Live Link Improvement idea

Author	Message
chris_157146	chris_157146 Posted 3 Years Ago
Junior Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 3 Years Ago Posts: 26, Visits: 89	I am now using the pipeline in earnest and finally getting somewhere. I have a suggestion for an improvement and thought I would air it here…. The main issue I have with the pipeline is one of faff. The process of recording a group scene and then assembling into one sequence can hardly be described as elegant. Keeping FPS up on both applications is a constant battle and I have spent quite a bit of cash upgrading my PC to enable me to maintain 50fps+ whilst recording. It does all work, it’s just not great. For this reason I only really use Live Link for setting up the scene (which is great) and transferring characters and props. These are not real time operations so don’t suffer any performance issues. I will then export all the animations into FBX files and import into Unreal. The advantages of this method are twofold:- 1) As I’m specifying the same start and stop frame for each export the animations for each actor are easy to get in sync in the sequence. 2) Any change in the animation can be re-imported without having to change the sequence in Unreal. This is a vast improvement over Live-Link’s re-record (changing settings first to keep up the FPS) and copy from the new sequence recording into the main one with all your other animations, making sure everything is in sync which is not always that easy. The only time I use the live-link recording method is when “look at” is used on actor’s as that does not get included in the FBX!!! So my simple improvement would be to have on the transfer tab in live link the ability to transfer animations INCLUDING LOOK AT data. Use the start and stop markers on the timeline for the extents and drop it in the RLContent folder for that actor. Then you can create your own sequence in Unreal featuring the actors and animations. Any changes to the actor’s design or animation can be easily re-exported using the transfer tab in Live-link without having to rebuild your Unreal sequence. This would also allow users without blistering fast PCs to overcome the FPS issue as you have the choice not to record things in real-time. I see others are having similar issues to me. What do you think? Edited 3 Years Ago by chris_157146
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nikofilm	nikofilm Posted 3 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Yesterday Posts: 315, Visits: 4.3K	I also use this method. The quality of the animation is great. If necessary, I edit the animations of the characters with Control Rig.
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chris_157146	chris_157146 Posted 3 Years Ago
Junior Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 3 Years Ago Posts: 26, Visits: 89	It's just the damn "look at" data that iClone does not export in the FBX. If it did that it would be a major step forward.
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Marniche	Marniche Posted 3 Years Ago
Junior Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Month Posts: 15, Visits: 1.1K	I think the future will be real-time. So we should hope for improvements on the live link with better performance and more flexibility. In my opinion TC sync is a more important issue. And a Live Link that works in both directions (from Unreal to Iclone and vice versa) would be spectacular :-)
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chris_157146	chris_157146 Posted 3 Years Ago
Junior Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 3 Years Ago Posts: 26, Visits: 89	I agree real-time will be the future, but it's just not really there yet. The iClone side of things is all pretty slick, but once you get into Unreal it gets clumsy, which obviously Reallusion have little control over. To me it seems Epic are putting more effort into excluding Reallsuion than they do making things slicker for integration and the full FBX export is something Reallusion can do to keep ahead. Sorry, I don't know what TC sync is (which I realise may mean I don't know what I'm talking about!)
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chris_157146	chris_157146 Posted 3 Years Ago
Junior Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 3 Years Ago Posts: 26, Visits: 89	If there is anyone from Reallusion reading this then.... Please save livelink transfer and link status with iClone projects. It defaults to all objects enabled for transfer and link which is really, really annoying as you end up deleting and recreating actors/objects in Unreal unnecessarily or worse after you've made changes in Unreal. Please stop renaming actors when you "export to iClone" from CC3. This is so annoying as if you don't notice this you end up transferring a copy rather than overwriting when transferring to Unreal.
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Marniche	Marniche Posted 3 Years Ago
Junior Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Month Posts: 15, Visits: 1.1K	Hi @chris_157146 about TC sync: TC stands for Time Code. Unreal Engine is able to generate and read different forms of Time Code (hours:minutes:seconds:frames). if iClone, like professional applications, would generate a Time Code when playing the Timeline or activating the Live Link, we could synchronize the recordings in Unreal. Necessary feature, for example when making some changes to the animation in Iclone afterwards, or when replacing audio in Unreal and sync it/ match it with the previously recorded animation track, etcetera...
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oisilener1982	oisilener1982 Posted 3 Years Ago
Veteran Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 2 Years Ago Posts: 190, Visits: 1.4K	Transfer File from Unreal to iClone would be great
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bennycoop_492497	bennycoop_492497 Posted 3 Years Ago
New Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Year Posts: 2, Visits: 135	Time code please! Without it we're just stumbling in the dark.
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Live Link Improvement idea

Live Link Improvement idea

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