Just picked up iClone about a week ago, and up until today I've been having a blast.

Now I need to work on putting clothes on some of my characters, so I've watched about five or six clonecloth tutorials.

I think I've learned this so far about clonecloth:

I have to buy Photoshop.
I have to buy a bunch of templates.

Otherwise, my characters will all be naked, apparently. Included with iClone, there appears to be exactly one set of pants for male characters, and one set of pants for female. Nothing else. There appears to be exactly zero tools within iClone to customize anything regarding actor clothing.

This can't be right, can it? What am I missing? I have absolutely no problems purchasing extra content for this product, and I've done so already. But am I really to understand that I have no options to clothe my characters aside from buying Photoshop and dozens of clonecloth templates?

Someone, set me straight here. :w00t:




Read "A Simple Scribe" on Kindle, a dark fantasy graphic novel made with iClone!    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0DGK4L

Errr, I'm powerless to make anybody straight, but the alternatives are not so bad.

You do not need to buy Photoshop. You can use GIMP, which is free. Or you can use Paint.NET, which is free. Or you can use ArtRage, which those crazy Brits like, and which is cheap. You might even be able to use Inkscape, which is free, even though it's a vector program, because it will make bitmaps.

You can radically customize the clothing on the "embedded"(included) characters by
loading bitmap pictures into the Diffuse, Opacity, Bump, and other channels for the Upper and Lower segments of the character. Using any of the programs just mentioned. Go into the Settings and give iClone the path to the graphics editor of your choice.


General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

Yes - Yet another aspect of Reallusion's Marketing methods that I find extremely distasteful.

I was in the same boat - Having purchased some beautifully dressed Characters from one of the Forum's Content Developers, I found I had to also purchase the relevant Cloth bases from Reallusion. Which I did, as individual items via Backstage. Cheaper in the long-run to purchase the Complete packages if you plan to  Dress a number of different Characters over a long period of time but expensive..

Props - You can make your own & Texture from within iClone Program, using 3D Blocks - But very time-consuming. Otherwise it's Google Warehouse - Free. Sketchup - Free, but you need Reallusion's 3DExchange for those - Not Free & expensive. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      REALLUSION FORUM ANNUAL PINHEAD COMMUNITY PROJECTS.

       New Pinhead Website & Project to be announced in September 2015

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Some of the Clone Cloth templates are free, and others cost around 500 to 1000 points to purchase at the store. (Equating I think, to about 5 to 10 bucks a piece.)

In the end, purchasing the templates are well worth it, because it will generally mean you can create whatever costumes you can dream up.

Another nice thing about the creation of clothes in iClone is you can actually take photographs of clothes and/or patterns, and apply them to the clothing meshes, resulting in some fairly photorealistic looking clothing. Ok....maybe not photorealistic, but very close.



"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

No and No is the answer to your questions above.

You don't need Photoshop and can use any image editor you like, including the free ones mentioned in the previous posts.

iClone4 itself comes with G3 CloneCloth Casual for both male and female avatars. Using this you can create many, many different outfits and styles. This is a great way to learn CloneCloth without needing to shell out any further money.

Once you are familiar with designing clothes for iClone4 you then have the option to purchase further clothing templates (like dresses, overcoats etc) to build up your wardrobe. A complete combo pack is available as well as the individual templates if you only want certain styles.

You can find the basics of using CloneCloth HERE to get you started.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

You can save the lower, upper, and shoes off of any character. If you have an Avatar selected, and you're on the "Lower" tab, click on the plus sign at the bottom of the panel where all of the pants are listed (left-side of the screen). This will add the current avatar's lower body to the Custom tab. That lower half can then be applied to another avatar (of the same generation (G1/G2/G3)).

Your selection of clothes is expanded with every new avatar that you have.

- Keith

I appreciate the replies.
I grabbed GIMP immediately, as suggested, and thanks for that Paumanok, because I didn't even know that existed. :D

If I may, and this will sound bad coming from a new member of the forums, but I'm a bit disheartened by the lack of free content produced by the community.

What do I mean by that? Well, I used to do a lot of modding for games, like Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, Oblivion, etc., as a method to tell stories. There was always an enormous supply of community produced content, free of charge. Someone would make a sword, or a set of armor, or a jungle landscape, or a dragon model, and would make it available for the community to use. As a modder, you could take those assets, produce a mod, and provide that, also free of charge, to the community. We all kind of worked together, in one way or another, to produce good content.

I don't see that a whole lot here in the iClone community. I see a lot of stuff up for sale, which is cool, but doesn't really further the community much.

I'm not trying to sound like a leech, but that's how creative communities work. I have no experience in Photoshop or with modelling or animation, but if I did, and I had stuff to produce, I'd sure have it out for everyone to use, and I'd be proud to see it in a movie someone made.
Right now, to complete my current iClone experiment, I either have to drop $100+ dollars to get the few assets I'd probably need, or learn how to design everything myself, from animations to clothing to props to landscapes.

That's a mighty steep learning curve before you even really get your feet wet.




Read "A Simple Scribe" on Kindle, a dark fantasy graphic novel made with iClone!    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0DGK4L

Thank you for your response, Peter. :)

It does seem to me though, that if your creation involves winter coats, or summer dresses, or something outlandish like a spacesuit, you're kind of out of luck. You basically have to make sure your story revolves solely around summer casual wear to avoid dropping a lot of extra money.

I was told by someone to avoid iClone, even though it was an excellent product, and the reason for this was that content to use within it was... sparse, at best, unless you had very deep pockets.

I'm loving iClone, but I'm beginning to understand where that concern was coming from. ;)




Read "A Simple Scribe" on Kindle, a dark fantasy graphic novel made with iClone!    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0DGK4L

Hello, sw00000p!

Yes, you're absolutely right.

However, unless I learn how to do it myself, I'll end up broke and living in your basement by spending all my money on props and clothes!




Read "A Simple Scribe" on Kindle, a dark fantasy graphic novel made with iClone!    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0DGK4L

Have you looked in the "Forum Freebies" forum?
https://forum.reallusion.com/Forum33-1.aspx

- Keith