What I would like to achieve and what is in my eyes the best workflow for games:
1: Only the head, the eyes, the eye lashes and their morphs as one fbx ( no body ) 1 material for head and eyes and 1 material for the lashes
2: The naked body with hidden faces removed as single fbx ( no head )
3: All the clothes and accessories merged into one single mesh with 1 material
4: The hair as seperate mesh with one material

A few things I noticed when you want to make use of the new tools and are trying to export the complete character at once (please correct me if I am wrong):
1: It is not possible to reduce the triangle count of the body mesh without combining it to the wearables.
2: It is not possible to combine meshes without reducing trianglecount
3: It is not possible to export the clothed character without the body
4: Every InstaLOD has its own baked texture set.

Right now I am a bit disapointed in the new InstaLOD/Remesher/MergeMaterial features. Combining materials without combining meshes makes no sense. You will still have a drawcall per mesh because they are not static and cant be batched. Generating LODs is in theory a nice feature but here it scratches only the surface. I would love to have the option to at least keep eyes and body seperate to make use of the faces morphs. The LODs I can generate are only usable for actors really far away. A switch from the LOD0 to LOD1 while the character is talking would be a nightmare. Also every LOD uses an own texture set wich is a lot of unnecessary disk space if you have many characters ( but i guess with automatic solution there is no other way).

So, in my eyes the best approach with CC3 is this workaround:
1: Reduce all the wearables with the object reduction tool ( 50%, 25%, 12,5%, 5% ) - building your own LODs really. You have much more controll being able to conform your wearables before exporting.

2: Export 4 fbx files (wich are just for your wearables) while merging the materials by type. Unfortunately each of these LODs will have to use different texture sets.

3: Backup your project and delete all wearables ( except for the shoes. see below why ). Then export the body using InstaLOD. I used these settings:


4: Unforntunately it is not possible to automatically delete the faces behind the clothes with this workflow. So you have to do that in your 3D application. Careful though... when deleting the wearables in CC3 the character might have a slightly different position because it has no shoes anymore... So just leave the shoes on while exporting and delete them later as well in max. If you have a character with short pants it will be a bit more of a challenge.


5: Rename your textures cause CC3 will export you some really messy folder structure with even worse naming conventions.
6: Set everything up in Unity. 3 LODs might be enough for most projects. I used the unreduced bodymesh for LOD0 and LOD1 so I can have one lower level where i still can have facial animations.


7. After this I recommend you use Mesh Baker Pro in Unity to combine all your clothes to one mesh per LOD. Since you merged the materials already via CC3 this step is super easy.
Check out this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqxLVS9m2jQ

If anyone has a better way please let me know!

Another thing I just noticed is that it would be amazing if it would be possible to export the CC3 collision meshes!

I just came across the Game Base Character wich I guess fixes some of my problems. As I understand it reduces the triangle count of the body. has a simplfied bone structure and merges the bodys materials. Again the lashes are included wich makes no sense. You dont want to have a transparent shader in game for the whole character. Anyways... i will check that out and maybe this works better for me.

Oh... and I know I am responding to my own posts here but this is also a good way for me to keep track of what I am doing

Please know how grateful I am for this topic, your thoughts and recommendations! I wouldn't have been anywhere without this. Thank you!

If you don't mind - how did you go about the animations? What do you record them with?
I have the following issue:
- I have my main character and LODs exported from CC3 and set up in Unity. 
- I open the character in iClone, record body and face animation and export it. 
- I use the Humanoid rig for it with copy from another avatar: the main one from CC3. 

This gives me an error, because somehow iClone renames the bone structure (for example 'root' to 'BoneRoot'). I tried renaming manually through Maya and in the FBX code, but that doesn't do the trick.
This means I can't retarget our animations to the CC3 character and LODs...

It would be awesome if someone can help

~Lindy

Thanks for letting me know that this topic helped you out.

Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing about workflow and setup. Our workflow looks something similar, also using the game base (that is quite nice, although in my opinion some useless polys like at the fingernails). It would also help if we don't have to manually remove the hidden body polys...

'Copy from another Avatar' should and has worked for us, but only when every single bone and blend shape share the same name. The problem is: every external software that you need to record animation (even iClone) renames all these. This means the CC3 exports can't copy the Avatar from the animation FBX. But you are right, the messy option of every FBX with its own Avatar does work. 
I can't find any documentation or tutorial about how Reallusion has set things up in Unity anyway.

Our setup records directly in iClone:
- Face mocap: a generic high quality webcam
- Body animation: iClone library clips that we customized
We export that FBX animation clip (which includes both face and body keyframes) and import it in Unity, where we combine it with the audio clip in Timeline. 

For body motion capture I highly recommend the HTC Vive with 8 sensors for precise movement and little cleanup. For more generic and zoomed out stuff Rokoko also does the trick.
The best of luck to you

Interesting.

Thank you for your feedback. I will pass this to the Character Creator team to review.

Please do continue to share your experiences using CC3 here, but do try to report any issues you have found in the Feedback Tracker. Thank you.


                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

I hope this gets solved. I still havent come up with a solution....

https://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/Bones-get-named-differently-when-exporting-from-IClone-or-CC3

I finally found a workaround!

Check this: You can embedd motion files created in IClone in your FBX export from CC3. Since all the LODs have the same (incorrect) bone naming its possible to use an avatar ( skeleton ) from LOD0 on all the other LODs.



It is very important that you follow these steps. Unity doesnt fu**k around...:


1: Export your meshes ( with your desired settings )



2: Export your animation ( add all in one file )




3: Set up the Avatar in Unity ( from the animation fbx )
This will and has to be the main skeleton you use for all other LODs. Dont mess around with the "Optimize for Game" function. I couldnt get it to work. If you can please let me know.
I recommend checking the root transform as well and its possible to compress your animation if you like.


4: Create Animation Controller & place your animations ( only once )
You have to use this controller on all your LODs. Animations can be used from inside the fbx or can be extracted via Ctrl D. 



5: Setup the LODs fbx files
Use the existing Avatar from the animation fbx file



6: Add Components to your LODs
Select all LODs in the hirarchy and add the Animator Component. Then select the Avatar from the "animation fbx" and the previously created Animation Controller.