Kelleytoons (10/11/2021)
We're pretty sure based on what RL has said that the basic rendering engine will not change with 8.
If you are dead set on a different renderer, just use iClone for your work, export out and render in Blender, for example (or UE4, or Unity or whatever). Even the Omniverse will be supported by iClone so that's another possibility. I agree with Mr kelly on this.
Reallusion is the only company that offers a multi-tiered product line
(AFAIK).
Its primary focus is realtime Character animation with Autodesk human IK
and nonlinear motion building.
That is what you get for a base price $200 USD
(assuming no sale specials)
Compare Iclone to its next nearest competitors.
Daz studio is Free and includes the retarded Brute force path tracer
(Iray), but no usable Ik solver, making quality animation virtually impossible unless you either, buy Iclone/3DX pipeline or an Autodesk motion builder subscription and retarget/export custom BVH to the Daz figures.
So , as practical matter ,you wont get decent animation inside Daz studio
without at least a $500+outlay at the Reallusion software store or an on going payment to Autodesk and this does not even include a decent lip sync & facial performance option that you will have to buy such as the iphone based "face mojo" plugin for genesis 3/8 for nearly $300 USD.
And even then, as you all know by now, that the Iray engine in daz studio is the same retarded, Brute force path tracer that we have for iclone and is only viable for STILLS and has no motion blur or support for particle systems.
However in this new era of cross application content transfer even Daz has acknowledged that there is a need to send their content out of Daz studio to superior render/animation environments and offers its own FREE export plugins to Maya ,Max C4D,Unity UE4x and ,of course, Blender.
And there is also the free ,third party Diffeomorphic Daz to Blender export plugin that is superior to the official Daz option particularly as it has an option to convert your Daz rig to a full Blender animation rig via rigify.
Poser By Renderosity?
barely worth mentioning frankly.
At around $250 USD
It has garbage native figures& content;
NO native support for the latest Daz genesis figures
NO viable export plugins to the Major 3DCC's& game engines except a broken/outdated FBX exporter.
Primitive animation tools not effectively updated since the late
1990's
A dying online community/knowledge base with idiotic forum admins
and nearly zero tutorial presence on youtube.
So from a pure monetary perspective, Iclone (in its current state) is a still more expensive than Daz studio but from a Character animation perspective Iclone is the FAR greater value .
Now for an additional outlay of about $245 USD for CC3 pipeline
(assuming no sale specials) you will have spent $ 445 USD.
For that You get all of the Character animation tools(Body & facial) that Daz studio lacks.
Additionally you get a decent Daz genesis Figure import/copying system
(That Poser lacks)
and Viable Dedicated export plugins to the major 3DCC's & game engines.
On the matter of render engines, we all know the limitations of the Iclone native render engine however Reallusion (like Daz) has gone to great lengths to give us viable export options to the other environments
two of them being free (Blender & Unreal).
For those who say; they would rather keep their workflows simple
and do everything in iclone.
That is perfectly fine... stay huddled in your comfort bubble.;)
However you can not really complain to Reallusion about not having
rendering alternatives because you do have them.