Is It really difficult to do high level videos with iClone?

Is It really difficult to do high level videos with iClone?

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By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

There has been a demonstration of a video from Unity called Adam Episode 2 and I do believe it really demonstrates the high capabilities of applications like Unity.
I have tried using Unity as a replacement from iClone a long time ago but I ended up giving up on it because I found it too difficult for myself. I came back to iClone because for me I find it much easier.
Although I have never tried doing anything of high level yet and now I am wondering if iClone really is too difficult to be able to create videos that look like that.
All my years with iclone have been focussing mostly on learning its abilities as well as creating models but I have seen plenty of other peoples videos that look great to me and I have made plenty of video's for personal enjoyment although I never worried about them being high level. Just high enough for me to enjoy watching them in order to save time.
Anyway I am going to try doing something similar to that Adam video within iClone to see for myself how difficult it is to do something of that level.
I shall soon find out if it is capable and more importantly, am I capable.

Anyway enough of that.
I finally got iClone 7.3 and CC3 working well on my computer late this afternoon and here is my fist attempt at this video. It took me a whole 4 hours to throw this together and I found it really easy. Its certainly not to the level I want to try and achieve yet though.
For one thing I really haven't used popcorn particles effects much until I started this so I have some learning and experimenting to do in order to get the fires something like as good as they are in the other video. I believe I will be able to achieving everything else because they are similar to things I have already done in iClone, just not to that level of characters. So particles is what I am focussing on most of all for now. The whole lot of this video at the moment is only using 1.6 GB of my 11.1GB video memory available so I believe I will be able to increase the number of robots in the scene considerably in future efforts of this video. Oh and the music is me playing my guitar. Something strange happened with how Audacity recorded it but I though it kind of fits robots ???? anyway I just left it as it sounds for now.

By mtakerkart - 6 Years Ago

Hi Delerna ,

I suggest to see how Adam episode one was made. It's really not a drag'n'drop process Wink

I can assure you you can make with Iclone really descent render but rarely with only 3 lights and a set Wink

Good lighting need some works with lot of lights , a good knowledge of GI , IBL , etc....
The only missing feature for me in Iclone is : Volumetric lights. This features gives artistic added value to the scene.
But for now I get all I need to build very cool scene.
For character animation part , Iclone is wayyyyy farther than the other Tongue

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

Nearly bed time for me but had a quick look at that video. Yes I will check it out further for methods etc. Thanks.
At the moment I need to focus on popcorn but I am sure Im going to pick it up pretty quick. It didn't take much effort to do what I did in this first shot.
I just threw them together to see what would happen so didn't really try to make a realistic fire yet. I need to do more experimenting to get ideas how to mix them to achive it.
Then I will be working on the robots to make them look better and then the scenery. As I'm doing all this I will be thinking about storylines I might use. Not doing it exactly like Unitie's.
Just looking at it as a guide for where I might go....or might not go

Oh yes, and you are another person who I have seen do some good stuff

By justaviking - 6 Years Ago

iClone has always been architected towards a SINGLE USER making a movie. A lot of the features needed for a TEAM to work effective have not been there. With Alembic import and other features, this might be slowly changing.

How many people worked on the Adam video? Two? Three? Probbaly more like a dozen, each specializing on script, character design, facial animation, body animation, lighting, camera work, editing, sound, directing, wardrobe... Even if you spend a year on a project, it's difficult for a one-man shop to compete with a team of specialists.

I'm not saying iClone is perfect. iClone's renderer is long overdue for an overhaul. But the biggest shortcoming, speaking from personal experience, is most often the individual, not the software. To be clear, I mean no offense to anyone here. Some people do very good work. But it's simply not practical for one person to compete with an entire production crew.

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

lol .... Delerna ... the 'iClonians' are taking over !!!! but wait .....no, - not all ... we have a casualty --- oh dear - he (she, it) never made it !!! ....lol Tongue

Well let none of us be that casualty !!!
(nice bit of guitar there by the way...) Smile

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

There is one very important factor to consider when comparing

Iclone to a real time environment like unity or unreal( and Soon blender EEvee)

@Delerna you had to actually render your video and was stuck with whatever choices you made on lighting an camera angles before the rendering started.

Unity is a real time "playback' engine, giving you the ability to make changes to lighting and camera angles WITHOUT re- rendering to see your changes.

However your scene 3D character assets have to have been pre-animated

( somewhere else) and all of the rendering and lighting Data "baked" to a MASSIVE GPU Cache.

The obvious payoff is the realtime Camera& ligting editing at final quality happening in front of you more like a Live action movie director.

With IRay of the older Indigo engine you have "previews" but not the realtime feedback you get with unity &unreal.yet you still have to invest in a pricey GPU.

A really long Video but worth the watch to truly see what I mean

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Autodidact >>>> "Unity is a real time 'playback' engine, giving you the ability to make changes to lighting and camera angles WITHOUT re- rendering to see your changes. "
Exactly .... that's creative freedom ....

.... "Camera & ligting editing at final quality happening in front of you more like a Live action movie director"
Again .... that's creative freedom ....

@mtakerkart ... Yes - that guy's pretty amazing; it's only the UI of Unity that's a bit of a turn off, but I guess once you knew your way round and where everything's hidden - you'd be able to create extremely quickly ...
And like you say - with volumetric lights (and also better DOF Wink

) - you could almost bypass a compositor or editor ---- This is why iClone has so much potential to improve....
iClone's the leader in animation - if only it was serious about rendering - (even, as others have said, a proper render 'plugin') ....

By Dr. Nemesis - 6 Years Ago

Iclone rarely makes big updates to it's renderer.
For almost 10 years VFX and DOF were subpar for quality productions. PBR was such a welcome addition, then the DOF fixes and PopcornFX, along with the F Curve editor is what allowed me to pick this up again as a pro.
HOWEVER in terms of visual quality it'll always lag behind Unity and Unreal. Their markets demand higher visual quality and simply REQUIRE greater efficiency. I remember when I first watched Adam I thought "There isn't enough VRAM on earth for Iclone to have a scene like this."

On the other hand Iclone is very much designed for the solo artist. Adam wasn't a solo project (not by a long shot) and required WAAAY more technical know how than anything I clone does. Iclone (despite it's faults) is beautifully designed in that it makes things as easy as possible for the solo artist so you don't have to worry about the technical as much.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, for 95% of Icloners the technical capabilities of this program aren't the limiting factor. Most Icloners don't know how to frame a shot, what makes a good edit, what makes an effective camera movement, what makes good character animation (the list goes on and on). Without having a basic grasp of these things, technical power doesn't mean anything.

Edit: PS for those wondering how many people made that episode, just watch the end credits. Lots of names, all highly skilled in their specific areas. The first Adam film took a team of 8 people 6 months to make.This is the real reason Iclone doesn't have its own Adam equivalent. Not so much because of it's renderer.

By 3d guy1 - 6 Years Ago

This is an interesting experiment.   Thanks, but...

But the results are a pale imitation of the original.     It looks like a typical iclone production.   As some one said, like
a ten year old game.

beyond the Renderer, what issues could be addressed?

THE LIGHTING. -          I recently posted, asking if their WERE LIGHTING HELPERS. for iclone?    Vendor created, after market Tools such as the ones available for REND, OR DAZ.

The general reaction I got was, that I was a clueless newb, who didn't know what he was doing.   Ie;   Iclone pros / veterans are whizzes with the stock tools. No specific tools would be needed or offered.

Yet, here we see an Iclone " pro" / vendor with the need for such lighting tools.

By justaviking - 6 Years Ago

@Dr. Nemesis - I think your avatar would look awesome wearing a Viiking helmet. You and I are certainly on the same wavelength today.

By Dr. Nemesis - 6 Years Ago

Lol! So true.

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

nAs a disclaimer: I dont wish to foment any Anti Reallusion sentiment here

or have people unfairly trash Iclone particularly in light of the issues with the recent Software releases

I was using Poser (ARRRGGGHH!!!) as my primary Character animation tool, before finally migrating from the Mac OS to windows and Iclone 5.5.

Right now IMHO Iclone pro is only exceeded by the Mighty Autodesk Motionbuilder in terms of Character animation & retargeting and this is only because I am fairly certain that Motionbuilder can do Ragdoll physics for action scenes.

Not everyone has the same final output quality targets and some wish to only tell stories through character animation. and for this Iclone is the Best and fastest solution.

I am an outlier here,

I believe in using a multi-tool pipeline to achieve my creative objectives.

and as professional animator ,who does paid client work ,I dont have the luxury of waiting for certain feature to be added to any particular tool someday, which is why I use some much Older software.

Dont give me what I want and I stop upgrading your tool and spend with those who do ...nothing personal just business

There are alot of render engines available and Iclone can export animated Characters to all of them in some form or another.( Alembic,FBX etc)

Reallusion has their priorities just as Daz or Maxon does.

IMHO we should not get angry at them if their priorities do not match ours

There are many ways to light Europe Cool

By 3d guy1 - 6 Years Ago

the main problem, with the lighting, for me- It emphasizes how FAKE everything is.

This is not in line with the goals of the original artists. So it's a failure for
me.

