Dear Community!

I have just started in animations with iClone 7, Character Creator 3 and 3DXchange. I have to ask, how to get started with all this, any tips tricks? And how to come up with ideas?

So far I have been learning the basic and some advanced tutorials from Reallusion and learned so much in a short time, but no tutorials even the Master Class shows you exactly how to, for example, make a complete project step by step on how to make a "Toy Story" movie. My dream is to someday manage to create something similar:-)

I just have to learn from all of you out there already, but now I feel "lost" in the big jungle of animation. Should I buy content packs, Kinect Cameras, Mocap Suits, Facial Animation with iPhone X, or should I not. Not so easy to know what to start with.....Any advice from you would be greatly appreciated to point me on the right path.-)

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Best regards
Albin
(AlbinosGambit)

don't try to learn it all in one sitting,  pick simple goals as projects to learn.  -   do things that give you a tour of the different features the software offers ..
ie -  do a project that's just about lighting ......once done,  do a project that just covers texturing,   then another project for just keyframing.  and so on...

as with any software,  iclone has it's quirks,  doing small focused projects allows you to become familiar with the limitations in bite sized lessons, which in the end will give you a bigger advantage  than discovering that not everything always works exactly as the instructions say. 

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Hi...

If you are new to iClone then it is wise to start with the "Basic" and "Beginners" series of tutorials first. Each tutorial covers a different feature of iClone and should help you get started.

For iClone 7 specifically, check out the "Basics" section below.

https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/tutorial.html

And it's also worth checking out some of the iClone 6 "Beginners" tutorials below as most of this information is still relevant to iClone 7 as well.

https://www.reallusion.com/iclone6/iclone_training.aspx


                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

Hi.

I appreciate the advice given.

Albin

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WIN 10, COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE 500H, MSI GAMING PRO CARBON X470 RGB, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GAMING X - 4GB GDDR5 RAM GPU, Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz 16GB RAM, SSD M.2 Corsair Force Series MP510 480 GB, SEAGATE BARRACUDA 3.5 HDD 4 TB.

Best regards
Albin
(AlbinosGambit)

Hi again!

So, this was a piece of very good advice and that I have been trying to follow so far.
Any other good piece of advice? 

One thing I feel I struggle very much with is the actual animation of humans to make them look realistic with all their motions. Using the puppet tool is so hard to master, and I have tried for so many countless hours, I just can't get it right, but practice makes perfect, right.

I hope someday would be able to produce something like a Toy Story movie, I just loved those movies when they first came out.

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WIN 10, COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE 500H, MSI GAMING PRO CARBON X470 RGB, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GAMING X - 4GB GDDR5 RAM GPU, Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz 16GB RAM, SSD M.2 Corsair Force Series MP510 480 GB, SEAGATE BARRACUDA 3.5 HDD 4 TB.

Best regards
Albin
(AlbinosGambit)

Yeah you are better off learning to crawl before learning to walk.  I'd suggest getting the fundamentals down first, then practice practice practice.  I would also suggest not wasting time on 3dxchange.  With character creator 3, i dont think its going to be around much longer.  I could be wrong but, you never know.  If it isnt depreciated then that should be something to learn later-later.   



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Hi.

Thanks again for taking the time to give some advice to a noob, I really appreciate this.

I am now trying to learn basic camera usage by first watching this:


Or maybe you have a suggestion for another and better tutorial?

A friend of mine suggested to start doing this:

make a scene of a street with buildings on each side, place a character at the far end of the street and make him walk to the other end, but we will use 3 cameras to get different angles of the animation.

The cameras will be:

1 High above looking down at the whole scene

2.Camera in front of the character tracking him as he walks (using a Dummy object to ensure a smooth track)

3 The camera behind him looking over his shoulder.

We will then use the “Switcher” to select what Camera view to use at what point in the animation to get the final result

I am not sure what the switcher is and how this works, maybe you could help?

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WIN 10, COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE 500H, MSI GAMING PRO CARBON X470 RGB, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GAMING X - 4GB GDDR5 RAM GPU, Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz 16GB RAM, SSD M.2 Corsair Force Series MP510 480 GB, SEAGATE BARRACUDA 3.5 HDD 4 TB.

Best regards
Albin
(AlbinosGambit)

Personally I think thats a good tutorial.  However I feel you may be jumping the gun again.  Dont load a scene, start with one character and learn the fundamentals with only the character.  That way you arent distracted with everything in an entire scene.  

The "Switcher" is a transition.  If you have multiple cameras it switches between them.  



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It really depends on what software you already know - do you know adobe products?

If you know adobe after effects etc you will find Iclone very difficult to use, as it just doesn’t work the same way. There are lots and lots of hidden things that have no explanation in the interface - you can’t just jump in and start using Iclone, as I found the hard way! :)

The biggest thing that helped me was when I google Iclone 4 and 5 and 6. It really has been a “labor of love” for the product developers, and they have done an amazing job! But the way it’s been developed has been that they added feature on top of feature on top of feature. So when you start fresh, it doesn’t make much sense. Lol.

Also, most people on this forum already know the software, so (no offense to anyone!!) don’t seem to understand how counter intuitive it all is.

So anyway I would suggest, as well as tutorials etc, that you go through the manual and make a big list of all the things you don’t understand. The manual is written really by people who already understand Iclone, so it doesn’t help much I’m afraid. But it’s good to make a list of things to learn!!

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