Hey guys, I have been toying with the thought of using UE5 for making movies.

I would like to ask two questions to people who have used IC and UE (4 or 5)

1. How would I go about creating a scene with, say, 10 characters? Would they all be transferable to UE and animatable simultaneously through the live link or is there any limitation I don't know about? 
2. Do the linked characters keep their physics settings? (cloth, hair etc) Do I have the option to transfer them without IC physics whatsoever and create physics from scratch inside UE? Which method would you suggest? 

I appreciate any feedback, thanks in advance! 

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My YouTube Channel
Phoenix  

1. Based on my experience… it would be tough to do. I would just import the characters in and animate by retargeting in the sequencer.

2. Depends. Most of the time, clothing would work… but hair is often a disaster. I have a video showing you how to make the soft cloth settings in unreal,

https://youtu.be/lKz1T3NYB78

iClone Certified Director and makes miserable Westerns.

Thank you for replying.

I will check out the video about the hair, seems very useful. 

I have no idea how to import the characters in UE and retarget the animations, but I guess I can find some tutorials on this.

Is it a lengthy process? I mean is it worth it, considering I have to import 8-10 characters for some scenes? 

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My YouTube Channel
Phoenix  

I have a video that covers importing characters in as well, but it depends on how important the characters are. Background characters like the crowd characters , I don’t spend as much time adjusting them as I would spend on the main cast.


I’ll be honest. The auto setup and live link are a great first step as it takes care some of the headaches of importing a character in. As you dive in deeper, you will find that many shaders need to be fixed. I’m not sure if it will be taken care of when support for UE 5 is officially released. It could change greatly when CC4 is released too. Time will tell, but working with Unreal involves a lot of adjustments for the time being. Unreal is complex and you have to get a different mindset than working with iclone. It’s not plug and play entirely.

Is it worth it? If everything works well, definitely. Unreal has become my main filmmaking tool with iclone acting as a blocking tool. There’s way too many useful tools inside unreal. It takes some time to get to know the program to make animations.

iClone Certified Director and makes miserable Westerns.

In the past few days I have been scratching the surface of UE5 and I can already see what you are talking about. It is very different from iClone, (kinda reminds me more of C4D than iClone).
But also the possibilities seem nearly endlesss and the visuals are fantastic, and that's why I want to try. 
I don't have a problem doing (even a lot of) extra work if it means that the results will be as I have imagined them.

However if the pipeline is problematic and I end up spending 90% of my time trying to fix the errors from importing and 10% actually making movies, this kind of defeats the purpose (which is having fun and making movies).

So would you say that importing animated characters mostly works, of course with some adjustments necessary, or are the errors too many and it's not worth the trouble? 

I hope I phrased it well, and thanks for taking the time to help me. 

___________________________________________________________________

My YouTube Channel
Phoenix  

However if the pipeline is problematic and I end up spending 90% of my time trying to fix the errors from importing and 10% actually making movies, this kind of defeats the purpose (which is having fun and making movies).

Importing the character would be the most tedious step and it gets much easier afterwards. I would say maybe 20 minutes for the character to be fixed initially and it gets faster once you are used to it. Once your character is imported and fixed, then you can retarget the motions in and you're set to go. It's a pretty smooth process. 


iClone Certified Director and makes miserable Westerns.

Thank you so much for the info!


___________________________________________________________________

My YouTube Channel
Phoenix