I can't seem to find anywhere on the Internet about iClone's very strange Bones/Joint rigging, making not attritive to use with other 3D applications where animation is retargeted (exporting FBX or BVH"). Here's my list:
1. The biggest issue is the bones not have a common "up-vector" or in other words, the bones axis are not the same. In the middle body, "z" points up, legs, point down, feet point back. No matter what app I load an iClone file (Cinema 4D, Blender, DAZ 3D, Autodesk SDK, the axis are not same.
2. There's no logic to the rigging rotational values. You should be able to zero out all bone rotations and get a default pose (like a "T" or "A"). If you zero an iClone figure you get a mess. You can't simply export it in a standard pose and then zero the rotations because the values are so far from zero you get gimble oscillations.  I'm guessing Motion Builder users are having the bone rig, re-rigged, because files I've used that have come from Motion Builder are not like iClone files.

I started to write some Python code to try to fix the bone 3D rotational matrix math, but after going through two up-vector changes had had to stop and ask why am I the only one seeing this mess?

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
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Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My Sci- Fi Graphic Novel on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9k3cwoY

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

Hi AutoDidact,
Thanks for the reply. To make sure we're on the same page on the term "re-targeting" as how I know it means. You are able to use a character created by another 3D application, and import a motion created by iClone? To make my question more clear, I'll give an example: You can open DAZ and add a native DAZ character to your scene.  Then using using some kind of option I've yet to find in a Reallusion application, you can export a BVH file and import into DAZ and successfully animate the DAZ character as created in iClone? 

I re-asked this question because everything I have found on doing such a thing, first requires the user to import the native DAZ character into their 3D-Exchange application that basically destroys the original joint rig, and converts to iClone's strange rig, So in this case you could import back into DAZ with iClone animation because it's no longer a DAZ character (and not even close to anything else). From that point on, you can only use iClone to perform animation, nothing else.

In my case, my main 3d application is Cinema-4D and I created my character rigging based on common practices. I'm able to re-target animations from other applications such as DAZ, Mixamo, Motion-Builder and purchased BVH files because other than the joint rig pose design (A-Pose, T-Pose, etc.) they follow the same standard rigging practice.  I wrote Python code in Cinema-4D to correct the joint rotational matrix of joints such as shoulders, forearms and thigs, to fix the offset due to the different pose design. But other than iClone, I've never had to correct axis up-vectors.
In the picture below I show all the iClone joint vectors (the direction the colored lines point). I counted seven areas where the up-vector changed.



The next image is from Mixamo, and a DAZ character and other applications would be the same. Notice there is only ONE up-vector. In addition, all joint rotations are zero and match a standard design pose. 



Below is a iClone character with all it's joint rotations zero. It doesn't look like any standard design pose I've ever seen.


These are not just offsets, the rig is twisted because the rig wasn't designed with just one axis coordinate system (up-vector), but some reason seven.
Am I still missing something?

Thanks, Bruce.

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My Sci- Fi Graphic Novel on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9k3cwoY

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

Here you go.

Hi AutoDidact;
Thanks for the reply again. I will look at your videos as I still have 3DExchange and haven't found such a process.
You're correct that Cinema-4D doesn't have have strong re-targeting tools, though they did introduce a new motion re-target system in R26.

I did create a fairly complex Python script (screen capture below) well before R26, and enables more options for me. It reads a CSV file based on what I'm kind of character I'm re-targeting and gives me the option to read the joint values instead of key frames so I can capture rig motion created by rig controllers and added dynamics and noise reduction. Creating the CSV file takes time, putting in axis corrections, rotation offsets, rotational orders, invers axis, joint parent/child relationships, etc. When I decided to try out iClone, I was floored on how it was rigged. It looked like there was no thought behind it with odd values at given positions and axis constantly changing, which result in my script taking longer because it's performing a new joint tree matrix calculation for almost every joint on every frame.  This what prompted me to make this forum posting to see if this was for real before continuing to create the rest of the definition file. The closer I can get an exported iClone rig to something similar to other rig, the more efficient it will be to use.

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My Sci- Fi Graphic Novel on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9k3cwoY

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

Hi AutoDidact,
I was unable to find a video on your channel where you used 3Dxchange to convert an iClone motion rig to a DAZ rig. Can you point me to one of your videos that is closest to this subject where the rig is corrected?   BTW - I do have 3Dxchange 7 Pipeline.

To clarify, I do not have an iClone character nor plan on making one. I'm only looking at using iClone for producing animations the same way I've been able to use Mixamo, DAZ and most recently Cascadeur. All I want is the animated bones, and I remove all the mesh objects,, their morphs and materials.

I don't have any problem importing iClone into Cinema-4D. The iClone character will animate and look the same in Cinema-4D just as it did in iClone, it's just the bone rig is so difficult to retarget it from. If I can get 3Dxchange 7 Pipeline to convert an iClone character animation to a rig similar to DAZ or Mixamo, I would be pleased.

On an unrelated yet positive note, the latest iClone AccuLips-AI does a descent job of speech animation. I wrote a Cinema-4D script that will import an iClone FBX file and extract the animated face morphs used for speech, and transfer them to my Cinema-4D character with extra code to smooth the transitions and apply additional face morphs for added realism. 


This is a low resolution render of one of my characters that I created and animate.

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My Sci- Fi Graphic Novel on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9k3cwoY

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

Just do not forget to set "Limits Off" for the entire bones hierarchy in DAZ before importing BVH.
Otherwise some motions would not behave as expected.