@ Amber Sand. Yes, I can well imagine! The fact AI seems to be doing some of the work  hints that it is not impossible - remember all that is needed is to simply generate a clone with some sliders so we don’t have to! The fact we can easily do this now must indicate plausibility!

As a software developer myself, I can assure you that what's "easy to do" from customer's point of view in 99% it's damn difficult to do by developers.

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Software developer. iClone hobbyist since January 11, 2020. Best work so far: Robots among us: The Lab and The sad end of a legend
In progress: Black Mamba
AMD Ryzen 3950X 16C/32T 4.2 GHz, 64GB RAM, RTX2080 11GB, 2TB Samsung 970 Pro SSD, 8TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD, Win11 64-bit, iClone 8.12

I have just now spotted a huge error in my discussion. I say 'why is this not in CC4?'. Which explains posts about idle poses showing breathing. However, in iC8, add any other movement and pow, no breathing - so, my mistake; it is the the lack of breathing ability as a fundamental fixed feature of iC8 that is the real issue - and which should have been in iC7. Within this discussion we now have three workarounds, the most simplistic being my 'error' one and the 2 by @4u2ges which are more solid and professional. That is progress! But it is not us who should be doing the tinkering. I am going to repeat myself here. As the avatars become more realistic then RL really need to up the ante and offer up a dedicated breathing track on the timeline so things such as the various depths of intake of breath before and after speaking, the nuances of exhaling as bad news hits home, the heavy breathing after running etc, etc, etc are easy to control and not mixed in with other motion keys. My simplistic version ends up with just two sliders, yep, not ideal, created purely by jacking up certain chest, neck and shoulder sliders in a clone and using morph generator. No bones were hurt in this process! One slider is the cloth which was automatically generated. Now, why hasn't that simplistic approach been AI driven since iC6 or iC7, but rather than morph, simply put to 'breathe'? The reason why I am repeating myself is this: usually when there is anything remotely critical of RL @Peter(RL) jumps in with a valid remark or point. His silence in this rather important discussion, that has produced workarounds, is therefore rather telling. Is RL a bit embarrassed by its total neglect of this fundamental life-giving attribute?

@4u2ges that looks pretty good, thanks for the tutorial, I'll try to implement it.

@michaelrbarton I will also review these animations. However, it seems quite difficult for me to integrate them into an animation that I will prepare. I'm not sure how much can be done with key duplication.

Actually iClone needs blend system. A huge understatement for a character animation program.
The absence of this feature makes Motion Director, which is an excellent feature, semi-useless.
You cannot hold a gun and shoot while walking.
You have to do this using a layer or you have to copy the on-body keys from a weapon animation. However, this will provide you with a static weapon animation. Because copying all keys is quite a long job.
Instead, you copy the first and last frame keys.

If you want the character to shoot with a rifle while walking, you need to merge it with an animation that shoots a rifle while walking.


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Mixamo has a breathing idle motion.  Actorcore  has a standby idle motion that looks like the character has a breathing motion.
ActorCore - Stand By Idle - 3D Motion (reallusion.com)

OK, I revised the routine slightly. It does not require any prerequisites now.

The goal was to allow bone driven morphs and poses to be transferred into Morphs Creator.
Traditional iAvatar format does not work in this case. It gives an error and deforms intended morphs badly.

The only other option was an OBJ format export out of CC. In my testings so far RL did a nice job revising OBJ morphs import/export routine in IC8/CC4.
However this method still has some quirks.

Pros:
Universal slider can be created in CC which accommodates combination of bone driven sliders.
Deforming mesh through Edit Pose mode can be applied afterwards individually per character.

Cons:
OBJ method is more critical to mesh quality than iAvatar format. Cloth/Accessories geometry must be errors free.
Need to be careful to not overdo bones animation. Lower body, lower arms and specifically fingers must not be animated while preparing character for morphs.

Tutorial has 2 parts:
First part shows how to actually make a morph slider in CC and then apply to some clothed character.
In second part, I am showing how to fix an internal geometry inconsistency for cloth item which failed to accept the morph.

Don't mind if I talk about Unreal and show examples.
Since I'm a UE user, I usually talk over UE.
My problem is being able to implement this feature without using any animation.
For example, I cannot give this feature to an animation I created from scratch with a video reference.
This makes the character act like a robot.
I need to do this using any animation.
UE has the ability to blend all animations.
iClone only does endpoint blends.
The only option is the new layer feature, but that's not something I want to mess with.

For now the way @4u2ges suggested seems the most realistic and easiest.

As @Amper Sand said, if there are clothes that cause problems, I may not use them.

The bottom line is that we all want RL to add a feature about it.
But I don't expect head-to-toe realism
To make these behave like real people, mocap devices need to be used.
Even that would not constitute fully human realism.

Maybe what I need is a blending system instead of breathing.
If this feature existed, I could already do a lot of things myself.

In short, when I create an animation, I want breath to be added to it automatically, and even this slight shaking feature seems enough for me for now.



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As pointed out there is a 'breathing' idle motion in iC8. And, if a person is this idle and relaxed one might not notice actual breathing but just in the UE clip you can see an essence of life because of the attempt to add breathing. Mind you, we are never static and even in the clip I feel there should be a wee twitch in the fingers to really make it sing!
Amper Sand's point about the Adam's Apple is interesting. When doing my flawed breathing I only need to change the sliders of the avatar, Creating the morph automatically generates the slider for the cloth, you'd think something similar could be done with this problem, though often an Adam's Apple 'moves' the hindrance, rather than expands it.

It might be an option to have the character sway back and forth, like UE characters, to make it look like they're breathing.
However, it seems quite difficult to do this and it is necessary to do it separately for each character.
RL needs to integrate this into the character, like a wink.



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Technically, I'm assuming I understand their problems in implementing this feature: has anybody observed how Viseme performs with clothes or accessories covering the neck's Adam apple? Viseme properly is deforming the character's mesh, but cloth remains fixed, because it's not being conformed for each Viseme movement.

______________________________________________________________________________
Software developer. iClone hobbyist since January 11, 2020. Best work so far: Robots among us: The Lab and The sad end of a legend
In progress: Black Mamba
AMD Ryzen 3950X 16C/32T 4.2 GHz, 64GB RAM, RTX2080 11GB, 2TB Samsung 970 Pro SSD, 8TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD, Win11 64-bit, iClone 8.12