Hi all,

I'm new to Iclone and Reallusion (haven't purchased yet)  so thought the best place to start would be here. 

I'm looking at bring my characters to live in real time live streams on my YouTube channel. At the moment I've been using mo-cap data and rendering using Maya but this is time consuming and obviously isn't real time. So I'm thinking that using something like Nueron perception with Iclone and it's facial capture would be a good way to achieve my goal. However I have some questions.


1: A lot of people seem to be using Iclone along with UE4 to achieve real time rendering. I don't mind doing this but it just seems like another piece of software I have to learn and that can possibly go wrong. What's the advantages of adding UE4 to the pipeline, is it simply for it's advanced rendering capabilities? I've seen some rendering from Iclone and it seems pretty good and supports things like HDR images so can I get away with just using Iclone to do my real time rendering?

2: I want to be able to comp my virtual characters into real environments. I'm going to use locked of cameras to keep things simple but can Iclone comp characters over live footage? Basically does it output an alpha?

3:  Looking through the store I've notice another cool package called Character creator. What's drawn me to this is the ability to animate facial expressions from Zbrush. Is this software easy to use and can it be then added to my mo-cap character using Iclone? 

4:  The facial mobcap in Iclone seems great but does it just work with blend shapes. Some of my characters are rigid bound as they're hard surface puppets. Can I just connect simple controls to move say the eyes, mouth and head? 

5: There seems to be a lot of options when it comes to packages. Can some recommend which set of packages they think I'll need given the above information?

I think that's all my main concerns at the moment. 

Thank you in advance.

Peter