Hi,
I am still learning about iclone and am enjoying it. I am working on the first scene of a larger project and have been exploring both using DAZ Studio or iclone to accomplish this.
I have used DAZ for still and a few animations for a number of years. I love the iray render quality, but do hesitate to use it for my full animation project as I think I will be rendering forever.
Animation wise, it is okay. Has some nice features like Puppeteer and aniblocks, but seeing what iclone can do and what I have started getting a grasp of, I really like it.

I can use my characters from DAZ in it via CC3, props and sets via 3dxchange, which is wonderful I know you can port over to Unreal, however, I am a ways off really learning that though I've had some exposure.

I really like the idea and practice of using iclone's real time rendering for my animations. I haven't mastered the lighting and setup yet to get consistantly great looking character renders yet. I was wondering if anyone with more experience has some tips and tricks. I hesitate to use IRAY via iclone as that too takes forever, even optimized to a minute a frame. Before I dive down that path, I wanted to see if the real time renderer in iclone 7 can do justice to character and scene renders.

Any tips, tricks, or tutorials you all may suggest?

Thanks!

I was in the same place last year, with lots of Daz experience but not wanting to render out animations there, so that's why I went looking for iClone. I've gotten some comments on my YouTube and questions here about how I get the results I do with the native renderer and am planning to put some things together (after I submit final grades tomorrow! I'll have a whole week off to play!) to show what I do, but some quick tips to start with...

Lighting in iClone is more like lighting in 3Delight than in Iray, in many ways--you have the same level of control (able to tell it not to render shadows on certain things, and you can turn off items throwing shadows, too). Image-based lighting and HDRs are NOT the same as Iray--no shadows, and that took me quite a while to wrap my brain around. I barely use Image Based lighting at all in iClone (like set it to 5 or maybe 10) because otherwise I'm fighting the no-shadows thing. Also, watch the GI. It can do some great things but it is not only super resource heavy, it too often washes out shadows. I've found I mostly don't use it, unless there's a super specific reason to use it, like a viewscreen glowing on a character's face or something. If you do use it, go into its settings and up the voxels to 32, and then move the anchor to whatever your focus is in a scene (you can link it to a a character or camera, too), to make sure the high-voxel rendering is where you want it. 

One way I've learned is to take an image I know was done in Iray in Daz, and tried to recreate it. I played with settings, lighting, etc, until I got something close (or different but that you like), then save those settings as either an Atmosphere or a Custom Project. I find it works better to use someone else's image, not my own (I get too frustrated because some part of my brain wants to do it the same way I did in Daz), and to be sure it's a 3D render (not an actual photograph or something), even if it's not Iray.

As an example, I took the image below of what I call "Sexy Rey" that I saw on Renderosity (I think--not sure now), and fiddled with something of mine until I got the same "feel." (I even imported that set from Daz to iClone, but it was huge and I didn't want to mess with all its textures to get it right so I went with something sold in the Marketplace, the Cyborg Corridors, instead). My scene uses spot lights, point lights, GI and Popcorn FX, DOF on the camera and the blur LUT, but no Image Based Lighting or postwork at all.  (Note: Rey is not my image---I'd give attribution if I remembered where I found it, sigh)




Lastly, don't be afraid to tweak your characters' skin or outfit textures in the scene itself, if you like the lighting aside from them. I try to base the lighting around the characters but sometimes it doesn't work because of the other needs of the scene, so I've done that a lot, upped the specular or added to the diffuse base color, to get the characters to look right in that particular lighting.

Here's what that still above turned into (no sound, no voice, just him, and was mostly just a test, but it will morph into the final scene of Book 2, when I finally get that written). 





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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

that looks awesome. can't wait to see a tutorial from you on this!

@restif and @ Dorothy Jean
Thank you both and I'll make the tutorial my first iClone project this week!
:-)

____________________________________________
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

Hi 3DChick, just checking in to see if you ever had the chance to make that lighting video to had mentioned. I’m definitely interested in seeing that as I have problems lighting myself in iClone.

Here are a couple of tutorials on lighting in Iclone 7.
I hope this helps.