The plan should have been thrown out and reworked. IMHO { tools anyone? }

I see this type of look, is so common to iclone artists. I find it very uniformed, inartistic, and lazy.

By mtakerkart - 6 Years Ago

Hehe!! Again the "Artistic" thing. For now lot of the detractors of what is a "professional" look means realistic. Realistic lights , realistic textures , realistic motions , realistic camera mouvement ,
realistic shader , realistic everything . The only artistic field for those kind of product are only in the design of sets/characters/clothes/creatures.
Artistic could be more generalist. I see lot of cg series on netflix with unrealistic look with a very artistic ambience.

By animagic - 6 Years Ago

I usually stay of these render discussions, as they are long in the tooth, but for those who don't see the improvements made in iClone 7 I feel really sorry. I find GI an amazing addition, but you have to work at it.

I have heard so many times that iClone looks like an ancient game engine whatever improvements have been made that by now it just feels like a comment to cut off any further exchange of ideas.

EDIT: I just saw mtakerkart's comments, and I'm with him: I find "artistic" more interesting than "realistic".

By 3d guy1 - 6 Years Ago

Unfortunately when I think of Iclone - I think of the standard " Iclone look ".

Inartistic, amateur hour!

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

Like animagic and what others have said I also am more into artistic than realistic. Actually my preference is for the video's to look cartoony. Make it look good but still obviously not real.
I also agree with what Justaviking stated, realistic videos are a huge work amount for a single person. Although I used to be into game making before I discovered iClone and got into video making. I find making videos much easier than making games and yet when I was into making games it was often stated that it was too big a project for a single person or small teams to make high level games. And yet I now hear statements that game engines are making it more and more possible for single, or more likely small teams, to create high level games.

Anyway, yes I agree, designing everything for a realistic video of my own is a huge task and its something I am never going to get serious about.
And as said, i'm really not interested in realism. If I was I would be filming real people doing real things....easier that trying to make 3D realistic.
I as one person actually rarely enjoy watching realistic professional 3D videos. Why I got into making 3D videos was because they are cartoony and I can make it do whatever I want.

But generating a replication of some of this video. No that's just copying something that's already and I am now wondering if it really is too difficult to replicate how that looks in iClone.
I know my first one isn't I wasn't trying yet. I am trying to get the fires to look like in that video. That's what I am focussing on first.

Oh and thanks for the demonstrations of how to do it in Unity. But that's not going to help me do it in iClone. I need to work with iClones functions to try and achieve its final look....as best as I can anyway.

By Darren01 - 6 Years Ago

I've seen some really top notch productions created with iClone. I think the software is very capable, but it really comes down to the skill of the user.
I'm the first to admit, anything I create doesn't look photorealistic. I'm really not skilled up enough to understand fully all the lighting and effects.
However I am learning slowly, and my scenes are improving as a result. I have discovered fairly recently, how important good lighting is to bring dimension and realism to a scene. I always heard people here talk about how important it is, but I still underestimated it.

Problem (well not really a problem) is that the majority of iClone users are very much just entry level animators. Most of us have little to no experience with producing animations apart from iClone. iClone, by nature attracts a lot of entry level users because it is so easy to create a basic animation. Many users aren't motivated enough to explore it's full capabilities, they just want to dress up a character, create a basic scene, a bit of music/sound and animate (often using pre-set animations). So the majority of iClone productions will be very amateur.

But as said, I have seen some very impressive productions from some of our advanced users here. iClone is very capable, however the emphasis on how realistic it is, really comes back to the user and their level of skill/effort

By Alan_M - 6 Years Ago

It is possible to do high end work with iClone now, but you have to accept a level of pain to deliver content that looks really good. (Just like on many platforms)

Both Unity and Unreal have better real-time engines from the look point of view but what most people handily forget is that it takes a lot of work to create the assets to put into those engines that make things look amazing. iClone is no different, if you put a badly textured asset into iClone it will look rubbish, if you put a really well textured asset in it will be a whole different story. Let's not get into lighting etc just yet.

Why do I say that Unity and Unreal have better engines? Well purely down to some of the things that can be rendered in the viewport in real-time that are not available in iClone. Another case in point is Blender 2.8 Eevee. I have spent some time playing with the alpha and Eevee supports volumetrics, iClone does not. Eevee has multiple light-probes for reflections, iClone does not. Having said that, iClone has VXGI, Eevee on the other hand does not.

So at the end of the day each application has features that another one does not have and visa-versa. Because iClone comes from a real-time background most long-term users want the real-time nature for everything. However, those of us who have come from a production environment realise that sometimes if you want a really nice image you have to wait for it. That is why I am happy to see Iray appear for iClone as it fixes the serious issues with Indigo when it comes to animation rendering. I know it is not perfect for some, but if you optimise it like Daz3D users have learnt to do, yes i am a Daz3D user, you can render some amazing animations and images.

The one thing iClone does for the individual user is make things easy for them to make a movie with minimal support, you do not need an army of animators and creators to use iClone to make a CG film. I always head straight to iClone and Character Creator to get a fully rigged asset ready to go to drop motion onto. Cannot do that in any other application. And as I have discovered I transferred my own CC avatar into iClone and just used Iray instead of real-time PBR and did nothing to the asset, it just looked great, with SSS and skin textures looking amazing with the standard automatic conversion defaults. That is what I really love about Reallusion Products, they are always trying to make it easier to make content with as little complexity as possible.

Also, please do not get hung up on realism, or photoreal, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes the best movies are those that have a stylistic or artist look as opposed to those that go for realism. Don't get me wrong, sometimes your job requires a real look, but that is the nature of real-world projects. If you are working on your own movie, short film or episodic web show then it is down to you to decide the look you are aiming for. We do not all need photoreal/realism.

So, on a final note. Just like with any product, you need artist and technical talent. The better you know the tool you have chosen to work with, then the more impressive your end product produced using that tool will be.

I have a lot of time for iClone in my professional work and even more so with the access to all the different motion capture solutions. Keep in mind, I do not know of any other platform that offer access to so many cost effective mo-cap applications than iClone. Lots of plug-ins to consider but in my opinion that is no bad thing.

By Dr. Nemesis - 6 Years Ago

*Sigh.
This realism vs cartoonish argument is a distraction from the more fundamental problem. It isn't about that (AT ALL).
Regardless of what you prefer there are still basic skills that 98 percent of people don't attempt to gain.

Cinematography, staging, general character animation, editing, basics of lighting, etc.
These are the base level concepts and they don't belong to a realistic or cartoony camp, they're universal to both.

Delerna (10/1/2018)

And as said, i'm really not interested in realism. If I was I would be filming real people doing real things....

But you were attempting to recreate a scene from Adam...
Again, Iclone's technical capabilities aren't yet the limiting factor for this task.

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

but it really comes down to the skill of the user

Here here. I totally agree with that statement.
I'm a very high experimenter so not sure my skill will be high enough. But I shall soon find out

By mtakerkart - 6 Years Ago

@Delerna

I need to work with iClones functions

That's what I did and never was frustated Tongue

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

I made some comment on this forum that i wouldnt be willing to purchase the Iray plugin for Iclone 7 , but from reading Alan_M posts i am beginning to change my mind . For example if this iray plugin can give similiar results as the one in Daz then for sure i would purchase it . I somehow have become influenced from reading other people posting that iray rendering plugin is mainly to sell Nvidia cards and i do have a 1080 gtx ti . Also i realize that i have not worked much in Iclone 7 for some time as i had trouble with the font sizes being too small which is now fixed. And that some of the reasons why i dont get the quality of rendering that i desire is likely as much my own fault for not having developed the skill. So what i should really say is that my results of rendering in Iclone 7 remind me of video games of ten years ago , but not because that is the case for skilled users of Iclone but because i am not skilled . And that I should not base my results on the rendering quality and assume that everyone gets the same as me .

By Alan_M - 6 Years Ago

musicaz (10/1/2018)

An offline renderer of course does not suit everyone, especially if you are used to a real-time/near real-time response. I spent a lot of time exporting animated assets from iClone into Blender for rendering in Cycles. That process too has just got a whole lot easier with the release of Character Creator 3, you still need to replace the shader tree if you want the principled shader, but if you want an import and hit render option it is there now and pretty rock solid.

As to Iray, I have used it a lot in Daz Studio for quick and dirty animations as its output produces a lovely look with the defaults, giving you bloom and lens aberration that helps an image really feel like it was a photo taken with a camera. I found Indigo a let down, it was great for stills but for animation it was a disaster, the .igs format which is effectively a scene description language like .mi files and RenderMan .rib made it massively time consuming to get animations. One scene I had took over an hour just to export the .igs files for each frame generating 20GB of data on disk, and that was before I could even start rendering. So, yes, for me having access to Iray in iClone and CC3 makes a big difference to that pipeline. It wont suit everyone, because the render times on complex scenes can climb very, very quickly, but on lighter scenes it works really well, just like in Daz.

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/56134d45-3cff-4c16-95ed-a1c9.jpg

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/2c44ceaf-db85-4b5b-a1ae-5e7f.jpg

Notice the massive difference between rendering with my old 8-core CPU and the GTX 1080. Certainly optimised for GPU rendering without a doubt. And if you use the Batch Renderer instead of Preview you can shave 10 minutes of the CPU render time and the GPU render time drops to 50 seconds. I did nothing to this CC2 character other than load it into iClone 7.3, tweak the lighting and hit render.

