I am very familiar with the various workflow processes, having worked in post and VFX for many many years.   I often hear, ‘why do you want to do that?’. Translated, this is, ‘this works, do it this way’.  Eventually, it has to be locked, as deadlines or budget intervenes, but up to that time the ability to improve the story is paramount. Editors recut, trim, revise until the last moment. 

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

I'm just a sole animator,, so changes are not too difficult.but I believe that in professional animation projects everything is carefully planned in advance because changes afterwards are difficult.

I know that one of our forum members renders each camera separately for the complete scene and does any composing of the scene in the video editor.

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Thank you again for your insights. Valid work around points. However I believe that the ability to break in a scene, is such a tantalizing prospect, that it is worth pursuing. I have had experience working with software engineers, so I don’t think the concept is out of reach.  

With regard to the baking:
In the case of Hulk that was not necessary (that character also just had a motion clip applied). I tried all kinds of things to make this "editing" work and one of them was baking/flattening the animation layers, so I guess one of those "bakes" on Hulk is just a left-over from previous testing.

The box originally did not have an animation clip, just three key frames for different positions. Whether or not that needs to be baked depends on what you want. I wanted the animation to stop during the frames that I "inserted" (just as with the two characters); if you just move the key frames (without baking) then the interpolation between the key frames changes and the box would, in this case, move more slowly but continuously during those inserted frames.

it would seem a small step for reallusion to break the overall project.

Experience has shown that with software things which are supposed to be easy or a small step often are neither. When I did "break" my testing scene, iClone took a moment to process the "break" so it was doing something in the background that took a short but noticeable period of time.

It is necessary creatively to be able to continually edit, as elements such as camera moves, sound and music, revised reactions, will influence the Final Cut.

Well, if you've been working so far with footage shoot on video or film, then you probably have had to work in the editing process with what you have (I understand re-shoots are expensive and not always possible, and, if no suitable coverage is available, then compromises have to be made). In 3D, you have more flexibility and "re-shoots" may be less expensive, but a tool like iClone may not be ideal for editing a complicated scene "in camera". Before you commit to such a workflow, I would suggest to also explore alternatives, you could, for example use a copy of the scene for a changed reaction shot and just change and re-render those frame that you need and edit them in during post (i.e. in the video NLE), instead of changing the entire scene file and re-rendering it as a whole.

Also, I think frame-exact "editing" in iClone is a lot more cumbersome then doing the same thing in an NLE. With just those few things in my test scene, I already found it difficult to mark everything and get it to "move"; if you have 20 or so individual tracks, it's probably going to be harder still. In fact, I was somewhat surprised to get it to work at all. With that said, it is not something I'd look forward to doing on a regular basis or with more complex scenes.

Finally, a complex scene in iClone may no longer play back in the viewport in real time (thus possibly require rendering the scene out first) and therefore make judging the timing more difficult if you want or need to be that precise.


My YouTube channel: Animations made with Cinema 4D and Reallusion Products

Thank you Nirwana for your test. Not sure why you had to bake the box or hulk, as charlotte works without baking.   I am away from my studio, but will test later. I don’t want to light or switch in another program, as it seems to defeat the benefit of iClone.
it would seem a small step for reallusion to break the overall project.  Or maybe we are missing the solution.

thank you AutoDidact for your comments.
my background is directing and editing drama and comedy. It is necessary creatively to be able to continually edit, as elements such as camera moves, sound and music, revised reactions, will influence the Final Cut.
the ability in iClone to have control of EVERYTHING, is amazing, and will inevitably require changing the timing. 

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

The OP's question was not, as I understood it, whether it is possible to tweak the timing, etc. on the level of an individual animation layer, but how to easily (!) move around a ton of animation layers for character animation, camera motion, dialogue/audio, facial animation, lighting, etc. all at once by, say 120 frames, to the right from the current play-head position. Is that something iClone can easily do (without having to flatten animation clips/tracks, breaking up individual layers/motion clips, and so on)?

[Quite a number of moments later...]

After some testing I can answer my own question: yes, it seems possible, but IMO not all that easily and it also seems to require prep work (such as flattening animations into clips, which the OP does not want to do):
I set up a small test scene with a a female dancer, an animated Hulk character and a simple box moving around a little (that animation needed to be flattened). I also gave the Hulk a few words to say via TTS. Then I selected everything animated, cut up all layers with with just one "break" command (i.e. one mouse click) and moved everything some frames to the right (see screenshot). NB: I did not test this with camera moves, lighting changes, the camera switcher, etc. because I'm not familiar with these things in iClone since I do all that in C4D.

iClone even cut up and moved the audio file and viseme track. To be frank, I had not expected that; iClone surprised me, so kudos to Reallusion.

@AutoDidact
Seems like I was at least partially wrong with my earlier statement.

NB: the screenshot is an attachment because of the resolution.


My YouTube channel: Animations made with Cinema 4D and Reallusion Products

One solution would be. 

I should add that I find the interface is very good otherwise, I am not a experienced animator, I come from an editing & VFX Background, and find the workflow is intuitive and with the ability to interface with blender unreal, et al very good.  Hopefully I can source people with deeper  expertise when I go into production.