This entire update is throwing lots of confusion my way.
For “Custom Character Import” you need 3DXchange 7 PRO.
I originally purchased iClone 7 + iClone 7 3DXchange 7 Pipeline. Am I to assume that I would need to upgrade to 3DXchange PRO or was the version I purchased the PRO version?

I think I just worked out that 3DXChange Pipeline is superior to the PRO version.
Thanks

It's a bit confusing, but here's the dealio:

All iClone users will get a CC3 version for free.  It does not have a few features of the "Pipeline" or "Standalone" version.  This has nothing to do with owning XChange Pro of Pipeline -- that's a completely different program, and nothing about it is used for CC3.

The extra features of CC3 are primarily the ability to autoweight and edit importing clothing AND the critical ability to remesh a character/clothing.  Right now in CC2 you *can* import clothing but you must weight it yourself in an outside program.  More importantly, you can't edit the weighting of that once imported into CC (or subsequently, iClone).  This weighting is vitally important -- it's the difference between being able to use clothing or not (otherwise the avatar or other clothing will break through as the character moves).

If you never intend on using outside clothing (clothing which isn't bought direct from RL) then you don't *need* the paid version of CC3, but you'd be crazy not to get it, IMHO.  However, if you intend to you HAVE to have it (again, IMHO).  There's no two ways around it (well, an argument could be made that you can do what we can do now, which is to use CC2 and weight the clothing in an outside program, like Blender.  This is, in fact, what I do all the time.  But as good as I am at doing it even *I* will want the full CC3 version, and have ordered it).

I don't think almost anyone can afford to ignore the ability to remesh characters/clothing -- this will allow you to use very lightweight background characters (and, apparently, have LOD similar to what we have with Speedtrees, so that you can see details up close as well).  Unless your work is just with one or two characters at a time and you never forsee a need for more, you will want the paid version.

So -- just buy it.  That's my advice (and take advantage of the pre-order price.  All who do not will kick themselves down the road).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Fair enough, but the advertising has a graphic showing CC3 as an asset importer; the WIP2 page says CC3 will be for "all-over content import"; and the Edition Comparison page seems to indicate CC3 offers fully rigged character import capability via .OBJ and .FBX. These things suggest that 3CXchange will become unnecessary, and I also think I recall a webinar mention that 3DXchange would stop being a standalone program--as if maybe iClone and CC will become all you need. On the other hand, the bottom of the Edition Comparison page does indeed say you need 3DXchange to import characters such as DAZ characters into iClone.

So the roadmap for DAZ users is more murky than it should be. Whether CC3 offers a significant benefit for using DAZ characters or putting clothes on them, or no benefit at all, I'm hoping someone from Reallusion will spell that out in certain terms.

The current offer for CC3 is very attractive, but I don't want to jump and then find out that the upgrade doesn't actually do anything for me.

It has been stated here at least a few times by RL that there will be a version 8 of XChange -- so it is NOT leaving anytime soon, and will still be needed for importing assets.  Clothing is a completely different matter -- that WILL be coming in via CC3 (due to the auto weighting features) but that's nothing new -- we've been able to do that with CC2 for quite some time now and it still didn't obsolete XChange for the import of things like Daz characters or props or sets.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

In Character Creator 3 Pipeline you will be able to load any almost any item of clothing in OBJ format, and then use the automatic transfer skin weight options to make the clothing fully CC base compatible. The clothing can then be saved and applied to any CC character. The whole process will take just a few minutes. You also have the option to manually edit the weights if you wish to.


                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

This whole discussion sensibly has been focused on character import and clothing import/export.
But...

Could you imagine if this same power also made its way into 3DXchange!!!!?  :blink:
Having a texture map consolidator...for a prop!  Or an entire scene!!!!
My goodness, put aside game exporting optimization....as far as outside rendering would go, this would make things run very very quickly!!!!

 

Thank you. :)
TS

Thanks KT, pr-eordered. I knew I could rely on you to provide a detailed explanation.