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Hi Alan! .... Let me say I'm so glad you're posting your comments ... You have valuable experience we can learn from ....
I posted a 'comparison' image on the 'showcase yourself' thread here, which shows that it's possible to create a 'comparable' render with a X4 timeframe iRay to iClone. This is somewhat encouraging. It did however require the use of 'de-noise' to get down to that figure.
● iClone 11 seconds per frame (with ALL the render enhancements switched on)
● iRay 45 seconds per frame (50 iterations, de-noise ON starting at iteration 48)
These were for a 1080p image rendered on a GTX-1070.

The 'only' downside was that the 'de-noiser' (on 'shorter' iteration runs) tends to remove all the 'detail' from the face regardless of setting ...
I'd be interested to know the number of iterations you used to produce your images here - and did you use the 'denoiser'?

By Alan_M - 6 Years Ago

sonic7 (10/2/2018)

Hi Alan! .... Let me say I'm so glad you're posting your comments ... You have valuable experience we can learn from ....

The 'only' downside was that the 'de-noiser' (on 'shorter' iteration runs) tends to remove all the 'detail' from the face regardless of setting ...
I'd be interested to know the number of iterations you used to produce your images here - and did you use the 'denoiser'?

Thank you for your very kind comment, I appreciate it.

As to the de-noiser, no, I did not use it. I always try to get good results first without going for the automatic clean-up tools. If you have a descent amount of light then you can avoid using the de-noiser and as you have pointed out, it removes detail from the image if not used properly. It is a tool that can save you but you can of course use a de-noiser in an external application, in my case DaVinci Resolve Studio. The later approach can be more flexible as once you have baked your de-noise into the image you cannot do a great deal about it. Sure you can add noise and grain back, but you cannot easily restore missing detail.

I will go post the full four test images I created over in the thread you just highlighted. Should have done that before, thanks for reminding me.

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

Hi thanks for posting those comparison renders& specs

As with the Daz studio version of IRay,

The render times look quite reasonable for renders of single,bald people in

bright Daylight,without any of reflective or Emissive surfaces or

Glass with caustics and no major lateral or vertical camera movement.

For those of use who are into Sci-fi stories that will have alot of technology

and machinery.androids with reflective metals and glowing elements,night

time shots,Dynamic camera moves and multiple Characters in some shots..with motion blur.

Well.. This is where You will find the performance of brute force path tracers

Like IRay falling off of a cliff unless you render separate elements in alpha channeled layers to be composited in Post.

Now granted you should be rendering for compositing in VFX heavy projects anyway.

However I have yet to see any IRay animation renders of more than a few

seconds with the types of scene complexity Described above.

To say nothing of entire short Films of five minutes or more.

All of the RL WIP Videos showcasing IRay, are the typical Daz Studio style still shots mostly
featuring attractive young, Ideal BMI ,white girls.

That is fine however Daz inc. has already captured that demographic of "one

frame" still portrait artists.

If anyone has some complex scene animations with IRay to share along with

Machine specs/render times, I would be quite interested to see them.

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Hi Auto ..... We're a tad limited at the moment, since this 'initial' release of iRay is currently only active inside of Character Creator (stills only).
Sometime in the final quarter of 2018, with an iClone 7.3x release, we'll be able to let loose on some animation.
Like you say, render times using studio 'stills' is no indication of *animation performance* ..... - but we live in *hope* .....

By Alan_M - 6 Years Ago

AutoDidact (10/2/2018)

If anyone has some complex scene animations with IRay to share along with

Machine specs/render times, I would be quite interested to see them.

Yes, as pointed out in the body of some of my previous posts as soon as you get into production rendering you have to accept that it takes time to render good images and animations. It does not matter if it is Iray or V-ray or any of the other many renderers that are out there (There are a lot to choose from these days). They all take time to render images that contain all the good stuff like refraction, caustics, reflections and of course motion-blur to name but a few. A heavy scene in iClone is going to be a heavy scene in any application. If you create a large detail sci-fi cityscape and throw the odd character in for good measure then your render times are going to be entertaining to say the least. The only major difference between iClone rendering in Iray on a GPU and the likes of 3DSmax and Maya doing the same, is the time it takes to push the assets to the graphics card. Some applications are better at this than others.

When I used to do a lot of production rendering a few years back I had a simple personal yardstick. Basically if a single frame took more than 15 minutes to render then I would start to cry. (OK maybe not!!). At that point I would start to look for cheats and optimisations to get the render times down. So, I was typically looking for 4 frames an hour on a single PC and would then ramp up the number of PCs in the farm to aim for getting 1 second of material per hour.

Anyone who says they would not wait as long as 15 minutes for a render is not living in the real World when it comes to complex off-line rendering. All you have to do is ask a few architectural visualisers how long they wait for their lovely still images of living rooms etc and I think you will find they will typically let those renders run all night to create just one high-res frame.

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Yes Alan, I've been 'mentally preparing' myself for longer render times once animation is possible.
I'm currently seeing sub 1 minute renders (1080p) on a 'single character' - no set - no added lighting etc etc.
And I'm saying to myself "Steve - be prepared for an X8 fold increase in render time" once the sets and lighting are factored in .....

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

good comments, discussions, tips, suggestions and reminders going on here.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

I bought iClone about a year ago as I wanted a film studio in my bedroom to compete with everyone and anyone, you know Hollywood, Bollwood, BBC whatever. I also wanted to produce stuff real quick. If you're gonna be ambitious might as well make it real big, nothing to lose eh!

It hasn't worked out that way as initially iclone was a nightmare probably due to computer driver issues (AMD 1700 processor) and iclone 7s initial instability (iclone 6.5 worked perfectly).

Now everything seems to be working well (iclone 7.2) but I have hit 2 problems. My lack of skills and maybe iclones limitations. The skills I am working on and we shall see. I am getting better but its a process that cannot be rushed, a lot of practice, playing, discovering, tutorials and maybe luck that you discover certain things that work? As for the product I have no regrets in buying it as I think I would have had to learn many applications to get the same results as I'm getting now and given how hard I have found this process, that was never going to happen.

The discussion is informative as I am barely getting to grips with iclone let alone how other products work. From what I can see of how iclone has progressed over the years one day it might be possible for one person to produce something realistic in a reasonable time frame. For instance iclone 7 seems to be a big improvement over iclone 6 in terms of final quality. There is also the question of improvements in graphics cards, I think a war is now starting between nVidia , Radeon and Intel so even though I don't have much time for war something real good might pop out of it.

Mr Delema, I like the fact you posted your work as I want to see what others are doing. It is limited as I know you are aware but after 4 hours a start. I will be interested to see how it turns out.

Alan M, your knowledge of the industry is rather informative, I think I actually bought iClone partly because I saw you advertising a beginners iclone course in which you said nothing compares with its ease of use, or something like that. I bought the course and have worked through half of it. Very detailed, very useful, I hate courses and that sort of learning but I have realised it has to be done so I will likely do the rest.

Slightly off topic so back to business. I have rarely seen anything in iclone that is photo realistic, not a full production anyway but I have had glimpses of it, maybe a scene in something. Can anyone point me in the direction of something as I would like to know what I am working towards / what is possibel or will continue to fumble along slightly in the dark.

In the spirit of sharing her is what I have manged

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfP2FARQ4uc

I think the TV studio at the beginning and the end shows some promise in terms of realism. The curves were made in Blender as the basic shapes in iclone were not suitable, it took me months. As for the rest some of the cartoony stuff works well and the animation is a start but needs a lot of work, that's what I am taking seriously now. I also discovered a LUT which I applied generously which improved the colour enormously making it not so faded. The nature scenes are OK but have a false feel which is most evident in the first one. I could go on but I am sure others will see the deficiencies but overall I am amazed at the end result. Whether or not I can improve it we shall see, I think the answer is alone its a no no but hey, I think I am beginning to have fun so who cares.

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

@Andrew .... your last comment >>>> ... I think the answer is alone its a no no but hey, I think I am beginning to have fun so who cares.... <<<<
Do you mean 'creating alone'?

By Lamias - 6 Years Ago

Do you guys honestly think that a team of iClone experienced users could create something like Adam in a few months, using the IC renderer?

Because I don't, but I would like to see evidence that support the opposite (maybe a video showcasing the boundaries of IC or something like that).

I also can't accept that Adam looks like this because of lighting. In IC7 we have the ability to create infinite lights. Why hasn't anyone come even close to re-creating unity renders? Are all Unity users pros and we are the noobs? Tongue

I also don't think it's about skill. I believe that most of us here (and first of all myself) need to learn very much to be called "good", and we need to stop thinking that throwing things into the viewport will create a quality render.
But even if we learn shot framing, tempo, cinematography etc, and even if we improve our technical skills, the renders will still look cartooney. Maybe the viewer will be content with what he saw, and maybe he will be entertained, but they certainly won't say that the resulting images were realistic. (When I say realistic I mean Unity realistic, not photo-realistic like Arnold or VRay, let's not get carried away).

