I have a workflow that allows me to use Marvelous Designer to do do cloth animation, and then import it into iClone as Vertex animation. This workflow worked with iClone 7.93 but it does not work with iClone 8.02. I can import the vertex animation but the cloth animation does not have the same timing as the character animation. Does anybody else have the same issues, and if so is there a solution?
I think that maybe this looks like the sort of mismatch that comes from the curve editor when the animation is not linear but has some ease in and out, but I cannot see how to fix this.
Animation working properly with iClone 7.93
Animation not working with iClone 8.02
My workflow is as follows:
I load the character that I want to create the animated cloth for in Character Creator 4. I delete the hair and eyebrows as they are extra geometry that is not needed for the cloth simulation (I put these back at the end), and I transfer the character to iClone.
In iClone animate the character, making sure that I start the Character in either an A pose or a T pose.Ensure that the fade in from the T pose to the animation is long enough so that there are not very sudden movements which would create problems in Marvelous Designer.
In the animation make sure that there are no situations where the hands penetrate the body mesh. Use the iClone Edit motion layer if needed to fix this, if using iClone 8 then possibly in combination with the Animation layers. Also consider turning on the breast springs to get some jiggle. Save the flattened animation layer in case you need to reapply it at a later stage.
Once complete then export the animated character as an Alembic file, making sure that the whole animation is covered. No need to worry about splitting the mesh by material or about textures.
Open Marvelous Designer and Import>Alembic (Scale cm-Daz, 100% and 60 fps).
Create the cloth for the Character using Marvelous Designer. Make sure that it fits the starting T pose properly. I would not use a particle distance of less than 10 as this makes it too hard for the computer. Choose a material setting for the cloth that gives the required swish. Consider adapting gravity if necessary.
Move from the simulation to the animation tab and Record to do the cloth simulation, this can be quite time consuming. If there are problems with the cloth simulation caused by the animation (for example hands colliding and getting stuck to cloth) then edit the animation, resave as an Alembic file and try again.
In the Marvelous Designer UV Editor tab make sure that the dress fits into a UV tile.
Once the cloth simulation is complete then from the animation tab in Marvelous Designer export the Alembic file. (Do people prefer using the Ogawa or HDF5 file formats, and if so then why, I cannot see a difference in the results?) Once again save to an area where you have a lot of disk space as these are large files. This will take a while to save the animation. From the simulation tab in Marvelous Designer export the fbx file. From the simulation tab save the selected obj file. This can be used for texturing in applications such as Substance Painter.
When importing into iClone 8 split into different sub-props and hide all of the sub-props except the dress. When importing into iClone 7.93 use 3D Exchange to open the fbx file and import the cloth into iClone.
With the dress sub-prop selected then add the vertex animation.