Thank you for the clarification.

I rendered one of my projects at 24 FPS from iClone. As it is not too long, I will try to do the 60 FPS rendering and then sample down to 24 FPS. I have Vegas Pro, so that should be OK.

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Hi Job, Yes I'm using Vegas, though Mark (Illusion lab) has kindly offered advice regarding quality Motion Blur using Fusion. But I did find a reasonably successful way to achieve a *good* 24fps result (actually I used 23.976) with Vegas. This is the way I go about it:

* Render your animation out of iClone at 60fps at 3840 x 1620 - for quality (I use PNG sequence) (2.37:1 aspect ratio - obviously you could use 3840 x 2160 or whatever).
* Import the PNG sequence into a Vegas timeline ('clip properties' set to 60fps and 'project properties' set to 23.976 fps)
* Render out a new PNG sequence with 'ReSample' switched ON
* Re-import this resampled sequence & place it DIRECTLY BENEATH the original sequence on the timeline (be frame accurate). Apply an "Ignite Motion Blur' to this new clip's 'Media FX' (accessed by right-clicking on the clip). (Use '''default settings" but increase camera shutter from 180 to 240 degrees)
* Now lower the top track's opacity to 25% (this allows for 75% of the lower track to mix through). (Opacity adjustment obtained by dragging the 'line' on the actual clip).
* Now TURN OFF the 'ReSampling'.
* Render out as PNG (or to an intermediate codec according to your needs).

The idea behind a 25% strength mix of the original PNG is to (subjectively) give a little more 'clarity' to the end result, which still has 75% of Motion Blur.
I find this a satisfactory result, the other (main) benefit being that Vegas does a good job of converting to 23.976 fps BECAUSE it is working with the full 60 fps as a starting point - and this makes all the difference. There's certainly 'other' and possibly 'better' ways of achieving a smooth result, but this seems to work OK. (it will work whether you're targetting either 23.976 or 24 fps)....

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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

@Sonic7 - Wow, what a lot of commotion just to get a satisfactory (to you) 24 fps output.

As was mentioned earlier, this could all be cleaned up if iClone's "internal" rendering clock was moved up from 60fps to 120fps (since 120/5=24, so no 2:3 pull-down and skipping or averaging of frames required).

A person could dream that iClone was written so nicely and cleanly that it's merely a simple variable setting in the code that adjusts that internal clock.  Surely they wouldn't have hardcoded that value pervasively throughout the code, would they?  (Yeah, my confidence in that statement approximates zero.)  With the improvement in CPU and especially GPU power in the last 10 years, it sure would be nice to have the option of increasing that internal clock.  If I write it up in Feedback Tracker, I'll report back here.

P.S.
I remember my Pinnacle Studio NLE going through a lot of pain with frame rates.  After a few minutes, the difference between 30fps and 29.97fps starts to become a real factor, especially when dealing with multiple video input streams with different frame rates, and keeping the audio in sync.  But it can be (and was) solved.  I think I'd be okay with iClone sticking with 30.00fps, and then if needed, I could use an NLE to make it 29.97fps, since I doubt a lot of our work will find its way to broadcast television.

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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

Hi Dennis ... Yes it IS a lot of (needless) effort to get 23.976 or 24 fps. (I use 23.976 to match camera footage). Funny you should mention 120fps - I'd 'played' with that for the very reason you mentioned - a perfect division of 24 by a factor of 5 hence no "invented" frames. But of course this proved more protracted for me, so I settled on iClone's top speed of 60. My recent research informed me that the *most universal* frame rate is 23.976 - offering the most flexibility for delivery (both TV and Cinema) - so I went with it. I would've preferred a straight 24 though. But yeah - as you say, would be nice if a *neat* solution was available straight out of iClone ... And (of course) *Motion Blur* ?


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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

Absolutely no need to attempt to create 23.976 frames... it's a timecode rate not a 'frame rate'.  1 second of time is represented by 24 frames regardless if the timecode is 23.976 or 24.  When you render frame sequences in iClone or any 3D software you are creating 24 bitmaps to be played in sequence - the "speed" at which they playback is determined by the master clock of the the "timeline".  Your camera footage will be playing back at 23.976, and in order to maintain sound sync your timeline must be at 23.976.  So the frame sequences you create in iClone will effectively be "slowed down" to conform to 23.976 by the timeline.