IC native renderer has been the same since IC(don't know which, but old). Only minor improvements have been made. Isn't it time to be upgraded? Or at least choose another renderer and not iRay which frightens me because it will probably need around 10 minutes for each frame, and this will make it a redundant feature for those of us who want to make films.

Let me explain what I am talking about.

This is the video of Kevin.S (AnimateMyArt on Youtube) which is one of the greatest videos that showcase the power of IC. Even though the results are incredible (and for sure very far from what I can achieve), they are still not realistic. Look below for a comparison between some still shots from IC (4k) and the CC3 WIP 2 video, which talks about game engines.

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/fae93ce6-dff3-499d-b45f-2d01.jpg

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/fc54b3dc-07e2-4c46-9ff4-e068.jpg

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/1102a967-4020-4a91-afa1-9978.jpg

You understand IMMEDIATELY which one is IC and which one is Unity. I don't see the lighting as a difference. I see the meshes being illustrated and depicted differently. Unity's renderer is more coherent, more structured. Iclone is more cartooney.

To Kevin: My friend if you are seeing this, I am sorry to be using your video like this and if you have a problem I will remove my post altogether. It's just that your video is hands down the best one I have seen in terms of quality and I would like to showcase that the tools put limits to us, and it's not just a matter of skill (which you have plenty). Thank you. Smile

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

Andrewlargin
You bought iClone a year ago, hey, for me that's not a bad effort. You made me watch it all and I even smiled a several times.
Some good music too.

Money.....its a gass….take it out in both hands and.....make a stash. Or whatever the actual words are.
Had me dancing my head anyway

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

@Lamias .... you're right ..... I can see what you're saying - at the end of the day the 'Render Engine' will place the work in a distinctive "camp".....
No matter what skill level (though skill IS still important) - but none-the-less, the final 'stamp' will be the Render Engine Stamp.
Which is why I'm *hoping like crazy* iRay will prove workable - I know - yes - it'll 'take forever' to render but if you're putting months of work into a project anyway - what's another couple of weeks? ....

So Lamias --- how would you *rate* iRay (forgetting it's 'speed') - how would you rate it's 'Quality'?.....

By Lamias - 6 Years Ago

Yes, skill is extremely important, I can't stress that enough. But for me, it's not just a matter of skill. I wish it was, because getting better would depend only on myself and not on external factors.

I haven't evaluated personally iRay yet, because I am too afraid. Many users reported problems when they upgraded and I preferred not to spoil a project I have been working on for 3 months. Also I don't have the time currently.

From what I have seen though, I would say that the quality is probably good enough for me. What holds me back though is the relation between quality and render times. If it needs 10 minutes for a frame, I don't know if I will use it at all (and I mean a full working project with many characters, props, polygons, animation data, GI, cameras, PBR, HDRI etc).

But now that I think of it, what you said about those couple extra weeks seems like a correct statement to me. I may reconsider, although I hope with all my heart that the render times are not through the roof.

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Me too Lamias .... to date I've found that acceptable 1080p 'frames' can be had for 45 seconds (150 iterations - no de-noising - with a GTX-1070).
But that's a very simple 'one avatar' - no extra sets or lights (which I'm guessing will multiply out to X4 or X8 that).
So my 'guesstimate' - on the 'favorable' side is 20 frames per hour.

By justaviking - 6 Years Ago

AutoDidact (10/2/2018)

However I have yet to see any IRay animation renders of more than a few

seconds with the types of scene complexity Described above.

To say nothing of entire short Films of five minutes or more.

We do not have an Iray plug-in for iClone yet, so that would explain the lack of Iray "animations" here.

Sometime in 4Q18 we should have that capability. (Remember everyone, the 4th Quarter runs all the way to December 31.)

Alan_M (10/2/2018)

I found Indigo a let down, it was great for stills but for animation it was a disaster, the .igs format which is effectively a scene description language like .mi files and RenderMan .rib made it massively time consuming to get animations. One scene I had took over an hour just to export the .igs files for each frame generating 20GB of data on disk, and that was before I could even start rendering. So, yes, for me having access to Iray in iClone and CC3 makes a big difference to that pipeline. It wont suit everyone, because the render times on complex scenes can climb very, very quickly, but on lighter scenes it works really well, just like in Daz.

Not to defend Indigo, but the "long export time" was not Indigo's fault.

I have often (and harshly) criticized Reallusion for their inefficient multi-frame export process. iClone writes out each and every frame in its entirety, as if it was a stand-alone render. That takes a long time and eats up a lot of disk space. It is entirely possible to write the non-changing objects and textures one time, and simply reference them over and over again. So for a city scene, you should not export the mesh and textures for the street, the parked cars, the signs, the buildings, and the fire hydrant 1,800 times for a 1-minute animation. But that is exactly what the iClone/Indigo plug-in does.

A COMMENT REGARDING THE IRAY PLUG-IN:

My assessment so far with the Iray plug-in in CC3 is that the "material mapping" from CC3 to Iray is excellent. There are a few minor improvements that could be made, but it is vastly superior to what I saw in Indigo. What you see in iClone is a good representation of what you will see in Iray, and with the Preview capability, you can have pretty good confidence that you will like your "final render."

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

[/quote]
Anyone who says they would not wait as long as 15 minutes for a render is not living in the real World when it comes to complex off-line rendering. All you have to do is ask a few architectural visualisers how long they wait for their lovely still images of living rooms etc and I think you will find they will typically let those renders run all night to create just one high-res frame.
[/quote]

Indeed this is the reality for most people. who are not part of the cutting edge game engine community.

My current feature length film project

is being rendered on the old Standard lighting "AR3"engine of Maxon Cinema4D. NO GI nor PBR.

I have a self imposed Frame budget of seven minutes per

with the option to go as high as 10 minutes per frame at

"Directors Discretion".

I am intentionally going for a Vibrant saturated marvel comic book

asthetic as the film is based on a marvel comic story

here is a short 5 Minute sample:

I am also slowly undertaking Migration from My aging MaxonC4D to Lightwave 2015

The LW Viewport renderer is even faster than Blender cycles for previewing your GI/HDR lighting here is a simple preview render test I performed with a First generation CC avatar exported from Iclone to alembic over to my travel gateway laptop with a

1.3GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core SU4100 CPUand Intel’s GMA4500MHD graphic card.

about a four hours to create the preview.

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

we should be gratefull if the new iray render for iclone should take 15 minutes to render one frame is- that the point ? Cuz if you guys say so i am already gratefull indeed !!!! ?

By justaviking - 6 Years Ago

I have done some Iray exploration.
It's been available to me for quite a while via Substance Painter and Designe, and now with CC3.

I have rendered some fairly complex scenes with a mere 250 iterations (with denoise turned on ) that looked quite good. On my GTX 1080, the render times ranged from 2 minutes to a maximum of 6 minutes for the 250 iterations, depending on the composition of the shot.

A 1,000-iteration render, taking 10-15 minutes, would look increadibly great.
(And would be fine for a single image, but would be a long time for an animation.)

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Sonic 7

Yes I mean that I cannot create what I want to alone and even if I could it would not be as interesting and efficient as doing it with other people

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Lamias that's what I wanted to see, the demo by Kevin S. At 8 mins there are some cogs turning and that is the most realistic in the video, pretty bloody good, good enough for me in terms of realism. As for the rest at least on a par with the best I have seen iclone do which is informative for me, thankyou.
I agree about the coherence, I call it the way the whole thing blends together once you have assets of sufficient quality. Beyond me I'm afraid.

Delerna - glad you watched it all, I think not many do

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Andrew, yes - doing it solo - difficult - when there's not others 'on-side' .... a test of one's fortitude for sure ....

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Sonic 7 - Been very good for me, learning this alone, dealing with computer problems, doing tutorials I don't understand and repeating them til I do. I have given up many times and come back to it as I got something to say and this language, video, is incredibly powerful. Whether I succeed or not doesn't matter as I have got more than ever thought out of it. I am not talking about my work so far which I'm happy with ……... for now, I'm talking about how I have never been this consistent in my approach to anything and this organised. I've now got basic skills so its beginning to be fun. I've had so many problems with the software and still get some crashes but its working and most importantly if it goes wrong I will problem solve it and fix it ………. or not. Some things (or many things) are out of my control so I get on with it. Its an important part of my life at the moment but I got many other things that interest me and many other things to do so hey ………… thanks iclone for everything and I hope to keep working with you but if it all goes tits up its been a blast.

By LarryPlane - 6 Years Ago

Cool thread. I really hope to create animated films using iClone, but two things hold me back, my lack of skill with using the software, and the cost of add ons such as the Essentials Pack for CC.

But really interesting reading you guys and watching your videos.

By Alan_M - 6 Years Ago

musicaz (10/2/2018)

we should be gratefull if the new iray render for iclone should take 15 minutes to render one frame is- that the point ? Cuz if you guys say so i am already gratefull indeed !!!! ?

15 minutes is not the point. If you get into production rendering you will find you will get all sorts of per frame render times that are entirely dependant on the complexity of your scene, anything from mere seconds per frame all the way up to many hours per frame if you are so inclined. There is no hard and fast rule that says it will always take 15 minutes and that it. My comments were based on how I worked on projects. One of the nice features of Iray is the choice between iterations or seconds per frame. In Daz Studio I simply do test renders to determine the level of quality for the image I want and then set that number of seconds for each frame to cook. The thing here is to check the image to see if it has issues, 120 second render may end up with too much noise in it to be acceptable. Of course you can use de-noising but that itself can cause problems so you need to get your own pre-sets that work for you.

