I am looking to purchase the 3DXchange 7 Pipeline (Daz Genesis Extension comes free with 3DXchange 7) and I would like to know what you think of the usefulness of the tool is. Based on the poll I might get a better idea of whether or not I should purchase the tool. I am also curious if it works for importing into CC3 and if it is necessary for CC3 to purchase the tool. Thanks!

I'm qualifying my vote...Most things are pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The best resource for getting a sense of how to do it and what you need would be to watch Kelleytoons' tutorials on YouTube. He is AMAZING and if you sample those you can get a sense of what goes into the different kinds of things, whether it be characters, morphs, outfits, hair, accessories, and even sets and props. The man is amazing...

Mike Kelley's Tutorials Playlist

Hope that helps!

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Life-long learner and having waaaay too much fun with iClone! Youtube Channel: 3DChick
Book Covers: www.significantcover.com Largely Unfinished Fiction: www.nemontgomery.com

I'll sum up my vote too

I agree for the mosdt part with Nelm2010, he's right on all accounts. That said for me to tricky part of the import was and still is I spend a lot of time doing body shapes muclase etc getting
the character (to me anyway, and thats what counts) awesome, export the FBX in a CC3 pose and use the tool to import, the skin turn a little pale, colour a tad wasted out but I can live with that,
different light and siftware and can be adjusted, what hurst is the morphing, I loose a lot of detail, fittness disapairs and the body is all but basic.
Just my thoughts as a novice for waht it's worth

Better use "Transformer" directly in CC3, no 3DXchange needed.
This is only available in CC3 Pipeline:
https://manual.reallusion.com/Character_Creator_3/ENU/3/Content/Character_Creator_3/3/09_Transformer/Transformer.htm


Toystorylab on Vimeo :     Crassitudes (my "Alter Ego") on Youtube: 

In a few cases you will get better results, but no "CC3 eco system" with 3DXchange.
See this thread:
https://forum.reallusion.com/448411/3dx-pipeline-vs-CC-pipeline


Toystorylab on Vimeo :     Crassitudes (my "Alter Ego") on Youtube: 

well it depends a bit on what you want to do... the import to cc3 is somewhat easy, but... if you want to them export to a game engine, something basic like morphs (and of normal usage) is still not possible so you will have to continue to use only daz and skip CC3 ...

there is an active issue on this for ages now: 
https://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/Exporting-morphs-to-game-engines-like-unreal-or-unity

Also, its easy only for the basic figure and props, but again if you need something more accurate like anatomically accurate figures (again something that should be standard) them it will pass from easy to close to impossible.

Carefully confirms what are your needs before buying, a lot of functionalities are strangely missing from CC3 and for sure they will not be included in any update.

So you can't import into CC3 from Daz, then reduce the model down to something usable in a game engine? Isn't there something in CC3 that does that? InstaLod does that but I haven't used it yet in CC3.

Sorry about the odd formatting--my internet blipped out and when I came back it got weird....
@robahouston, you can reduce them! One thing I've done, is get the character in from Daz, then make sure my morphs and skins are the way I want them, then save as a morph slider and custom skin. Then load a standard CC3 character, apply the morphs, apply the skin, and bam! Instantly waaaay smaller, even before playing with instalod or create game base. Like 150k smaller!

Kiwi-Hawk--I totally agree. The hardest part is getting all that detail back, once in CC3! I use pretty extreme custom normals for wrinkles, and do a lot of mesh editing to get the morphs to look right. (I have waaaay to many of ZevOs products, lol). That said, I'm super excited for the new system CC3 is going to implement. Won't make the alien HD morphs better, probably, but wrinkles and veins, etc, natively in CC3--very excited. And I've been able to use mesh editing to get the alien/fantasy morphs back. Also, Headshot is great for getting those odd HD characters' faces in--like Genesis 8 HD Orc, etc...use that to get the crazy morphs, use tweaked normals to get the body stuff right, then follow the process outlined above to appl to a base CC3 character...I don't know how all that comes through in Unreal or Unity because I open them up, cringe, and come back to iClone, but in iClone they look great.

:-)

And I agree with toystorylab except if you want to bring in props and sets--then you need 3DXchange...I have 1000s of Daz props I that I needed to bring in, so I got that right off the bat. If you only want to bring characters in, then you don't need that, but you for sure need the CC3 Pipeline Extension.

As I understand it, 3DXchange Pipeline is for getting props and sets OUT of iClone into other programs. I bought it, but mostly because I'm a software hoarder--you never know what you might want in the future... ;-)
Sometimes props and sets from Daz come in huge! (same with hair and clothes), but I tried something I learned from Kelleytoons, when I get a prop into iClone, and it's massive in polys, is attach it to a base character, send it to CC3 as an attachment, then use Reduce Object to cut it down. Then send it back to iClone and you have a much smaller prop or set. 

There are tons of ways to accomplish all of this--and not all of it requires Reallusion software if you own other stuff, but I find it easiest to use Reallusions's products. Only once have I had to use Blender to decimate something, and that was a set I bought on CGTrader. Daz to iClone involves some tweaking, if you're picky about what things look like and you don't have a great system (both apply to me) but it's very doable and sooooo much easier once you learn the tricks.

My 200 cents (adjusted for inflation)
:-)
Nicole

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Life-long learner and having waaaay too much fun with iClone! Youtube Channel: 3DChick
Book Covers: www.significantcover.com Largely Unfinished Fiction: www.nemontgomery.com

Absolutely confirm what you need to buy--it's super confusing! But I have to disagree that you can't get achieve anatomically correct anything. It takes a LOT of work (particularly to get skins to match the Digital Shader) but you can get them in...it's not different from bringing in wings or tails or anything else that has both morphs and bones in Daz. It's not "one click," but I haven't yet found anything that can't be brought over--only things I don't have the patience to work with (poses from any generation later than Gen 2, for example. Gen 3 and 8 poses can be done, I just don't want to mess around with them). Gen 2 poses are super easy, BTW, and those are super easy!

Anyway, just wanted to add that.

I think I'm up to 300 cents now. ;-)




____________________________________________
Life-long learner and having waaaay too much fun with iClone! Youtube Channel: 3DChick
Book Covers: www.significantcover.com Largely Unfinished Fiction: www.nemontgomery.com

Hello,
I went to Daz for a specific character. After a week of trying to transfer the character from Daz (and giving up, losing the moey I paid for the character) it turned out that I had to build the character myself (no idea how to do that in Daz) with (as it turned out) an outdated character.... For me it was impossible without actually learning how to use the application... All I wanted was to buy the character, and it was not cheap. So, I am no fan at all of Daz, out of pocket, and I feel your poll should have included the category of 'Impossible if not an expert' in the application'...
Best regards.
Ken

The more I learn, the more I realise, I know nothing!