Excellent post.

I am a newbie's newbie to iClone, and so far I've been hacking and experimenting before I get serious and begin learning it in a more methodical way. I dragged a sound onto a project and wanted to change when it occurred, but couldn't find it anywhere. After exhausting all the places I could think to look for it, I decided to search the forum and found this thread.

My sound was attached to my house! But I can see where this would be useful, if you wanted a squeaky door or something.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

:)

Being a noob to most of Iclones features, I take a different approach to sound. That may be because I started with machinima instead of 'real' animation but...

After rendering, I strip ALL sound from my iclone video in my video editor. (Videopad Pro) I then re-introduce the sound on the soundtracks of my editor. (it has unlimited sound tracks) By doing this I'm able to control every aspect of the sound from morphing (for a monster voice) to volume, pitch, and blending. To fine tune sounds I use Audacity (free version because I'm broke most of the time) and Power Sound Editor Free. (for the same reason. :P) These are the tools I used in machinima (where I could have between 100 and 200 different sound bites in one 10 minute video.) and I am very comfortable with them. 

I've found it much easier to get a more balanced soundtrack using these tools as opposed to iclones tracks. (I'm not slighting Iclones sound tracks, just saying that, for me, this approach works better and faster.) I also find that it is much easier to blend multiple and complicated soundtracks (music, voice, and special fx sounds) so one doesn't over-ride the other.

Don't get me wrong, I love Iclone but, for me to do sound right, I feel I have to have complete and uncomplicated control.

:cool: pete 

76% of original size (was 664x19) - Click to enlarge
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I didn't start in machinima, but I do that too Pete. Except for character voices where I want the animation on the face, all other sound is not introduced in iclone, but rather put into the video audio tracks in my editing program. Like you said--lots more ability to customize it that way.

Tami
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"Real" animation would take the same approach: keep it separate.

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I really like the features with talking avatars and the ability to do viseme in IClone, but I have also run into loosing track of some sounds and all my music plays in something I would call mono because I can't tell if something originates from the left or the right from IClone playback. (Which gives a syncro problem here and there. Also it's rather "sad" to listen to a "degraded" version while trying to syncro animations etc. to it.)

I don't think it's a local codec problem either. (Installed iClone on a Windows 8 laptop for extra render/speed and some pixel shading issues. Still mono.) - Can live with it, but...

It needs some quality check/caring on the realtime (sound) playout and in the interaction. It's almost perfect when you learn the do's and don'ts as in the above. I am quite satisfied with the render quality it produces.

It just occurred to me recently that always using the same spot of where to put the sound - it saves time not to chase around for the sound.

A hard earned tip, is to keep a copy of the final talking in a scene (sometimes for each avatar) and not only save the final mix of everything when one thinks it's all done.

That way it's possible to replace/adjust the music or replace the actor voices when one needs to.

Another tip which is more of a local slow pixel shader handling discovery on my cheap, but very loyal desktop computer - is to syncro sound in Quick Shading, not in Pixel Shading. It sort of buffer or backlog the audio.

http://www.youtube.com/user/elektron2kim?

:)

I do not consider machinima 'real animation', as I consider Iclone to be. In machinima it is all about compilation. You don't 'create' a movie as much as you 'compile' one. Stripping the game sounds was essential because many of the sounds were either misplaced for the story or of pretty bad quality. I honestly had no idea how the animators on this forum did it and it is comforting to know that the procedure is basically the same for both mediums. :D

:cool: pete

76% of original size (was 664x19) - Click to enlarge
http://www.youtube.com/user/peterblood50?feature=mhee