I do my best with projects to keep each frame's render time around a maximum of 15 minutes, so if the image looks good at that time frame then that would be the maximum I would use. So in seconds that would be 900. That is what is really nice, you simply say render each frame for 900 seconds and then move on. It is a great way of rendering as you know exactly when your render will finish as it is easy to calculate.

I have other more complex render tests that have easily hit 40 minutes per frame on my GTX 1080 so as always you need to do tests and optimisations before you set an extensive animation going. Also, remember that in production people use render-farms or at a minimum, like my situation here, more than one machine for final rendering. If you rely on one machine for all your needs, and yes I know that the best performance is on your GPU, then larger more complex projects will take a very long time to deliver. Don't be discouraged to leave your machine on at night when you go to bed, If it is not doing anything then get it rendering, by the morning you will have another batch of frames to play with.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Has anyone used this, the Rome Fantasy Pack I for iClone.

It was a long time ago but I think it was one of the reasons I bought iclone. Its a bit washed out so it could be misleading but it looks good, maybe one of the most realistic things I have seen. So has anyone bought it and used it and what it like with avatars in it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGhZg80yc2Y

By animagic - 6 Years Ago

3d guy1 (10/1/2018)

Unfortunately when I think of Iclone - I think of the standard " Iclone look ".

Inartistic, amateur hour!

You can't blame the software for that.

By mtakerkart - 6 Years Ago

@andrewlargin

You can have a short idea of what it looks in the beginnig of this video :

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

thanks mtakerkart for the excellent video tutorial ! ! ! ! ! Excellent =}

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

do i need to buy fbx export plugin or licence even for my own creations in iclone 7?

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

i dont see option for me to upgrade my 3dexchange to the pipeline version?

By Alan_M - 6 Years Ago

musicaz (10/3/2018)

i dont see option for me to upgrade my 3dexchange to the pipeline version?

Not sure if it will work for you but in the past for myself I have found the following to be the case.
Upgrading to 3DXchange Pipeline

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/733c6cb3-8785-40a2-afde-b773.jpg

Once you go to your software registration page of your account you should see upgrade options.

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/50cdeb77-b04d-44f3-bba1-21ce.jpg

Typically the upgrade option would appear in the last column if I remember right.

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

no its just an additional seat licence but thanks

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

349 dollars to upgrade from 3dexchange pro to pipeline . ouch too much , thanks

By LarryPlane - 6 Years Ago

This is one of the problems I have with iclone.
Everything is so expensive. Especially the plugins.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

AEMAX and MTAKERKART

Thanks for setting me straight about this. I briefly looked at the video about UNREAL and the Rome stuff. I will do a bit of research today as I know next to nothing about Unreal. My question is: is it possible to export a project from iClone and render it in unreal without having to spend vast amounts of time. This would seem like a solution to the cartoon feel iclone has. Any answers appreciated as it might save me a lot of time looking at a lot of videos.

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

musicaz (10/3/2018)

349 dollars to upgrade from 3dexchange pro to pipeline . ouch too much , thanks

Hi if you are considering exporting your iclone pre-animated figure to another platform to render and you have Iclone pro & 3DXchange

you dont need Pipeline for this purpose. Alemebic straight from Iclone (6.5 or higher) FBX from 3DX will work perfectly fine.

FBX from 3Dxchange will likely be your best option for game engines.

However I prefer Alembic for sending to external full 3D programs

because of the ability to just send over new animation motion Data from Iclone (or from Daz studio in an obj/MDD pipeline)

without having to re-export the figure and redo the textures each time

for new motion in the rendering app

This Character Creator Figure was Exported Directly from Iclone 6.5 to Alembic to Lightwave3D 2015.

Once I adjusted his textures for the HDRI lighting in my test scene I can open up the orignal Iclone scene of him and keep applying new& different animation ,face puppet,lipsinc etc and send the new Alembic Data to lightwave to replace the old .

I do similar process with my IClone/DAZ.obj/ MDD /to Cinema4D pipeline.

Today is my real life errand day (groceries etc)

However tomorrow I may Start a thread specifically for the discussion of various options for Exporting & Rendering in external programs from Iclone &3DXchange.

By animagic - 6 Years Ago

andrewlargin (10/3/2018)

It will not be straightforward for any scene beyond something other than with basic complexity. In addition, you will need export licences for all purchased content, so it can be expensive.

Avoiding the "cartoon" look you seem to be convinced about (which BTW is to me sort of a dismissive meaningless catch-all) really comes down to the skill of the user. No software can be learned overnight, and anything can be made look bad in any software.

EDIT: I just saw AutoDidacts's post. A separate thread on how to accomplish export to Unreal or Unity would be interesting. I'm not against learning something... Smile

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Animagic

Thanks for your reply. I looked at the videos Realussion has done showing how to import into Unreal. Firstly it seems it will take a bit of learning on my part and secondly it seems to be about controlling game characters. As you say it is not easy except with very simple stuff I think I will leave it for now and keep learning iClone. I will keep an eye on Unreal and any other possibilities including the thread you suggest but go back to prioritising that which am weakest at in iclone.

I am not dismissing anything, I am looking to get what I do as realistic as possible. I use the term "cartoon feel" as others have done to describe something that does not look real. Thats what I'm after and it might not be possible with my budget or skill level ....... ever. This does not really matter to me, iclone is a tool for me to achieve my goal of producing some quality video. I am not hung up on a real look but I want to be able to do that as well as produce something which is cartoony or arty or whatever words you wish to call it when I see fit. I am very practical about these things. For the moment iclone is all I got and I will continue to use it to produce stuff that satisfies me. So far so good, no real comlaints, its all about learning without teearing my hair out, we shall see.

In terms of realism I found this on another thread yesterday and I think it looks real and was rendered in iclone. Its small scale with only a few assets and very short but it ticks my boxes. Question is how far can it be scaled up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76Dt_IElF4

I also like another one he did which is much bigger and complex though its not as realistic, not miles away though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWCW8USJbcQ

Looking at stuff like this has reinvigorated me somewhat as well as taking a break from iclone for a few days and listening to what others have to say in this forum. Time for onwards and upwards.......maybe???????

By animagic - 6 Years Ago

andrewlargin: I think time spending with iClone is well worth it. It is a good tool for animation and telling a story. You can experiment with character development, sets, lighting, camera angles, etc. to enhance your story-telling.

In my view, making animation films is just another form of movie-making, and I've noticed that those with a background in live-action filmmaking often do have an advantage.

So I think there is a whole lot to learn and explore before worrying about the actual look. It is a fascinating journey if you give yourself time.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

To Animagic

I want to be heard and taken seriously as I have many things to say about how humans could do a better job living on this planet. Now a days there is a predominance of shiny fancy blingy movie making using incredible graphics such as the Marvel stuff. However this is all violent nonsense which entertains me momentarily but is not subtle or nice or of any use at all. People are used to this shit so one way of grabbing their attention is to be like that but write better stuff. However there are many other types of film styles which will appeal to others so as I have said I dismiss nothing. Me I am a realist, I like looking clearly at things in the real world so realism is likely my preferred style but I do appreciate others as well and since talking to you and having a real quick look at your work I am changing my mind somewhat. For the moment I will try to make my work in iclone as realistic as possible. This will give me skills which I can then use in other ways. Its just a discipline, investigating something you are interested in and trying to make sure it has a wide appeal as my goal is communication. There is no right or wrong style, only that which works and for it to work I have to have an audience or I will communicate nothing. I am quite drunk so I hope this makes sense, do tell

PS didn't really talk to what you said but hey, quite drunk, going to bed, have a good one

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

First and formost. Statements I make for my preferences are not meant to be against other peoples preferences.
My statements have only been according to my own preferences and as far as I am concerned everyone one has every right for our own preferences. I have no right to try and discourage anyone else because they don't see things the same way I do. For me, the biggest importance of any video is excellent story telling and that is one of the primary reasons why I don't focus on high realism. I need to improve my story telling capabilities more than anything so I try to not waste too much of my own time worrying too much about realism. Its also why I said I don't like very many professional realism video's. It's not because I don't like high realistic visualities. Again I can only speak for my own preferences but I find so many to be so boring as far as the story telling is concerned. I even see that with many games, which I am into. Best graphics I have ever seen......most boring game I have ever plaid. But as I stated, I can only speak according to how I see things and other people won't agree. I have no problem with that.

WORKING ON MY ATTEMPT OF REALLISM WITHIN ICLONE
Anyway, as I stated in the post of my video. That is not a high realism video, I hadn't even tried to make it as highly realistic as I can yet.
I just threw that together as the starting point for what I am working on to make as highly realistic as I can, just to see if iClone can assist ME to do this.
I dropped iClone 5 a while back and tried doing it with UE4. About 6 months I think and I just found the learning curve for me to be way too large.
Again, I am not trying to say that is the case for everyone. I can only state things according to myself and no one else. Anyway I ended coming back to iClone and I will be sticking with it.

