I'm interested in doing animations with iray, and I read that iclone 7 will incorporate it very soon for animation.

Will I need the separate plug in, and should I purchase it now to save money? Or will it become redundant when the ic7 is updated?

Also I'm curious if anyone has an idea about the card specs required. I have a 1080 (non ti) card, 8g. Will that be enough? 

I worry somewhat that iclone is getting fairly bloatware-ish and without massive expenditures for mocap, cards, etc. seems to be slowly pricing out the individual artist in favor of
larger companies and animation teams.

It will be a separate plugin, although it is the same as for CC3, so if you have that already then you don't need to purchase it again.

I wouldn't buy it at the moment, but wait till experience reports have come in from those that already have Iray for CC. It will work with a 1080, but it will not be fast. Iray can make use of multiple GPUs, so the more you can throw at it the better.

My advice is to wait, also because the big question is how the interfacing between iClone and Iray will be implemented. It was very inefficient for the previous external renderer for iClone (Indigo), which madethat one unsuitable for animation. Some will say Iray is not suitable either (too slow), but we will see.

You will probably encounter some strong opinions about this...

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I will support and confirm what Animagic said.

- Since the "pre-order sale price" is past, there is no advantage to bying the plug-in now vs. waiting.  Unless you want to play with it in CC3, you might as well wait.

- It is ONE PURCHASE for the plug-in, which includes both CC3 and iClone.  The iClone half is expected in mid-to-late December.

- Render times are going to be beastly.  That's the nature of ray tracing.  Render times could range from 30 seconds (highly unlikely) to 10 minutes or more per frame, depending on the scene, the resolution, and the quality you desire (the longer you render, the cleaner the results).  If you render at 2 minutes per frame, it will take 60 hours to render a 1-minute at a 30fps frame rate.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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