Hey everyone!  This is my first time posting here in the forums.  To be honest, I had no idea there were forums until I read over the contest stuff again.  This is cool!  I haven't been a part of a forum since 2005 I think.  Anyway, here's my entry for the contest.  It took me about 12 hours from start to finish.

A Pirate's Last Song


Here's the workflow I used for the project:

- I wrote a song that would fit within the 30 second time frame then performed it using Propellerhead Reason.
- Created the character in CC3 while keeping in mind the type of faces he'd need to make.
- Imported the model into iClone 7 with a very basic lighting setup with 2 planes to simulate the beach environment.
- Imported the song and used AccuLips to sync it up with the mouth.
- Adjusted the mouth shapes to give the character some funny quirks like the raised left upper lip and jaw shift when saying "Eeee".
- Used Motion Live to capture the facial expressions and head movements with my iPhone.
- Adjusted the motion capture data for smoothness and accuracy
- Added a few more quirks to the facial expressions like the wide eye vs squinted eye and some extra nose flares and eyebrow lifts.
- Set up a basic ocean scene in Unreal Engine using Megascans and a few other custom made props.
- Imported my CC3 character into Unreal Engine using the iClone Auto Setup plugin.
- Imported the animation I created in iClone.
- Dropped the skeletal mesh character into my beach scene and placed him in the sand.
- Created a new level sequence, added my character to call the animation then keyframed the camera movements to match my project vision.
- Once the camera and character looked good, I started adding props to the scene to add more fun to the environment.
- Exported using Movie Render Cue using these settings: PNG sequence, Anti-aliasing (Override Anti Aliasing checked) with both Spatial and Temporal Counts at 5.
- Then imported the images into Final Cut Pro, turned them into frames, added my music and some minor lighting and color adjustments and that was it.  Final export!

And here's the result!

If anyone has any questions about anything, I'm always willing to help.  I'm usually over in the iClone Facebook group working with people.  That's why I haven't been here yet.

Keep up the great work everyone!  I love seeing all of the fun things you've created.

Brilliant, love it, very funny and very well executed. Welcome to the wonderful world of iclone.
Cheers,
Tony

Yo, very cool... Like it!

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

I just got an email saying that my submission might get disqualified because they weren't able to see the link I submitted but it was a link from Instagram.  Has anyone been having issues with Instagram links?  I'd hate to get disqualified for a technical error somewhere.  I'm wondering if they tried to review my WIP video yesterday when Instagram was down.  I hope not.

I also used insta for my WIP but I didn't got any message yet though

Hmm. Must have been an issue with the submission form. I saw a bunch of people adding more WIP links into the description of their videos. I wish I would have thought to do that.

UPDATE: They weren’t able to see my Instagram video from a computer but they were able to watch from a phone. Good to know for future contests!

Reallusion asked me to reupload my WIP to YouTube so they could see it, so here it is:

Behind The Scenes - Plan and writing
https://youtu.be/_fwaGttV5YE

Behind The Scenes - Animating w iClone
https://youtu.be/3aOWrPV0WJg