I have been using Iclone for the past 5 years. I started with Iclone 5.2
My attraction to Iclone is the simplicity.
Someone laughed at me on Instagram that I am using a COPY and PASTE Program because I can't make my own motions.
I need to rely on pre-made motions and the rest.
Truth be said, I used to call myself an animator, but what is an animator if he does not know what the 12 principles of animation and apply them?
Then ICLONE came with Curve Editor. I was excited about it, not because I know how to use it, but because  I have read about the importance of curve editing for a real professional animator.
There are many motion clips in the market including Mixamo library, but they are not enough for a customized job.
I want to make my own unique motions like a real professional.
I get irritated when I see iclone videos on Youtube. I see same motions, same character, same clothing.
So what am I saying?
How can I make my own professional Character animation using the Character Editing and  Curve Editor?
I want to know how to move from Step to spline professionally.
I hope I am making sense to someone.

The funny thing is, I'm working to move in the opposite direction.  I tend to do too much manual keyframe animation, which is very tedious, and want to get more productive by leveraging pre-defined motions more often.

You can use "Edit Motion Layer" to move/rotate any joint on a character, but it's very tricky to make a natural motion that way.  The Curve Editor helps greatly to smooth out and correct those manual keyframes.  On the other hand, you can also take a pre-generated motion and modify it to make it unique, and still use the Curve Editor to help refine it.  That's what I want to do more often, since 80-95% of the animation will have already been done for me, saving many hours of work.

Another possible solution for you is motion capture, using something like the Perception Neuron suit.  Then you can dance, jump, duck, kick, and make custom motions to your heart's content.  I don't do that because I don't do enough "real" animation to justify the cost, but it's a fantastic option and I'm jealous of the people who have that in their toolkit.

The bottom line is the finished product, not how you made it.  A "real" professional animator needs to be productive.  People that do architectural visualization renderings often start by thinking they need to model everything in the room, but that's a mistake.  A professional arch vis person recognizes the value of buying assets (tables, lamps, vases, books, fruit, faucets) and using them to create a beautiful rendering in weeks rather than months or years.  So apply the same logic to your animation.  There is no shame is using something pre-defined; it's smart, as long as the end result is good.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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My idea is to use motions clips as much as possible. As they often got natural motions and are very easy to adjust and make something totally different compared to the original motion of the clip. And you can combine motion clips to get an never ending stream of unique motions. Key-framing is hard to get natural in the end. Why not start with something natural and then just adjust it to create a unique animation?

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iClone 7, 3DXchange 7 Pipeline, CC3 Pipeline, CT8 Pipeline, Iray, Live Face, iPhone Xr, Win 10, i9 9900K ~5GHz, Nvidia RTX 2080 8GB, 16GB Ram, M.2 SSD

And it's really simple to avoid "same characters, same clothing" at Iclone, you can make your changements at CC3, change your cloths if you want


     

Regarding motions, I've always found the puppeteering abilities to be a good middle ground between keyframing and motion capture for unique motions.  The motion puppet allows you to tweek characteristics of ready made motions, re-time the sequence via your mouse motions and mask out body parts (particularly helpful for motions from a seated position) while the direct puppet is pretty good for adding lifelike movements to individual body parts (which can be done after setting a pose) again using mouse motions.  Its definitely an often used tool in my toolbox.

Thank you. I tend to undermine the power of Iclone.
Because, it is so simple I want Iclone to do all the work for me.
Thanks for the comment

Late to the party but this is an interesting discussion. I would just like to add that you have to ask yourself what your end goal is. To me, it sounds like you want to make your own animations. If that's the case, then create your own from scratch using the program!

However, if your end goal is to be a storyteller, or film creator - then you are essentially the animator, editor, visual effects guy, director, producer, screenplay writer, etc. You are all of it. Unless you have a team of people helping you, which let's face it - most of us don't.

For me, I want to produce animated films in the highest quality that I can achieve. My goal is to produce each film with better quality than the one before it. I have purchased, and use a lot of motions (which by the way, still require a lot of tweaking for any scene they are used in) because it saves me time. Instead of creating a motion from scratch, I tweak existing motions. That is honestly what really turned me on to IClone in the first place. I am not a great animator, but I can tweak the hell out of things pretty well.

It already takes a TON of time to make something somewhat professional, and if you add in animating from scratch into that mix - you'll never finish or at the very least spend a lot more time on each project.

So find out what your goal is, and focus on that. Take whatever short cuts you can for the other things. Most importantly, enjoy the journey!

IMDB: James Muia
Aviticus Dragon on YouTube

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