I have put in another 6 hours so far and I am finding out that, as I originally thought, that it is not that difficult to do reasonably realistic looking video's.
I have added popcorn particles to get the wind blowing in the scene and improved the fires. Still need to experiment with the particles though as I am really new to popcorn particles.
I am actually starting to want to get into creating my own particles, I see huge potentials with this. Although I saw that potential when they got added to iClone but I just haven't had time to get into it serious until now.
I also started working on making the characters more realistic this morning. Getting there but still have plenty to do. Hoping in a few weeks I will be able to post a new version of that video?

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

OOPS
I should add. Yes there are movies I have seen with high graphics that I loved watching too.
But I guess I am saying its totally the story and how well its told that makes it enjoyable and not so much the graphics that makes it enjoyable.....in my opinion anyway

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

What is or isnt a good story is a subjective experience , right ? But good graphics mostly everyone agrees on ? All i am saying is why cant we have both , in fact we payed enough money we should have at least good graphics offered to us , right ? I am of the mind set that i agree with those that claim the graphics arent so great . If you're the person creating an excllent story and i am sure many in here do so that is not to the credit of the software , that is all you , but imo the software company should provide excellent graphics and if you chose you dont want to use it , fine . I dont get this concept i seem to be hearing about how good story is the main issue and the graphics are not so important. Arent both equally important ?

By animagic - 6 Years Ago

Good graphics is not necessarily realistic graphics. So I don't believe that we all agree. What annoys me is that time and again iClone is dismissed as inadequate, which is simply not true. But over the years I've found such discussions futile and I try to stay out of them, sometimes failing miserably.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Not sure exactly what's happening here but I am going to keep this real simple. Overall Iclone is a great piece of software which has its faults but as I am used to nothing else I rather like it. I don't currently have the skills to produce what I want in terms of realism which is my main interest, so I produce other stuff which I like. I don't know whether iclone is capable to do this on a large scale as I have never seen anything that is. I have never attacked anyone else's work because it doesn't look real and in fact I would like to be able to emulate that as well and will happily steal ideas form any style of work that appeals to me. However I thought we were discussing realism and how to achieve it. Going back to the beginning of the thread I see I was wrong as Mr Delerna used the words "high level" which can be taken to mean anything one wants so I have nothing else to say on this matter.

PS Mr Delerna I am still interested in seeing where your work goes as opposed to talking about how to do it. If you post vids I will watch them.

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

Oh yes so true. Different story types definitely appeal to different people.
But I haven't said anything about that. I have been talking about being able to tell stories well, not what types of stories to tell
And I wish I could do that easily....ohhhh I wish
That is THE most difficult thing for me

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

andrewlargin (10/4/2018)

Not sure exactly what's happening here but I am going to keep this real simple.

I am quite sure what is happening here.

Sadly the same thing that happens in the Daz or even the old poser forums.

Users are unhappy. (for whatever objective or subjective reason), with the finished outcomes they are seeing from the software in question.

They post Blunt, declarative statements or questions such as "when is Daz going to release a female that is actually attractive??"

Now the people who have made renders with the current Daz females ,that they consider attractive, see this as personal slight of their work and feel compelled to post rebuttals, and links to what they consider

exceptional etc etc..

People here are reacting the same way to statements that compare the Iclone renderer
and presumably the finished work of every one using it ) to an"Old video game from the late 1990's"

And without fail the discussion further descends into the tedious

philosophical debates on wether the visuals are more important than the

narrative and eventually culminating with the hopelessly,pointlessly

Elusive question of "what is art?"

Thus you rarely see any dispassionate, cerebral ,technical discussions of

the software's shortcomings and the reasons why you might want to

consider outside solutions.

@Delerna, Just my opinion on two things.. not meant as an Attack.

First the title of this thread is very broad and vague because there really

is no objective defintion of a "high level video"

Second, the reasons that your attempt to emulate the "Adam 2"

video from unity ,go far beyond your particle & fire effects.

The walking robots did not even cast ground shadows completely

detaching them from their environment. however im sure you already

knew this.

I was planning on starting a thread to discuss the various options to

export your animated Iclone people (RL natives or from Daz) to other

programs to render Via Iclone Pro &3DXchange version 6.5 or higher.

However I see now that such an effort would likely be wasted for the

reasons I stated above.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Autodidact
I'm not unhappy with iclone, it is what it is. In certain regards it exceeds my expectations and in others it doesn't. I just want to explore what it can do and of course what I can do with it given my abilities. I don't sit at home pining for a mirror which would be nice but I just get on with it instead. As far as any technical discussions go that's what I want, partly, to see if my end product can be improved. So if you start a thread I would be interested but likely would be able to contribute nothing. From the little I can gather exporting anything like a full iclone project into anything else to improve the look is a no no as its complicated and likely inefficient. So …… until something better comes my way given my abilities and resources I need to get better at iclone as I'm still a bit of a beginner.

There is no discussion for me to have about the relative importance of visuals or narrative. Both need to be good to reach an audience and of course just myself, an audience of one as why else would I do it except to be satisfied and most importantly develop my skills in all regards. I find life boring if I don't learn stuff and I'm not just talking about iclone.

Delerna

Story telling is a skill just like any other, the key is practicing and practising the right way. There is of course no right way so I would suggest you practice every way, you think about stuff whenever you can, you write it down in any way you like, you do it in iclone, you speak to people or cats like I do constantly and definitely look around especially in the real world of humans and everything else as that's where all the action is and that's the source of everything. Then put it out there and let people shoot it down as some idiots take great pleasure in that. This is what you got to get used to, its done me a lot of good, I'm not thicked skinned but I have learnt to not just react so I can then listen and decide for myself whether their criticism is founded or not. How else can one learn affectively without being informed of something you are doing wrong or could do better. Then sometimes people communicate nicely and give you useful suggestions without being inconsiderate. Both have been real helpful to me.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Oops, had some internet problems and low and behold 3 posts for the price of one. Tried to find out how to delete it failed and made it all worse

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

andrew >>>> " .... As far as any technical discussions go that's what I want, partly, to see if my end product can be improved. So if you start a thread I would be interested ... " <<<<

I feel the same as you on this Andrew ....

By justaviking - 6 Years Ago

I've worked at not posting every through I have on this thread 20 times a day, but I was looking at the listing of topics in the forum, and this title kept jumping out at me...

Q: Is it really difficult to do high level videos with iClone?
A: It is really difficult to do high level videos. Period.

Regardless of what software you use.
Regardless if it is animation or "live" videos.

"High quality" is not easy. Period.

I'll close by repeating comments I've made before in a variety of places:
- The greatest limitation in iClone is usually the user (myself included)
- iClone is targeted toward "single user" customers, and it is unreasonable to measure an individual against a team of specialists
- iClone is not team-friendly, it lacks the infrastructure to really facilitate collaborative movie making, though mocap and facial capture and other features are starting to change that
- But yes, Reallusion also really needs to improve their internal real-time renderer... volumetrics, subsurface scattering, etc.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Justaviking

I agree with a lot of what you say. There are bits I neither agree nor disagree with as I have no knowledge of them so have no informed opinion …….. so I will take your word for them.

These are teamwork, presumably the magical pipelines and work flows, and even the real time renderer as I have only worked alone using iclone.

This I can do nothing about, I can only for the moment keep playing with it and hopefully get better.

Just loaded the latest update and everything seems hunky dory. CC3 seems to be better, I like the hands and face more than CC2 which was OK so it looks like its a step in the right direction. I also like the new clothes, the huntress stuff. Early days but I think there is some fun to be had.

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

If you look at the old Iclone 5-5.5 YTvideos from Reallusion

they originally presented themselves as a Pre-vis animatic

solution for makers of live&animated films to visualize scenes before

shooting.

And on the animation side they always placed emphasis on the

motion retargeting aspect of 3DX to apply imotion to imported rigs

to be exported to game engines or other Full 3D packages.

To be very frank the internal renderer was never a matter of major

concern as the Avatars of that era (Old chuck&Gwynn) were of such

poor quality, no render engine would have really improved them.

With Iclone 6 , we had the indigo plugin option that apparently was

very hardware intensive.

However to be brutally honest, IMHO the G6 Characters

were not really ready for the scrutiny of Full GI/PBR lighting and

rendering either and you often saw many videos feature the latest

Daz genesis models in IClone.

With Character creator we finally get Iclone natives that are

( not quite) but very nearly on par with Daz people as far as quality

Now with CC3 this stark contrast between the IRay renders of the

new CC avatars and the native engine seems to have more people

taking notice of how badly the native render engine has lagged

behind the other features of the program.

On the Matter of of exporting to other programs for rendering

I assume most are looking for an easy solution to send an animated

scene to one of the free options currently available using only the

Iclone 3DX pro version,

Well not surprisingly, there is no easy solution as the only option is

via an Alembic Cache export to either Blender ,unity,or unreal.

I personally still use Iclone 6.5 pipeline version as well as over a

decade experience in both Maxon C4D and Newtek's lightswave 3D.

thus FBX or Alembic is quite straight forward to these app for me.

Alembic to unity( which is how the "Adam" video was done BTW)

looks extremely labor intensive and certainly not for a new user of

unity with no prior experience with the program.

The scenario for unreal is similar.

That leaves Blender.
the import proces is as easy as Lightwave or

C4D however the Alembic format requires you to manually apply

you textures in your importing app( See Video)

As it can not read multiple UV assignments

so how is your knowledge of Blender shader node system??

Here is a 2 year old video of the Alembic to Maya from the Iclone 6

beta days

By Postfrosch - 6 Years Ago

I also like the new clothes, the huntress stuff. Early days but I think there is some fun to be had.

No Iclone - no DAZ - it's a Hivewire Avatar
And now a little riddle: Wath ist this CC 2 or CC 3 ??

https://forum.reallusion.com/uploads/images/51a2cebf-32f2-46da-9947-bb82.png

Greets from Germany
Postfrosch

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Auto .... I think it was this sentence that kept me 'lingering' on this thread ....

" ..... Hi if you are considering exporting your iclone pre-animated figure to another platform to render and you have Iclone pro & 3DXchange you dont need Pipeline for this purpose. Alemebic straight from Iclone (6.5 or higher) FBX from 3DX will work perfectly fine..... "

By kungphu - 6 Years Ago

animagic (10/4/2018)

It seems an ongoing saga where someone is looking for something “realistic” and iclone can’t get there. Then others are offended when stating iclone looks too “cartoony.” There is much beneath the surface here. At first iclone looked like an old washed up 90’s video game. It has come leaps and bounds since then. If I animated a realistic human being in iclone personally I’d never confuse an iclone animation with a live actor. It’s not that level of program. But what it can do, is just about anything/everything you can do in a movie studio aside from sound.

In an experienced animation/production team I’m certain it could equal the quality of animation we see on some animated tv shows. It’s take a team of lighting compositing experts to get a polished look. However, iclone isn’t Maya... no one will confuse it with Maya. but to Ani’s point above, good graphics aren’t necessarily realistic graphics. Let that sink in a bit and help it kick start you to telling your story.

One of my favorite directors is Wes Anderson. If you haven’t seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, please do; it’s brilliant! It shows what happens when a world class director dips his foot into the animation pool. The stop motion animation is beautiful no doubt. However, no one sees the screen and wonders if this is a real fox. There are many elements the director uses to set the scene for the audience to know this is a suspended reality and know what type of film they are in for. After that, the gloves are off and anything is possible. On the surface it appears a “fun” children’s film. However, beneath the entertainment, there are some extremely deep introspective aspects to the story. The movie says a lot about society classes, acceptance of those who are different, growth of an individual and acceptance of who we are as people. Many more adult motifs are examined throughout the film as well. Intense “stuff” done with stop motion animated animals. It tells a deep story with a “childish” medium. If Anderson or other gifted directors chose to make a film in iclone, it may not be the flashiest looking film, but iclone would do nothing to detract from the director telling his story. It’s all about how you use your tools. Use the tool in the best way to tell your story. The point here is, tell your story. Iclone may not be Maya or Cinema 4D. But you’ll tell your story waaaay faster with iclone than going down the learning curve with other software packages. I’m no iclone fanboy, just a guy who wanted to make movies and tried Daz, Poser. carrera, Maya LT and others (even 2d programs) before settling on iclone.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Autodidact

My knowledge of the blender node system is extensive as in I tried to use it once and failed miserably. I think you have set me straight, stick to iclone for now or forever is my probable only option so thank fuck for iclone or I would be doing none of this. Its a question of time, learning other stuff is not practical and then there is still the ease of use thingy and from what I can gather iclone is the quickest platform, but quality is traded off.

This has all been real interesting. I've learnt a bit about the mysteries of 3D animation and film production. I enjoy playing around with it even though it can be incredibly frustrating but as I am now vaguely competent in a very slow type way I think I need to just get on with it in iclone and see if I can write well enough and produce speedily enough to get others interested in playing with me.

Appreciated

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Kungphu

You are right about Mr Fox, good shit or what. I looked at First Blood, obviously not the same quality as Foxxy but seriously impressive especailly given the manpower, software and time constraints .......... really entertaining. I think iclone can make TV quality gear and I think it can be real cheap as compared to the vast amounts productions currently cost. I think the BBC commisions work at between £5,000 and £1 million an hour and given the poor quality of some of the stuff they air its rather excessive. In so far as realism is concerned I planned to be able to have it sometimes with maybe a bit of green screened video as well. I am still thinking that way and might be able to get somewhere if I keep things small scale, room size or less.

Just had a thought about one of the reasons Mr Fox is so good, its realism. Not in terms of a braod thing like it all looks real but its the hair / fur on the faces and they way the hair moves. It makes them sort of touchy feely cuddly which draws me in. Guess thats what I am after as well as so many other things that make films work, something sensual that draws people in...... never thought about it like that before.

By illusionLAB - 6 Years Ago

Is It really difficult to do high level videos with iClone?

Yes.

If you imagine creating a production like "ADAM" is like building a Ferrari, you can easily imagine the amount of expertise and skill required and are less likely to declare "I've got a garage, a box of tools, metal, plastic and wire... and a 'can do' attitude" BigGrin

"High end" production is always difficult... especially for the people who earn a living from it - the big advantage they have are better resources, better 'talent pool' and yes... better tools. This is not a dig at iClone - it's the best software in it's class... it doesn't pretend to be a "high end" 3D production suite, and considering what it's capable of doing in "real time" it already exceeds the serious trade off between 'speed' and 'quality'. If you needed a minimum $10k computer system to get that performance I imagine that far fewer of us would be here right now.

It's actually not fair to compare iClone's rendering with Unity, Unreal or any other well spec'd game engine... yes, they're "real time PBR environments" but I am sure there have as many differences as they do similarities - especially in architecture. Computers always handle "playback" functions easier than "record". It's possible to pre-cache an asset when it always does the same thing... so CPU/GPU cycles can be accessed more efficiently - which allows everything a little more room for complexity or quality.

Do I think iClone in it's current state is capable of "high end" work..? Frankly, no. But I didn't buy a VW thinking I'd get the Porsche experience either. Obviously, offering a IRay has provided a "high quality" render (if you've got the time) but there are dozens of other areas that fall short of "high end"... like soft body collisions for instance - long hair or clothing that intersects the character never looks "high end".

By TonyDPrime - 6 Years Ago

Curious....
Delerna, maybe you can just use the Adam project yourself in Unity and see how the attributes are arranged, and then just upon import of your assets from iClone, use that approach, in Unity. At least it will involve iClone in a way, perhaps the solution is right here all along.

Otherwise, I would say in general, iClone realtime renderer has its own look right now that can not match the 'looks' Unity can achieve currently, due to several factors. Likewise, it is very difficult to match iClone's look in Unity.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

IllusionLAB

You obviously know a lot more about this stuff than I. My view from looking at what others have produced is iclone can make decent quality gear that compares favourably with some things that are on TV. Never seen it do high end so looks like you may well be right. Decent quality gear will do for me for now as that appears to be my only practical option ………. so that's my next goal.

Postfrosch

I have no idea if CC2 or CC3 but its interesting, a different approach, I like it

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

illusionLAB CC3 has tools to fix long hair or clothing that intersects and imo the new base characters in CC3 are most definitely high end . However i hope i didnt offend .

By Dr. Nemesis - 6 Years Ago

So on page 3, I'll ask it. What are people considering "high end" to mean? Because yes, it's vague.

I guessed it to mean good for TV or a wider audience than Icloners (because I think most of the Youtube views on Iclone videos are from other fellow owners of Iclone).
I'm guessing it to mean a piece of work that transcends Iclone itself and appeals to a wider audience.

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

One of my biggest problems these days is using correct words to say what I mean. At work I have great difficulty expressing what I want to say. I have extreme difficulty remembering words.
I know want I want I am doing but telling others what I am doing I find more and more difficult. And that difficulty is growing faster and faster. I am actually at the point of wanting to retire from my job because I feel guilty.

There have been several comments from other people such as Kungphu, animagic and Just a viking, just to mention a few, that express many of my thoughts but better. Not totally but highly in line with how I see iClone

I am not trying to argue whether iClone is as good as Unity and other software for generating high realism in the graphics.
All I am trying to do is discover how true it is that iClone is so difficult to create high level graphics in videos.
I am using the part of the Adam video as a guide because it certainly looks good. So I am not attempting to degrade Unity at all.
I also know high level graphics takes a lot of work, especially for a single person, that's why I am only working on a the start point of that video.
I just want to find out how close I can get a video to look like that and how difficult it is. I don't believe something someone says just because they say it.
I will say that I am not finding it is not all that difficult. I do see it can be time consuming .

TonyDPrime
As I said. I have already tried using Unity and I gave up on and came back to iClone because I found its learning curve too big/confusing for me. Not speaking against it. It just doesn't suit me.
Isn't that the case with everything. They suit some people but not others....no matter what it is?
Anyway, I am using the result of what was achieved with Unity to see how close I can get to its look with iClone.

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

Actually I should have said.
I certainly listen to and appreciate suggestions made by other people. Often see things I never thought of.
But if I don't know personally that it is true or false I must try it out myself. At least if it interest me anyway. I rarely just believe something is not possible so don't try it just because someone else says its not possible.
And I am sure I might find something is not possible and someone else will find out how it is possible.

