Thanks, also, Animagic, for your help.

Without having looked at lip-sync/facial expressions in any of the characters either in DAZ Studio, Iclone or CC3 Pipeline export I can say that there is a definite workflow possible for CC3, DAZ and other figures to be exported to Carrara (as .fbx).

The lip-sync/facial expressions side of things is something I haven't gotten into.  I don't know what it would take to get them exported from CC3, I just haven't researched any of that.

Using CC3 Pipeline I can, at the export of .fbx stage, navigate to motions in my Iclone content libraries and incorporate them in the .fbx.   As you know, I can't preview how they work in CC3 apart from the first frame pose.  So arm or other adjustments would be slightly hit and miss - for me - because I don't have the latest Iclone.

I don't get a huge amount of 3d stuff done these days but I will certainly try to explore this workflow further.  I'm very happy to have bought CC3 Pipeline along with the Skins and Morphs add-on.  I'm hoping to make a few simple clothing meshes to try out.

In Carrara it is possible to use a third-party Hair and Clothes Draping program called VWD to get excellent cloth and hair physics effects.
In case you missed it (which I doubt, but anyway...) I did provide a video link in my post above to the CC3 female and DAZ females animated from CC3 Pipeline in Carrara.

I can add that, although I'm discussing these things on the DAZ Carrara forum and here, I've only used CC3 Pipeline a handful of times so far, so I'm not any Guru!

Briefly, because I need ti go shopping, but iClone has a Motion Plus option, which includes facial expressions besides motions. So that might be an option to explore. 

I will try later if that indeed reimports as FBX into 3DXchange.

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Time for another comment from me but thanks for all those posts people have made posts since my last one.
Trying to absorb the pros and cons of what has been said I am still confused by Iclone's various offerings.
I downloaded the trial but realised couldn't do much without learning so  I have been watching a lot of video to try and get a grasp on the software - this is time consuming so I think the trial will expire before I get to know much.
Therefore my advice to anyone considering buying is to watch a heap of videos THEN get the trial software.

Whilst I understand IC7 includes  a lot of motion clips I haven't been able to see examples where I can key-frame my own animation which presumably could be saved as a motion clip.  Video link anyone ?
So far I have to say I am not comfortable with the drab interface and haven't found options to customise it. [ Love Blenders option to resize fonts.] 
So, still do not know WHAT to buy though every corner I turn seems to lead to spending more money ! ha ha ! Now to return to watching tutorials.

I'm sure there is a video somewhere (there is also a manual! ), but saving a key-framed animation clip is quite simple:



After you have created your animation, open the timeline and drag your mouse in the Collect Clip track covering the part of the animation that you want to capture. (I believe the length of the resulting clip will be the project length, so to avoid that set your project length temporarily to the area you want to capture.)

Right-click the selection (shown in blue), and an option menu will open. For a motion, select Add Motion to Library. You will then be prompted where to save your motion.

If your animation includes facial animation, you would select Add MotionPlus to Library.

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Animagic Thanks for that info which I will keep in reserve.
My first effort at doing something was to import Daz G8 which failed spectacularly. I found a video explaining the process and it seems there are files which must first be installed into Daz Studio.
Danged if I can find these files to copy and paste. They are not where the video suggests. Does the 3dxchange Demo actually include the G8 extension ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EXDvs5uyyk&t=286s
I have run out of data so could not download the content of which there are 3or 4 gigs to come. Would the genesis extension likely be in that ?

Just been watching topic " buy out Daz" https://forum.reallusion.com/405610/Reallusion-Why-not-buy-out-Daz?PageIndex=2 
Bringing in Genesis is apparently not as simple as RI makes out OR should I now be using Character Creator 3 for that.
My confusion grows !!!!!!!

Bringing in almost any Gen figure is a piece of cake IF you use CC3 Pipeline.  You can do it with XChange, but I wouldn't bother nowadays.

Takes less than five minutes and looks tremendous.  Works with clothing, hair, accessories, etc.  I have brought in literally hundreds of avatars and thousands of pieces of clothing without a hitch.

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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

Animagic expressed an interest in any progress I made with bringing animated (.fbx) characters from CC3 Pipeline to Carrara for rendering.
Here is an example I made today using DAZ Genesis 2.

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Grimhilda, I think that looks very nice. I don't know what kind of renderer Carrara uses, but it has a nice quality.

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Thanks, Animagic, my work is generally poor because I mainly just try this and that but I was quite pleased with this.

I used just one prop - something called 'Hidden Grotto' which I bought a couple of years ago and only installed today!  I buy extremely few assets for one reason or another but on that occasion I bought about half a dozen things from Renderosity and this is the first one of them I've looked at.  I just didn't get round to them before! 

I used one bulb light and one spotlight (which had some ivy in front of it to cast a few shadows).  The background is a plane with a photo of trees in the mist which I took earlier this year.

The hair and clothing could (I believe) be given physics simulation with the VWD program for cloth and hair.  I use it in Poser but need to buy a plugin for Carrara.
So perhaps there is a viable workflow from CC3 Pipeline to Carrara rendering.

Some Carrara users render in Octane or in Luxrender, neither of which I know anything about.  Plugins are needed and I think Luxrender was updated recently.  I don't know whether the Carrara plugin is out of date now??