There has been a demonstration of a video from Unity called Adam Episode 2 and I do believe it really demonstrates the high capabilities of applications like Unity.
I have tried using Unity as a replacement from iClone a long time ago but I ended up giving up on it because I found it too difficult for myself. I came back to iClone because for me I find it much easier.
Although I have never tried doing anything of high level yet and now I am wondering if iClone really is too difficult to be able to create videos that look like that. 
All my years with iclone have been focussing mostly on learning its abilities as well as creating models but I have seen plenty of other peoples videos that look great to me and I have made plenty of video's for personal enjoyment although I never worried about them being high level. Just high enough for me to enjoy watching them in order to save time.
Anyway I am going to try doing something similar to that Adam video within iClone to see for myself how difficult it is to do something of that level.
I shall soon find out if it is capable and more importantly, am I capable.

Anyway enough of that. 
I finally got iClone 7.3 and CC3 working well on my computer late this afternoon and here is my fist attempt at this video. It took me a whole 4 hours to throw this together and I found it really easy. Its certainly not to the level I want to try and achieve yet though.
For one thing I really haven't used popcorn particles effects much until I started this so I have some learning and experimenting to do in order to get the fires something like as good as they are in the other video. I believe I will be able to achieving everything else because they are similar to things I have already done in iClone, just not to that level of characters. So particles is what I am focussing on most of all for now. The whole lot of this video at the moment is only using 1.6 GB of my 11.1GB video memory available so I believe I will be able to increase the number of robots in the scene considerably in future efforts of this video. Oh and the music is me playing my guitar. Something strange happened with how Audacity recorded it but I though it kind of fits robots ???? anyway I just left it as it sounds for now.








i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Hi Delerna ,

I suggest to see how Adam episode one was made. It's really not a drag'n'drop process 
I can assure you you can make with Iclone really descent render but rarely with only 3 lights and a set 
Good lighting  need some works with lot of lights , a good knowledge of GI , IBL , etc....
The only missing feature for me in Iclone is : Volumetric lights. This features gives artistic added value to the scene.
But for now I get all I need to build very cool scene.
For character animation part , Iclone is wayyyyy farther than the other 

Nearly bed time for me but had a quick look at that video. Yes I will check it out further for methods etc. Thanks.
At the moment I need to focus on popcorn but I am sure Im going to pick it up pretty quick. It didn't take much effort to do what I did in this first shot.
I just threw them together  to see what would happen so didn't really try to make a realistic fire yet. I need to do more experimenting to get ideas how to mix them to achive it.
Then I will be working on the robots to make them look better and then the scenery. As I'm doing all this I will be thinking about storylines I might use. Not doing it exactly like Unitie's.
Just looking at it as a guide for where I might go....or might not go


Oh yes, and you are another person who I have seen do some good stuff


i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

iClone has always been architected towards a SINGLE USER making a movie.  A lot of the features needed for a TEAM to work effective have not been there.  With Alembic import and other features, this might be slowly changing.

How many people worked on the Adam video?  Two?  Three?  Probbaly more like a dozen, each specializing on script, character design, facial animation, body animation, lighting, camera work, editing, sound, directing, wardrobe...  Even if you spend a year on a project, it's difficult for a one-man shop to compete with a team of specialists.

I'm not saying iClone is perfect.  iClone's renderer is long overdue for an overhaul.  But the biggest shortcoming, speaking from personal experience, is most often the individual, not the software.  To be clear, I mean no offense to anyone here.  Some people do very good work.  But it's simply not practical for one person to compete with an entire production crew.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

lol .... Delerna  ... the 'iClonians' are taking over !!!!  but wait .....no, - not all ... we have a casualty --- oh dear - he (she, it) never made it !!! ....lol 
Well let none of us be that casualty !!!
(nice bit of guitar there by the way...)

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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

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
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Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

Autodidact >>>> "Unity is  a real time 'playback' engine, giving you  the ability to make changes to lighting and camera angles WITHOUT re- rendering to see your changes. "
Exactly .... that's creative freedom ....

.... "Camera & ligting editing at final quality happening in front of you more like a Live action movie director"
Again .... that's creative freedom ....

@mtakerkart ... Yes - that guy's pretty amazing; it's only the UI of Unity that's a bit of a turn off, but I guess once you knew your way round and where everything's hidden - you'd be able to create extremely quickly ...
And like you say - with volumetric lights (and also better DOF ) - you could almost bypass a compositor or editor ---- This is why iClone has so much potential to improve....
iClone's the leader in animation - if only it was serious about rendering - (even, as others have said, a proper render 'plugin') ....

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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

Iclone rarely makes big updates to it's renderer.
For almost 10 years VFX and DOF were subpar for quality productions. PBR was such a welcome addition, then the DOF fixes and PopcornFX, along with the F Curve editor is what allowed me to pick this up again as a pro.
HOWEVER in terms of visual quality it'll always lag behind Unity and Unreal. Their markets demand higher visual quality and simply REQUIRE greater efficiency. I remember when I first watched Adam I thought "There isn't enough VRAM on earth for Iclone to have a scene like this."

On the other hand Iclone is very much designed for the solo artist. Adam wasn't a solo project (not by a long shot) and required WAAAY more technical know how than anything I clone does. Iclone (despite it's faults) is beautifully designed in that it makes things as easy as possible for the solo artist so you don't have to worry about the technical as much.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, for 95% of Icloners the technical capabilities of this program aren't the limiting factor. Most Icloners don't know how to frame a shot, what makes a good edit, what makes an effective camera movement, what makes good character animation (the list goes on and on). Without having a basic grasp of these things, technical power doesn't mean anything.

Edit: PS for those wondering how many people made that episode, just watch the end credits. Lots of names, all highly skilled in their specific areas. The first Adam film took a team of 8 people 6 months to make.This is the real reason Iclone doesn't have its own Adam equivalent. Not so much because of it's renderer.

This is an interesting experiment.   Thanks, but...

  But the results are a pale imitation of the original.     It looks like a typical iclone production.   As some one said,  like
a ten year old game.

beyond the Renderer,  what issues could be addressed?  

THE LIGHTING.  -          I recently posted, asking if their WERE LIGHTING HELPERS. for iclone?     Vendor created, after market Tools such as the ones available for REND, OR DAZ.

The general reaction I got was,  that I was a clueless newb,  who didn't know what he was doing.   Ie;   Iclone pros / veterans are whizzes with the stock tools.  No specific tools would be needed or offered.

Yet,  here we see an Iclone " pro" / vendor with the need for such lighting tools.

@Dr. Nemesis - I think your avatar would look awesome wearing a Viiking helmet.  You and I are certainly on the same wavelength today.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD