Hi all,

I'm wondering about how to maximize the render quality of my animations.  I've noticed that a lot of rendered animations I see coming straight from iClone look, well, rather like older video games whereas the stuff I see coming out of Unreal Engine looks much more polished and contemporary. I'm not sure exactly how else to describe it, but I'm guessing the volumetric lighting capabilities in UE4 are part of the reason why (just a guess).

This video is a good example of the sort of 'look' and quality I'm hoping to achieve:



I would think that iClone should be able to render better looking images than Unreal since Unreal is realtime and Iclone can be rendered out, but so far the UE4 animations I've seen tend to look better.

My question is: once I'm done building and animating everything in iClone, what's my best best for renders that look like this? Native iClone with some particular settings, or would I be better off exporting everything to UE and rendering there? 



Thanks!


Mirror Valley
*Tales of the Strange and Unusual*
Mirror Valley on Youtube

You can get some pretty nice quality with IClone if you take the time to light up your scenes properly. Lighting is key. There are some here who have proven that.

But let's face it, you're not going to get Unreal level quality in IClone. Not yet anyway. IClone 8 will add some new visual features like optical flares and proper godrays, but again, not going to compete with Unreal.

Most of us making films in IClone want better performance over visual features because there's no point in adding all these graphical features if you can only display a few characters on the screen. Most of the scenes I make have to be broken down into 3-5 parts just to be able to get them to render. Improving the render engine, and improving the speed of IClone is the biggest priority IMO.

When IClone performs like Unreal, then you're going to see some incredible films being made.

Here's a few renders, so you can see the type of quality you can get with IClone when you take your time with each scene.



IMDB: James Muia
Aviticus Dragon on YouTube

Computer Specs:
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti - 11GB - EVGA FTW3

Thanks for the reply and for sharing your work. It looks great! I just subscribed to your accounts – looking forward to checking out more of your stuff.

A few points of clarification if you don’t mind – though I’ve been using iClone for years, some of the finer points of this stuff are still new to me.

You mentioned that we’re not going to get Unreal quality from iClone, but that using iClone, for you, comes down to better performance over the visual features. Does that mean that Unreal couldn’t handle some of the more demanding scenes I’ve made in iClone? That Unreal takes more resources to render more or less the same setup? I don’t mind longer render times if it means my finished product looks better, but I’m wondering if the problem is that it wouldn’t be able to handle some of my iclone projects, regardless of how long I was willing to wait for it to render. Is that correct?

Also, you mentioned (and I’ve heard it said before) that so much of what makes the difference in getting really top-notch looking scenes from iClone comes down to lighting. I’ve watched the basic tutorials and understand how lights function in iClone, but I’m wondering if there are any resources online (iClone specific or not) that go into detail about what to do with lighting in order to make things look really good. Is it just trial and error? Are there any general principles I could learn beyond just basic lighting?

Again, thanks for your time and for sharing.

Mirror Valley
*Tales of the Strange and Unusual*
Mirror Valley on Youtube

You must have the same approach as the UDK artist. I suggest you to open some free udk project.
First for realistic scene they use Megascan textures. It is real scaned texture applying to props.
Second there are not only 6 lights in their scenes like lot of beginners do in Iclone but rather dozens of point light , spot light , etc...
Third the majority of the exemple scenes of your video are not made by one person 

Ultimately nothing insurmountable or impossible. You just have to spend the same time consuming like "Pro"

This is some free udk project you can find







I forgot to mention that if you want large scene you need to understand how to trick like udk. Udk use LOD prop
automatically but not Iclone . 
This project below is a very good start to make large scene which requires few PC resources.

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
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Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My Sci- Fi Graphic Novel on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9k3cwoY

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

If you're looking into Unreal, make sure you can render with real time raytracing. It will require a RTX card however, keep in mind. 

I would build a set in Unreal and try out a few renders as well to see what you can do. There's a lot of control in what can do, but be sure to know your camera, lighting, and post process settings for the best look. 

iClone Certified Director and makes miserable Westerns.

my lack of experience with iclone is telling me that the iclone render is not up to par with unreal realtime raytracing. I have tried making it looked realistic like unreal, it turned out very decent with slow render time. The shadow flicker is meh. Maybe there is a way to get rid of it.


Vimeo made it low rez. The color rendition should be somewhat the some.

There is not much point in comparing ray-trace rendering with a non-ray-trace renderer like iClone. One is not necessary better than the other. It all depends what you are looking for to fit your story.

As has been pointed out already, lighting is very important and a lot of users don't take the time to explore all the lighting possibilities in iClone.

I myself just discovered that you can make point lights directional with IES files. I've used that to create local enhancements to lighting to make a character's eyes more lively, for instance.

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Thanks everyone for all the good information.

I was naively presuming that all that would be required to render with another tool (Unreal/Blender) would be to export the project from iClone, open it in the other software, tweak a thing or two, and render it out.  Clearly this is not the case.

It sounds like, even using iClone/CC3, that exporting and rendering in UE4 would be no small task in and of itself and would definitely noticeably increase the amount of time I spend creating videos, which means that, for me at this time, it's not a viable option.

That's disappointing, but I'm glad I finally know for sure.  Now I know to focus my time on figuring out how to make iClone look as good as possible.


Mirror Valley
*Tales of the Strange and Unusual*
Mirror Valley on Youtube