I do have a programming background (C, C++, VB, php), but before I jump into python, I wanted to know if anyone is working on the few plug-ins that I'd like to see.

A Frame Rate Plugin (I don't understand why this isn't a part of iClone. It seems so simple, since not everyone is interested in video games)
Rates of  8fps, 12fps, 15fps, 23.976fps, 24fps, 29.98fps, 30fps, 48fps, 60fps, 120fps, 240fps or simply allowing the user to pick their frame rate.

A Jiggle Control Plug-in (I see this asked for all over the YouTube. A mixture of the Joint-Driven Morphs and SpringBones) could actually serve as the basis of this. To allow people to control bounce of body parts such as breasts, buttocks, legs, under arm, fatty necks, etc.

A Skin Interaction Plug-In: A plug in that gives a red border to the screen, or maybe a dot in the upper hand corner to show that a hand, finger, etc is intersecting with the base mesh. This helps to quickly fix errors where the model is intersecting with itself.

An accurate physics engine: again for those of us willing to wait. The engine would simulate cloth, soft dynamics, hair, etc and store (bake) the mesh data in a cache until the user deletes the cache. Right now iClone's engine is too "real time" and even when it takes it's time, the meshes don't simulate that accurately or crash. It would be nice to have something like Blender 2.8 has for those of us willing to wait.

I'm not sure if I can write these or not. I'm putting them out there for the programmers looking for something to program. I'd gladly pay for these, and I'm sure others would too. Especially the Frame Rate, Jiggle Dynamics, and Accurate Physics engine. It would also be nice if after loaded, these simply become a part of iClone and don't have to be setup or a button pushed every time someone loads iClone. This could be a possible moneymaker for those interested. There are a lot of filmmakers/storytellers who use this software, and this is what we need to make our productions better.

Thanks

Most common frame rates can be set before rendering the video if you export the file as AVI or, using the choice of animation film makers, image sequences. The 29.97 fps, there never was a 23.97 fps rate, can't be output for animation purposes and almost every animation film is rendered at 24 fps - even the greats at the Disney studios couldn't hand draw 29.97 frames of action.

iClone does not offer variable frame rates when exporting mpg, wmv, or mov (just a wrapper for mpg) because they use the totally crappy Microsoft encoders with a fixed almost NTSC 30 fps rate.

As for the rest of your wishes, it would be best for you to post them as suggestions on the Feedback Tracker. 


Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

You can't have higher frame rates than what's native in iClone (i.e., 60 fps). Motion clips will also be 60 fps at the most, so it is not clear where the data for higher frame rates would come from. It would also massively increase processing requirements and currently iClone is already struggling maintaining a workable frame rate in Preview mode. For filmmaking I see no advantage. It's puzzling to me that on the one hand some swear by 24 fps as the true cinematic frame rate, whereas others want higher and higher frame rates...:unsure:

Lower frame rates can already be set during rendering when using image sequences (the only sensible way to render). Non integer frame rates such as 23.976 and 29.98 are meaningless IMO as they would require dropping frames which is better taken care of by the NLE. 

EDIT: Gerry was quicker but at least doesn't contradict me...:P

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Thanks for the replys. I'm learning a lot about iClone and I really like the software.

I think for many filmmakers, we don't want to see 60fps. It's confusing to us when we are trying to line up our animations and shots. For example, the first animation I did I skipped every 5 frames, animating on 6, 12, 18, 24, 30th frame and so on. Why should it be like this? Why can't it just be at 24fps while I'm actually doing work, not just at render time. That's confusing. In After Effects/ Premiere/ Final Cut we can pick our frame rate. iClone should work the same. It might not seem important, but it really is to us. Like I said, I'd pay extra if the system could be set to choose my own frame rate which would affect physics, motion blur, etc because now instead of 60fps needed to be calculated, only 24 would need to be calculated. It would be nice if this was a future upgrade, but I didn't know if anyone had the skills to simply write it into iClone. I was even thinking of trying to get a small Kickstarter going to fund more Film Making Tools for someone who actually programmed a lot in python.

I'm not complaining about iClone or trying to step on anyone's toes. I think it's a great product, but it would be nice if it were a bit more user friendly to filmmakers. I've seen several posts where other filmmakers have asked similar questions and wanted similar things. I'm also sorry if this is the wrong place to talk about this. Like I said, I was thinking of trying to program some of this myself, but I wanted to see if anyone was working on something similar and just aid them.

Also film rate is 23.976 the final frame is only partially placed. It shows up over time, not just in one second. But when you watch the average movie, it is running at 23.976 frames per second.

It's also be nice for the numbers on the time line to reflect in seconds, not in frames.
So: 1, 2, 3, 4... 1SEC, 1, 2, 3, 4... 2SEC, etc

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76% of original size (was 661x19) - Click to enlarge

We have had many discussion about frame rate in the past and the basics are not going to change. The internal frame rate is fixed at 60 fps; this is the resolution of the animation engine if you will. iClone makes extensive use of motion clips which will also have their internal frame rate at 60 fps. This is a completely different situation from a film editor, which can fudge things to change the source frame rate into the target frame rate.

I  have used iClone for a long time and it hasn't bothered me. A second of animation is a second of animation, regardless of the frame rate. I time my audio in seconds, not in number of frames and I remain in sync.

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as a film maker myself. i have no issues with things like frame rates and such. as far as i am concerned, iclone does a really good job. 60fps is no issue for me.
of course then again.. i know how to use the tools in my video editing software with no denigration of quality. :P