Hi people, nice to meet you all!
This is my entry into the 2021 iClone Lip-Sync Animation Contest, called 'Don't Lose Hope'.

-----INTENDED RESULT-----


-----FINAL SUBMISSION-----


-----LATEST WIP-----


----- INITIAL POST-----
I have decided to lift audio from one of the audio tapes from Metal Gear Solid V - Ground Zeroes (go to 1:00:36):


And here is my animatic for the entry so far:


I have decided to create new characters for this scene using Character Creator:
The Interrogator:


The Prisoner (The head is the default male, noone will see it as I will put a bag on him later on):


... That's it so far! I will continue updating this post with the latest WIPs and when its done, the final entry. Hope you enjoy and I look forward to working on this!

- Dr.J.

Got some progress - did the first pass of poses for the interrogator:


Hope you like!

- Dr.J.

real life had me occupied for a while and gonna see if i can make it tomorrow night, really having a blast with iClone and CC3, i would never have made it this far trying to do all this stuff from scratch using DCC software.

right now the body animation for the interrogator is almost done and the poses for the prisoner are in:



gotta refine everything, do the facial stuff and take it to blender all in one night, lets hope i make it!

- Dr.J.

FINAL ENTRY:


I couldnt get as much as I wanted done, but heres what ive got anyway - hope you guys like it because i really enjoyed making it! in the near future i will finish this properly with lighting work in blender and put that bag over the prisoners head, but for the comp i decided to submit this iClone render with default lighting anyway. as an animation exercise this was still lots of fun!

good luck everyone!

- Dr.J .

INTENDED RESULT:


Found some time to export to Blender and worked on the lighting and camera a bit more before rendering with Eevee. A shame that I couldn't get this done before the deadline.

To talk a bit more about working with iClone and AccuLips - it really was a breeze to use. I was initially concerned that without a curve editor i would experience pain when fine tuning the body animation but in most cases this was fine. AccuLips and the face puppeting was amazing, I didnt spend that much time on the facial animation and I very quickly got the result I wanted. Editing the lip sync after generating it with AccuLips was also so easy, very intuitive and I can't imagine doing facial animation anywhere else now.

If I was to say I was caught off guard by something it would be the fact that exporting the animated characters to blender was a bit of a pain as I was unaware that it would require 3DXchange and that the trial would restrict me to 20secs of animation (as you see this anim is 29.5secs). If the time was limited to 20 secs from the get go I am sure things would've been a lot smoother for a lot of people who wanted to render in blender. That said I must say that I am very impressed with CC3 and iClone and how easy it is to then export to Blender! Can't go back with character animation now and will be getting myself a copy of 3DXchange later on for unlimited exporting.

Thank you Reallusion for this opportunity and good luck to everyone!

- Dr.J.

v2:


Decided to refine the facial animation a bit and have a second pass at the colour grading - this is as far as ill take this. Was a great learning experience! 

Very good animation overall. Well done
I for myself can't help but leave so many unfinished projects behind

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thank you! I think its good to take a project all the way so you can see how close you got to what you imagined it to be! my number one piece of advice is to plan and make sure the scope is reasonable for you!

FYI
Exporting to blender does not require 3Dxchange
If you have CC3 pipeline. 

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
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Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

oh even if the characters are then animated with iClone? how? would love to know, thanks!