So I’ve recently received a film grant to upgrade

Here’s what I’ve looked into and decided but I haven’t been able to figure out a few other things that I have to decide to move forward.


I’ve decided to buy two smart suit pros, and the plug in for them; I considered another Neuron pro but I don’t like the one I have... issues with the little things and never figured out how to get it to properly work with the wifi.


So here’s where I’m stuck on moving forward.

Iray or Unreal Engine 4 link.

I’ve been watching the shorts made with UE4 and I have to say, they look fantastic. So the link to me is a great idea. That said... I’ve been playing with unreal engine and for the life of me I can’t figure out how to make things look photo real or less like a video game. I’ve been watching you tube videos like crazy. Doesn’t mean I won’t figure it out, just at the moment I’m “how though? How!!?”

Option two... I have the iray render, but right now I’m in the middle of a 4 minute short at 150 iterations... and it’s doing about 1000 frames in 24 hours. I need to pump that up to 1000 iterations so it looks reasonable up on a big screen. But that’s going to cost buying some more GPUs on a small render farm to have things finished in a reasonable amount of time. (I really do love the iray look, but this route seems like a waist if I can figure out the unreal engine)

Or option three... which is an unknown at the moment. There’s hint that some up dates are coming with iclone... ie, the picture with the good looking face. Is that something that’s bringing realism? Should I just wait, and for how long?

Basically I’m looking for other people’s thoughts... I don’t want to waist money on the worse option... mostly because I don’t want to go back to the grant people and go “boy did I mess that up.”

If you dont want to waste time I would go with Unreal. Unreal can render 30 seconds movie under a minute. While Iray can take an hour.

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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

Yes, UE4 is the best option for me too, Iray is good to render some great pics but for movies, forget it. Since the release, I've seen no complete movie rendered with Iray and Iclone, even one, there's tons of pictures but no movie. Just maybe because of too much time asked for it ?


     

I think that’s what I’m going to do, use unreal engine for a few shorts and use them to upgrade down the line. Thankyou

You have to look at the big picture as well. Will you haVe particle fx in your film? If so then iray is out. Unreal has its own particle effects system to work with. The biggest deal breaker is render speed. That’s the allure of unreal for rendering. But yes, there is a learning curve. A large one at that. IMHO, it’s well worth it.

My "NEWEST" Latest  Movie Made With Amaaaazing iClone


—> High Noon”ish” in Narrow Valley<—

I started an animation project in Iray, but there were a number of problems, the main one being that trees were rendered inconsistently. There is also a bug on the Iray side with texture allocation. Otherwise I would have had a short movie to show. 

I regret that it didn't work out,because I do like the look I can achieve with Iray. 

I'm a long-time user of iClone and have seen steady improvements in the native renderer (ultra-realism is not my goal) and the announced improvements look promising. 

For Unreal to be practical for me, it would need to be easy to export my scenes as I build them up in iClone in addition to my characters. It would mean the extra cost of export licenses, obviously.

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I fully agree with animagic.

Since i like Iray a lot, i am using it for still renders but there is not much point in doing animations with it.
Some user on this forum has the heaviest rig i am aware of, and even he says that Iray animation makes no sense.

My approach is to get the best out of native iClone, while having the advantage of doing eye-candy stills.
Of course, the current limitations are obvious.

My dream would be 'Realtime Iray with iClone effects'.
Or a certain new engine, whatever it is based on.

UE4 on the other hand is not an option for me right now (even though it looks amazing).
I simply don't have the time to learn and the money to invest into another platform.

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“Time” is an important aspect there. It isn’t as simple as plug n play to Unreal. There is a distinct learning curve for sure. The new advances in upcoming iclone rendering do look promising for sure. It would be awesome if we could come closer to Unreal type renders while keeping everything still in iclone. The jump from 5 to 6 with PBR was staggering. Would love to see another big jump closer to Unreal with real-time, or at least close to real-time rendering.

My "NEWEST" Latest  Movie Made With Amaaaazing iClone


—> High Noon”ish” in Narrow Valley<—

Reallusion is supposed to roll out a new material system this quarter. If the new material system includes subsurface scattering that can be rendered in the native render, there might be another option for you.

Looking at the images you displayed, the architectural The architectural assets appear crisp. The problem I have with current systems from Daz to blender to unity to iCloud is that human skin does not look as good as everything else in the scene. Therefore I have to dial back on the realism of the architecture and everything else in the same beside humans, or have a completely miss matched scene , With the characters looking like they’re from a cartoon.

Iran renders astonishing human skin. From my experience, SSS and dual lobe speculation weight are essential in delivering realism. If IClone delivers SSS, improved facial geometry and better hair, you might obtain what you are looking for.

Nathan