Here's the thing. When I first read about Iray, I was excited because I genuinely like the Iray renderer, but upon giving the matter some thought, I'm a little hesitant about putting it in my shopping cart. 

I got into iClone because I wanted to do animation. Of course I want the best looking animation possible, but I realize there are some trade-offs, so when I make a purchase I try to keep in mind what can be gained. Faceware was an obvious advantage, and so were Speedtrees and so was Popcornfx. But what I am seeing at the moment makes me hesitant to make this purchase, strictly when it comes to animation. Iray doesn't seem to be compatible with PopcornFX at the moment, or won't be at launch. So when I saw that my heart kinda sank because animation without special effects is not going to work. 

You make these leaps forward with PopcornFX, and then it seems like you take a step backward. So I can say at the moment that I may purchase Iray at the time I purchase CC3 Pipeline, but I won't go trying to do much with it if it doesn't support the plugins that matter to me as an animator. It would make more sense to me to pursue adding SSS to the iClone Render Engine which already supports all of the features that animators are using. I'm all for choice but I don't see a value in Iray if it doesn't support the wonderful plugins you've given us thus far.

I'd be more inclined to make this purchase if there were definite plans to support the special effects plugin. So I'm curious to know if there are plans for Iray to support PopcornFX and the other special effects features of iClone.

First at all, I love PopcornFX and I also interesting in coding. PopcornFX it's design for real-time purpose, nothing else for non real-time render.
What I known about RL  they said "maybe" implant PopcornFX as Iray rendering at future, but I didn't see any point to do this.
Iray plugin is a toy, 50$ buck toy. Therefore, don't take so serious about it.

Just hope, more and more visual improvement at future, but not iray one.
If RL can co-operate with Blender, sure be win-win situation.


 

You really do a disservice to iRay as a serious tool by calling it a toy. I do agree with the OP, I would rather have seen the work spent on iRay put towards improving the real time engine, but I also imagine at some point iRay may effectively be the real time engine and this is just a toe dipping into a whole new rendering ocean. I wonder what three years of tech development in video cards might bring. If anything, PopcornFX should be seen as the stopgap toy/tool until a more powerful simulation engine is available, something that does Flip stuff, high quality smoke, fire, water, volumetrics, and probably rendered in iRay.  I personally will probably get used to rendering in Eevee or Unity maybe until then.

Regarding PopcornFX, I'd like to know if the plugin WILL get updated to work with the new, easier to use nodal 2.0 editor. Reallusion has a history of abandoning development on plugins once they are released. I'd like to see them stop that and start treating everything with much more care and honor the investment we users make in jumping aboard and supporting each new idea they try out. 

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My system: i7 3770 Gtx1060 6GB

Iray is not a toy. For those interested I would recommend to do your own research rather than rely on unsubstantiated forum comments. But since there seems to be no desire by some to have any serious discussion, I'll leave it at that.

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