But having said that...

You can fade in/out the soud as a percentage of the sound's duration.  I don't have a screen shot since I'm not home.  But I faded in/out some background sound (like ocean waves) before, so I know there's a way.

I'll give a more detailed explanation later today (like 8 hours later, probably) if nobody else does it first.

ADDED...

Try doing some searches here ("Fade" or "Audio" or "Volume" or something like that).

https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/help/iclone5/Pro/

The page doesn't work correctly for me at the office.  I think the funcitonal portions are blocked by our dilligent network security policies.

I did a Search for "sound track" and clicked on the result "Performing with Sound Effects."

Here's a clip from that page...

Sadly you cannot keyframe the volume.

But if it's a 20-second sound, and you want it to fade in during the first 3 seconds, then 3 of 20 is 15%.  The max value is 50%.  No fade (in or out) can exceed half the clip's duration.

NLE stands for Non-Linear Editor, which is just a fancy term for video editing software.  I started with Pinnalce "Studio" software many years ago, and used it to edit home videos and videos of theater performances at my kids' high school.

Why use a video editor with iClone?

• Add titles and credits and overlay text
• Combine smaller projects into one larger one
• Many iClone projects are best done as 3 or more smaller iClone projects to minimize the complixity to improve performance and stability
• If you change scenes (locations) you will certainly use multiple iClone projects
• The video editor combines the output from those projects into a single movie
• The editor software will give you much more control over your sound
• Usually you can have multiple audio tracks (sound effects, music,things like that) and you can easily adjust the volume
• Post-rendering affects
• Some people adjust the color tone, or if they have fancy software, use their NLE to add things like motion blur
• Compositing
• Sort of like the "green screen" effect, you could add layers of stuff to your video.

There are advantages to completely muting your iClone audio and replacing it in your NLE.  It's more work, but for example... An avatar has "one volume setting" for the entire project.  You cannot make him louder and softer (like when he's near and far, or for dramatic effect).

SUGGESTIONS:

You can do some basic work with Windows Movie Maker.  It's FREE!!!  Then you will at least see "why" you might want one, but you'll probaby quickly out-grow it.

After that... well that's a whole new topic that's been covered before, and you'll get a ton of product recommentations.

REMEMBER:

Start simple.  Baby steps.  Don't let us overwhelm you.  :)

And have fun.  ;)

It's my pleasure.  I get so much help from others, it's always nice (and fun) to be able to help out when I can.  Don't worry, you'll be helping others soon enough.  More than once I've even seen a newbie help a veteran, simply because he stumbled across a creative way of doing something.

So you like to be overwhelmed?  Here's a tip for you... Audacity.

If you haven't already done so, download and install Audacity.  It's an excellent, and free, audio recording and editing tool.

I use Audacity for recording my voiceovers.  Then I can do noise reduction to get rid of background hum like from my computer fans or the air conditioning or furnace.  You can also add echo, or do some pitch changes and lots of cool stuff.

My Audacity workflow for iClone:

• I record a block of dialogue, usually repeating lines multiple times.  That's track #1.
• Then I copy it to track #2 and do my noise reduction (I always keep the original so I don't destroy anything).
• Next I copy each line to its own track.
• For each line, I pick out my favorite take, and export it to an MP3 file.
• Then in iClone, I import the mp3 file rather than doing the recording in iClone, and now I have nice, clean audio (with no hiss or hum that appears whenever my characters speak)

For bonus points, I could also put those voice-over lines into my NLE, replacing what I got from iClone, allowing my to further refine things.  I did that sometimes because it's hard to keep the volume consistent.  I could modify the volume again in Audacity, but then I'd have to put it back into iClone again, ruining any manual lip-syncing I did, and I'd have to re-render my video too.

I also use Audacity to cut and trim some of my music, especially when I use pre-existing music from CDs I've purchased.

So, yeah, at first it sounds like a lot of extra work, and I guess it is, but my last project was a big one and I gradually became convinced that's the best way to work.  Any audio in iClone can be considered temporary, used mainly to help you put the animation together.

Necessary?  No, not exactly.  Desirable?  Yes.  In the end, that gives you the greatest freedom and control.

You'll need a good naming scheme for all the files.  My 40-minute project had nearly 300 mp3 files for dialogue.  (I used lots of short clips.  Many were one sentence long, so that way it was easy to position them where I wanted.)  I also had a lot of music and some sound effects too.

No, you don't have to do all that tomorrow, but you did say you liked being overwhelmed. :P

Anyway... Take it one step at a time.  I know I still have miles and miles to go.  It's nice to have another traveling companion on the journey.

Over time you will find that you'll develop a workflow that "works". Having consistent file-naming to keep track of them is indeed part of it. There will be many files that make up a project!

Adobe Premiere Elements should be an adequate video editor to start with, as I believe it supports multiple audio and video tracks.

Audacity has a decent reverb built in, and I use that quite a lot. Not just for distance, but also to simulate room acoustics, where you add just a little reverb. Sometimes I put a dry and a wet version of a track in the video editor so that I can manipulate the proportions on the timeline to fit the image.

Sound is an important element of film (coming from a sound background I would say that of course...:P ), so it is worth your while to spend time on it.