be it could inspire someone else about IC and CC2. Those 2 products are too underrated.
If you would like to know more about real-time 3D rendering, i have a Gumroad subscription page dedicated to 3D real-time rendering. Subscribe to receive emails with exclusive contents like work in progress, 3D rendering and breakdown, pipeline tips, tutorials, project files, desktop wallpapers, material presets, 3D assets etc.
My name is ILema R.Manohiray , i'm a generalist 3D artist but i'm transitioning to real-time rendering surfacing and lighting artist for films,games cinematics,motion design etc. 

WIP Unity + CC2 +Iclone  27/05/2018

What is the goal?
The goal is to build a real-time 3D complete and serious cinema production pipeline including rendering (Unity) , character design and animation (IC+CC), cloth design and animation
(still making researches to decide) , FX and simulations (still making researches to decide)

Why Unity? Because :
1.I like the Unity's workflow and it's very compatible with Iclone for building a semi real-time character animation pipeline.Now i can animate a character and cloth inside Iclone which is very fast and intuitive then export the alembic and Unity auto update the animation. I've noticed that soft like Maya or Houdini or Blender cannot handle on the fly abc files updating. Unity eat it easily. Also in the same feature for example UE alembic and FBX import are really really slow for long clips, slow enough to not choose UE for this project.
2.Unity has now a new real-time graphic renderer called HD Render Pipeline which is powerful and very fast with hi end quality.
You can know more about it here  https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/03/16/the-high-definition-render-pipeline-focused-on-visual-quality/ 
3.Unity has a very nice asset management and the Interface is simple and intuitive.
4.Unity has Cinemachine . You can know more here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Q5sKXjZOM
5.this is a personal taste but unity has countless wonderful assets paid or free like this one called umodeler. Know more here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugjXKbFWX4Q
6.And last but not the least Unity is FREE

Why in these renders some of the characters have no cloths ?
Because i'm still trying to find a solution to create cloths and animate them. The IC/CC2  cloth workflow is a bit closed. I know that CC3 is coming , the WIP are cool, i hope that it will be more toward "pipeline" integration. I need a software that allows me to design and animate cloths a la Marvelous Designer or Clo3D or Daz Artful Physic tailor. The IC built in cloth animation is good but the quality is not enough for cinema or VFX, it's more in the game quality side.
In the more traditional DCC cloths and Fx workflow i'm still deciding if i'm going to use Houdini,Maya or Blender. 

Known issues with iclone?
1.the exported alembic objects from IC are huge. The scale is wrong 100x bigger. I've tested with Blender, Maya and Houdini.Not a big issue but should be 
fixed. The workaround that i've found with blender is to set the import scale to 0.01.
2.iclone do not let you to choose custom framerate for project and some output .I would like to work with 24 fps.

TEST R&D 1 (also available as video render)
NOTE: all of these images are WIP and don't represent the final renders when i will start any serious film production. That's why you will notice 
many imperfections. Unity 2018 is still in beta , each build bring something new.

Iclone male character rendered with unity


Video render Test





TEST R&D 2 , FEMALE AND TIGER RENDER



That's all for the moment , i will update this thread as soon i have  interesting contents. If you would like to access the exclusive contents
please follow me on FB : ilemalight
Thanks



https://www.ilema.artstation.com
Open for Professional collaboration as a lighting artist.

realisticreal-time renderingunity3d

Edited
6 Years Ago by R.Manohiray RT 3D

Good constructive post Ilema . i work with Unreal and iclone so don't know much about unity but good luck with your project

Thank you for your input. I love UE too. I've started my R&D with UE but i had to face some issues that unfortunately blocked 
the progression. Those issues are still here until now.
1. UE fbx import is really slow when you import for example 2000 or 3000 frames of animation
It's really really slow compared to Unity. It may take 20 t0 30 mn for example but with Unity it will take 30 sec.
So if i update and export the animation in IC it will take longtime for the update in UE.
2. the alembic importer has the same issue like above. 
3.Epic seems to have abandoned the realtime GI side, i've used the LPV system but it's old and not good enough. There 
is the VXGI but for the moment it's not natively integrated, you need to build a custom version of UE.  
I hope one day they will fix those issues.

https://www.ilema.artstation.com
Open for Professional collaboration as a lighting artist.

Hello, I am now getting my feet wet in Unity 2018.1.  I have used UE4 now for several months and am familiar with almost all of its processes.
I am very interested with the Raytracing Lightmapper Unity will later have, and to see what Unity could do with it in the near future.
UE4 and Unity are amazing at settings and backgrounds, I am interested to explore characters when it comes to importing from iClone and Daz.  
I like the new shader graph in Unity.  Very very similar to UE4.  I would say, if you get very used to Unity's shader graph, you will have little issue getting into UE4 as far as material set up.I am interested to follow this thread,
I'll share some info as well when it relates to Unity  

a really excellent job, in every way!
sincerely bravo

Ogier

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