As for your 60fps to 24fps adventures, there is no 'ai magic' going on... the software is just "binning" 36 frames - it's a matter of "which" 36 frames are binned... different compositors choose different 'patterns'.

First of all thanks for the help and the compliments on my project, thanks! I reviewed 4u2ges youtube video and couldn't really see much but that is youtube's horrible compression, but when i reviewed the video file I was kind of in shock almost no stutter (there is a little bit almost not noticeable, but it has to do with animation curve, i guess that could be fine tuned with the curve editor plugin which i don't have because i'm broke at the moment). So i fired up my computer and opened an old render at 30 fps and it was smooth...wtf i thought to myself, what is different this time? And the answer is simple, 95% of the time i watch the rendered videos it was after rendering said videos, of course if you have iclone open and have GI on viewport turned on any video will stutter because the gpu is busy, and the stutter obviously is different everytime you play it because again the gpu is busy. So obviously if you close iclone the gpu will have all its processing power again and everything should be smooth again no variable stutter and here is the big but for me: variable stutter is gone but there is a stutter that is not variable, happens always in the same spots. So it made me think the problem was how iclone dropped frames, it is not. So why didn't i get stutter today? I DIDN'T LAUNCH Iclone. For some reason that could be related to iclone or not (maybe something remains in memory?) after using iclone or rendering in iclone something happens in my system that $%&@!  up my video playback. So problem semisolved, render and reboot. Thanks for the help!

Also 4u2ges helped me prove that there is an issue that is not related to my system. Tree shadows disappear, which i already placed a feedback tracker issue. Watch the video that 4u2ges uploaded or mine and watch the tree shadows on the lower left at second 30 by second 32 or 33 they are gone for no reason, I noticed this issue before i placed all the particles, so it isn't popcornfx.


Anyways, thanks for the help everyone!

I had forgotten about that, but I remember now that I got terrible results from Vegas when rendering my image sequences to MP4, and that also occurred with iClone open and taking up part of the GPU. So that is indeed advice to remember.

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@Raxel_67
I am glad you figure it out.

And the answer is simple, 95% of the time i watch the rendered videos it was after rendering said videos, of course if you have iclone open and have GI on viewport turned on any video will stutter because the gpu is busy, and the stutter obviously is different everytime you play it because again the gpu is busy.

Hopefully this might get fixed in an upcoming release, otherwise switching to Quick/Minimal mode might also help.

In regards to trees shadows. I saw that, but I forgot to mention. To fix it, switch LOD off in Preferences. Shadows disappear because trees do. There is something weird between trees and LOD.
Trees would disappear sometimes, when they are not in the camera plane, even if they are relatively close to the camera.
They did not think, that depending on a light source the shadows would still be in the camera view. So there you go, just switch LOD off and and you should get it fixed.
But watch it, once you switch to any preset view (High, Medium, etc), LOD would automatically be switched back ON.

Edit: It did not fix it. While trees/shadows are in place now in the viewport (after switching LOD OFF), the render still causes those trees disappear (JapaneseMaples at the hill).

Yes indeed it isn't LOD, love it on games but i dont really see the need for it in iclone, after all the goal is quality not 60 fps performance so i always have it disabled. It has been assigned in the feedback tracker so i asume it has been aknlowledged as a bug

@Mark: ....... Absolutely no need to attempt to create 23.976 frames... it's a timecode rate not a 'frame rate' .........

Maybe I still don't fully understand - I thought it was necessary to 'lock-in' (or define) a final frame rate during editing. If your "timeline", (say in Vegas), is set at 23.976 fps to *match* field camera footage (also filmed at 23.976), I'd assumed (rightly or wrongly) you would need to add iClone material that's also set to (or created as) 23.976 fps. (bitmaps per second). That is, 'the speed looks correct' when played at 23.976. That way everything is *matched* for editing (field camera footage and iClone scenes).
* Assumption 2. That being 'near enough' to 24 fps it could simply be cranked to (viewed at) 24 fps with hardly any noticeable audio pitch change. (like *printing* the video onto physical film). And that *if* it were later needed, it could also undergo conversion to 29.97 fps.

Also: I'm still thinking along the lines that 60 bitmaps per each second are *needed* out of iClone for use in Vegas. Those 60 *finer* intervals of time seem to be *key* to Vegas creating the smooth 23.976 or 24 fps that iClone can't create by itself ...

I could very well be wrong, and I'd welcome any correction to my thinking on this ...

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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