In my lifetime I have found that we should never say "that is not possible". I guess many will disagree but that's how I see it.
When I was young I once told a guy to walk through that wall right here (I pointed at it) seeing as you think nothing is impossible.
So he went and got a saw and said he was going to cut a hole in the wall so he could walk through it.
Yea simple but I believe it applies to anything. There is allways a way if i'm prepared enough to find out how to do it.

By nealtucker - 6 Years Ago

Hi Delerna, thanks for starting this post with the Adam example, it may not be to everyone's taste but it is a fine example (to me anyway) of what can be achieved with a lot of work and some knowledge.
Following this post I watched the making of Adam and have to say I have learned a lot and certainly sheds light on the process they used to achieve their goal and this level of quality.
Apart from the high-quality models used the lighting of the scenes was achieved by almost the same tools we have in Iclone, they used spots, emissive surfaces, and IBL, various small amounts of particles like fog and smoke,
The lighting and atmos were setup for each camera angle so each shot looks the very best it can be, every detail and shot was meticulously set up.
The scene Adam animations were done with full mocap suites hence the smooth humanlike movement.
The soft cloth physics were also very good and sparsely used on some well-placed props, so something I will need to have a look at in Iclone.
The last thing I noticed was the constant camera (Jitter) movement and use of DOF, we can do DOF but not the camera jitter effect so I tried this in HiFilm which has (camera shake) plugin, with a test scene and it works a treat,
So I would say to anyone, check out the making of Adam and use what you learn for your Iclone projects, I know I will.
Neal

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Delerna

Glad you started the thread, I have found it similarly informative. From the start you have communicated clearly and in a civilised fashion so maybe your communication skills are better than you think and others are not quite listening to you?

As far as your approach is concerned its good to listen as thats how we have built this society but its equally good to check thngs out for yourself otherwise no new innvoations would ever occur.

Your ambition to produce high level video or at least to check it out the possibilty is in my opinion spot on. If you fail in iclone it will have driven improvements in your skills and quality of your end product so its a win win innit.

By andrewlargin - 6 Years Ago

Dr Nemesis

I think high end will mean different things to different people.

For me it means Hollywood blockbuster where you can't tell the difference between CGI and actual footage. What I want is something when most see it they are drawn into it because of some quality of the graphics that is appealing and are not distracted by anything that stands out as not blending in to the overall feel. My target is TV quality not Hollywood blockbuster which I have seen achieved in iclone by people with good skills.

By AutoDidact - 6 Years Ago

[b]Delerna I once told a guy to walk through that wall right here (I pointed at it) seeing as you think nothing is impossible.
So he went and got a saw and said he was going to cut a hole in the wall so he could walk through it.
Yea simple but I believe it applies to anything. There is allways a way if i'm prepared enough to find out how to do it.

This anectdote only proves the importance of having the proper

resources or tools.

Note how the guy was ready to deploy a power tool capable of

penetrating the wall..not merely his determination or will power.

A strong belief that "anything is possible" without the proper

resources is actually harmful and one of those examples of terrible

advice that people often give to others as well intentioned

encouragement.

This applies to someone needing to physically penetrate a wall

or produce a certain level of CG rendering quality in a 3DCC

application.

Using our Program Iclone as an example, indeed it is probably only

exceeded in Character animation capability by Autodesk

Motionbuilder & Maya.

However if a client need realistic Ragdoll physics for a game or action sequence it would be Delusional for me to promise him this outcome using only Iclone under the mantra of "anything is possible"

for this I would need to use my Endorphin Software or some other tool that would give me this utility.

Tools matter

By musicaz - 6 Years Ago

you make an excellent point Audodidact and i agree with you completely =)

By justaviking - 6 Years Ago

I was watching a presentation about the Blender movie project "Spring" and I remembered this thread.

A few pages back in this thread I wrote:

Q: Is it really difficult to do high level videos with iClone?
A: It is really difficult to do high level videos. Period.

Regardless of what software you use.
Regardless if it is animation or "live" videos.

"High quality" is not easy. Period.

I really enjoy "behind-the-scenes" features like this. They are very inspirational. The "concept art" is so beautiful.

However, seeing the amount of work that goes into making a "high level" video can also be demoralizing for a solo artist. But keeping in mind that we are looking at the work of one generalist versus 10 or more specialists, usually done over a much shorter length of time, iClone users do manage to produce some very good videos. I wonder what the man-hour comparison is.

Another speech from the Blender conference was about the Netflix movie "Next-Gen" which was 80-90% created in Blender. They talk about 3-HOUR RENDER TIMES... PER FRAME! I think that was the average time; some were much worse. (The first minute is just "conference" talk, then he introduces the speaker.)

By charly Rama - 6 Years Ago

I totally agree, it's not simple to make a good movie. With this quick test, I've TRIED to reproduce the first scene of Adam, focusing in the lighting, manipulate GI and IBL , the camera movements was a minima and the details idem. I would prefer another avatar than the dummy in iclone but as it's just a test...
It's so far away of the original but it shows that iclone gives tools for amateur who work alone. It took for me 2 hours of works (without rendering) and I didn't use final cut pro X (for all my movies and not tests, I always use FCPX for video editing, sound effects, LUT etc...). This very short video is straight from Iclone.
I'm still learning, studying what do others do, the key is work work work Smile

Global illumination, IBL, DOF, angle of camera, camera's movements, quality of sounds, storyboard...so many things to learn, but I love to learn it with Iclone,

By sonic7 - 6 Years Ago

Hey .... Well done Charly! That's an excellent result direct out of iClone! ....

By Delerna - 6 Years Ago

Yes, I also totally agree that it is definitely not easy to create a good movie, the most difficult thing I find is coming up with a good story and then telling it well.

I have seen so many movies that had reasonable but low level graphic/animations but the way the story was told made them highly popular to many people.
I have also seen movies with reasonable but low level graphics/animations but the way the story was told made them totally boring to many people
I have also seen movies with extremely high quality graphics/animations and the way the story was told made it highly popular to many people.
I have also seen movies with extremely high quality graphics/animations and the way the story was told made it totally boring to many people.

That is why I say what I say. The main thing for making a good movie is being able to tell the story well.
Even if the graphics/animations are only reasonable, so long as the story is told well then it has a high chance of being a successful movie

I know there are plenty of people that don't agree and insist that a good movie must have both and express their opinion on how they see it.
That's fine to me, we all need to go along with our own beliefs. Everyone has the right to express their opinion and unlike what some people think I am not going against them.
All I have done is express my own thoughts on what is needed for creating good movies.
As far as I am concerned my trial here, or more to the point my second version of it, has shown me that iClone is more than capable of producing adequate graphics for a good movie and its not that difficult.
Anyone who doesn't have that belief should listen about the other software's people talk about. Maybe they will help you? I have tried some of them myself but didn't find them as easy to work with as iClone so I ended up giving up on them and started sticking with iClone. But as far as I am concerned that's only how I saw it for myself, not anyone else.

Charley Rama, you have shown an even higher graphic level for the character than what I did, although mainly I just stopped on it because its not my story and I saw enough from what I had done.
I have also seen so many fantastic looking characters lately in the 'showcase yourself-show us what you got' post. I have also seen several enjoyable video's made with iClone lately that look fine.
I have seen one person who uses iClone for his business and as far as I can tell he is doing well and he is also producing excellent graphics.
So for me iClone is plenty good enough to produce good looking graphics for a good movie and more importantly it gives a single person a good tool to work with.
All I hope I can do sometime is lean to improve my ability to create some good stories that are my own.

By charly Rama - 6 Years Ago

Delema, thank you, I agree with you and I understand what do you mean. That's why, I've done a very very short part and I stopped. I wanted to show once more (even if that I showed isn't perfect) that people have to work on other things first, and use Iclone or other soft to make "good" animation movie

Thank you Sonic,

I'm very satisfied of leap motion for hands animation. I'm guitarist and saxophonist and I make some musical animation and leap motion is good for that

By KenCoon - 6 Years Ago

This is probably the longest topic I have read on here.
I am just a newbie who has made a short movie in 2014.
I was rather proud of my accomplishment. It is not perfect, nor is it photorealistic but it does tell a story and follows a script.
I plan to improve it if I can this year. ( I have been away for several years.)
I am not trying to produce a perfect movie. I am not a professional. Just a beginner.
Thanks for the insight but many of us are just like me and are trying to enjoy our experience.
This has helped me understand where many of you are coming from. I appreciate that.
I really enjoy everyone on here so this is not about trying to put anyone down. Just trying to be better under stood.
Ken.

By LarryPlane - 2 Years Ago

A fascinating thread that deserves to be raised from the archives.
I've just read through all 11 pages and I wonder how the issues of quality now look as we engage with metahuma n and realistic skin plug-in do CC3.

But either way, the conclusion of this thread seems to be, if you have A decent story, and tell it in an engaging fashion, the issues of quality of image may not matter so much.

As I engage on trying to create my first proof of concept iclone short, this advice is forefront in my mind.

Anyone who hasn't read this thread, should do so. Some great learning points here.