I thought Iray should be my next purchase but have seen some negative posts when it comes to animation.
Be nice to have a broad picture from as many users as possible on their experience,tips or advice[ And yes I have seen all the tutorials ]

If the replies could include details like  - Length of scene in seconds, number of frames and FPS, output size eg 1280x720 ,any particular Iray settings and TIME TO RENDER  the scene
or any other factors to help us understand whether Iray is a viable 'render option' for animation.
Machine specs are probably relevant too. 

Thanks look forward to some interesting posts.
PS Curve editor might be a better way to spend my money just now!   
 

https://forum.reallusion.com/424798/Simple-Animation-using-iRay

I did a quick test a while ago to simply show this. Although the video did not require such high settings it was to just to show people how long with my hardware and setup.
Hope it helps. As a side note, this same animation exports in Blender EEVEE in about 30 seconds.

Bluey Creative in the Marketplace

I would say don’t bother if it’s animation you want. Just to render still it takes a little time. Just ignore that one still that took a minute or so to render will take that time times 30 for one second of animation. It’s not practical at all for animation. For stills it’s cool though.

My "NEWEST" Latest  Movie Made With Amaaaazing iClone


—> High Noon”ish” in Narrow Valley<—

Better wait for iClone 8. But in any case, anyone considering rendering short animations with Iray, read further:

Regarding hardware, when it comes to Iray render speed, nothing else matter that much, other than *Compute* speed of your GPU and the number of them.
Compare various options here: https://render.otoy.com/octanebench/results.php

The next important parameter is VRAM. And it is relevant to the density of your scene. For overly dense scenes with hi-res texture, consider setting custom Max Texture Size and Compression in Preferences.
In case of multiple GPUs, the VRAM is not combined, because scene is loaded into each GPU VRAM separately.

I personally have a pair of 1080TI (11GB) and here is some render specs I did a while ago: https://forum.reallusion.com/404350/Moonshine-Theater-UFO-Abduction-Iray

Quick guidance for rendering animation in case you buy it:
Optimal number of samples is between 200 - 400
Always use Denoiser. Though Denoiser in some cases might produce motion artifacts on some texture, in which case increasing samples would require.
Always use Nominal Luminance filter. It does help killing "firefly" artifacts faster. Experiment with best possible value.
You want to use Photoreal mode. Interactive mode does not render emissive objects and produces a lot more motion artifacts.
Test a lot. Render various frames from animation. When found optimal settings do the final test animation render by setting frame rate to 1. That would fairly quickly render entire animation for frames review purpose.
Consider rendering to PNG with lower resolution and then upscale images with Topaz Gigapixel AI. In most cases it does produce satisfactory results.

Better wait for iClone 8

What can we expect in IC version 8 that would make a difference ?
And thanks for replies - guys !

With 7.8, 7.9, 8.0 RL gradually introduces whole lot of new features such as SSS for props, Mirror (hopefully Environment Reflections would get an overhaul as well), motion blur, volumetric lights, lens flare (should not rely on post anymore) and some other.
And I keep my fingers cross for better shadows and occlusions.
Full list is here (though it is probably not final): https://forum.reallusion.com/437781/What-to-Expect-in-2020-iClone

I'll tell you about my Iray animation experience... after it finishes rendering.  

I have had plenty of fun with Iray, and it can make great-looking stills, but it is currently completely impractical for any animation that is more than 20 seconds long.

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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

So what you are saying, if I understand correctly, updates to come will assist the standard renderer  to make better images [ thus animations ] without hitting performance ?
Another question -  Iray comes with a heap of materials. Can these be used with IC7 standard renderer ?   

Iray materials can not be used with anything but Iray, and Reallusion or others can't change that.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

I bought it an then asked for a refund. I render 4K.  30 minutes per frame and the results look vastly different but not in a good way.  I don’t think it’s usable and would not recommend it.