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By Bridgette (RL) - Last Year
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Dear Valued Customer,
We are writing to inform you that Reallusion will discontinue the Iray render plug-in as of June 15th 2023.
Instead, we will focus our resources on the integration of our animation tools (iClone, Character Creator) and content (ActorCore) with NVIDIA Omniverse™, the next leading platform for real-time computing and GPU-based ray-trace rendering.
With NVIDIA Omniverse™, you can enjoy all the major features of Iray render, but with even greater speed and an open collaboration platform compatible with major 3rd-party solutions. Additionally, NVIDIA Omniverse™ includes the latest AI technologies, such as Audio2Face audio-to-animation application, fast GPU rendering, denoise, and the upcoming real-time SSS shader. iClone also features Omniverse LiveSync, allowing for a faster and easier animation workflow.
NVIDIA Omniverse™ offers the following advantages:
- Free for all users.
- Provides features that outperform Iray.
- Leverages NVIDIA's latest AI technologies.
- Features faster rendering and denoising.
- Interoperable with iClone via LiveSync.
As of the aforementioned date, the Iray render plug-in will no longer be available for sale in the Reallusion Store. However, customers who have previously purchased the product will still have the option to download and install the product, and can receive technical support from our customer service. Please be aware that there will be no further updates for the plug-in. If you intend to purchase the product now, please make sure to try the program before your purchase, and keep in mind that it will be discontinued in June 2023.
If you have any feedback on the Iray features which might not be included in Omniverse, we are here to listen and collect your comments and suggestions.
Thank you for your continued interest in our product suite. Please do not hesitate to contact Reallusion Support for further inquiries.
Sincerely,
Reallusion, Inc.
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By mat365 - Last Year
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What if I bought it 1 month ago? Can I get a refund?
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By Peter (RL) - Last Year
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mat365 (5/10/2023)
What if I bought it 1 month ago? Can I get a refund?
If your purchase is outside of the 14 day return window then refunds are only granted under special circumstances.
As explained in the original notice, the Iray Plug-in will continue to work as normal and you will still be able to install it at any time and seek technical support if you need it. Basically if you are happy with it now then I'm not sure why you would want a refund as you can continue to use it as is for as long as you want.
However, for any questions about refunds, please contact Support using the link below.
https://www.reallusion.com/CustomerSupport/UserEx/QForm.html
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By jeff.davies - Last Year
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Can you provide any insights into the new NVIDIA project? Will it be a product we need to buy (if so I'd like a DEEP discount as an IRAY owner) or will it be a built-in integration (which is my hope)? Naturally, any projected delivery timeline for this new capability would help us all plan head a bit. As a software engineer, I know that planned delivery dates are rarely me, but they still help provide us with some guidance! 
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By animagic - Last Year
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This is what I know: iClone projects are exported in USD format and then processed in Nvidia Omniverse. There are so-called Connectors (free) which provide the interface between Omniverse and various applications.
So there is nothing to buy. RL is working so that all features available in iClone (physics, wrinkle, etc.) are also available in the exported project and can be rendered in Omniverse.
Caveat: I don't work for RL...
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By Peter (RL) - Last Year
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jeff.davies (5/10/2023)
Can you provide any insights into the new NVIDIA project? Will it be a product we need to buy (if so I'd like a DEEP discount as an IRAY owner) or will it be a built-in integration (which is my hope)? Naturally, any projected delivery timeline for this new capability would help us all plan head a bit. As a software engineer, I know that planned delivery dates are rarely me, but they still help provide us with some guidance!
Ditto to what Ani has already explained. The Omniverse pipeline is available now and free to use. You can find out more by clicking the link below and you can also find getting started tutorials under Learn.
https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/nvidia-omniverse/
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By jeff.davies - Last Year
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Thanks Animagic and Peter. I've been "heads down" on my current project and not able to devote any significant cycles to understanding this. In a day or so I'll take a breath and look into this in more detail 
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By eljofa - Last Year
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Iclone proyects rendered in Omniverse look great.
I bought iRay, but switched to Omniverse as soon as I read that iRay won't be getting new updates
Cheers
PD. Just waiting for RL to implement a tighter integration with Omniverse
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By Ascensi - Last Year
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I would have loved it if Reallusion had developed the Realtime auto-disable/enable visual states of content that the camera can and can't see using frustum + occlusion culling technology rather than only relying on clipping the view distance. The visual states could be baked into the timeline for faster playback I provided free code examples to the Development to help expedite this so that everyone can experience up to 3X faster Iray and Native Renders, and another 2-3 times faster when the stage is reduced in size to thumbnail and the iclone system priority in the taskbar is set to high. Using this setup could be superior to the speed of Omniverse right now but could complement Omniverse if iClone projects can be exported to omniverse with the visual states of all the assets baked into the USD file, if not we'd need a script.
Game engines currently use these culling techniques, I wish Reallusion would take advantage of it. A couple downsides pushing users to rely on the omniverse for rendering is that it requires RTX cards, I currently use several (6) GTX 970s, an RTX 2080 ti, now a RTX 4090 24GB! and wish I could utilize them all but could at least for iClone if it supported Vulcan or DX12 -simultaneous multi GPUs. The other downside is the learning of another program which also seems like it will eventually replace iClone - Reallusion gives away a lot of their power directing people to other programs, especially dropping support for something another program provides. iC8 maybe could have been what Omniverse is now with an update to Iray (iray 2.0) and the above culling support, Vulkan and scatter tools which I think is already available as an open python plugin in the store.
There are fees/subscriptions using Omniverse but is specific for team collaboration - hope things change but it's still awesome for what is provided.
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By eljofa - Last Year
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And which software You talking about??
Cheers
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By 0Calvin - Last Year
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Unfortunately, the Omniverse workflow is a clunky mess with so many limitations right now that this is just not a viable alternative to the Iray plugin. I realize that most iClone users seem to be OK with the realtime renderer, which is definitely not bad, but it is still no substitute for a good ray-tracing engine. I hope we eventually get another tightly-integrated ray-tracing render option in the future because when/if my Iray plugin stops working, this program will become nearly useless to me.
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By animagic - Last Year
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@0Calvin: I wouldn't hold my breath.
We have had two attempts now to integrate a ray-tracing renderer and while Iray is not bad, there are known limitations that have never been addressed. Also, once introduced, Iray wasn't further updated to keep up with newer developments.
Time and again, we see a promising third-party tool or asset introduced (I'm thinking about PopcornFX, SpeedTrees), which then never gets updated to the latest version available. This is my one major gripe with RL, although I also realize that the development team is relatively small.
So for now, our best bet is that the workflow with Omniverse is improved, as that is a solution that has continued development by Nvidia.
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By Sophus - Last Year
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The speed of Omniverse is pretty impressive if you have the required hardware.
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By AutoDidact - Last Year
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Daz recently announced that the next version of Daz studio will export to omniverse. so it is likely that they too will cease Iray support at some point. Iray is a DUMB brute force path tracer originally designed for the Architectural/product visualization industry as a loss leader product to sell graphic cards. It was never suitable for an animation software like Iclone ,particularly before RTX technology was widely available .
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By 0Calvin - Last Year
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animagic (7/3/2023)
@0Calvin: I wouldn't hold my breath.
We have had two attempts now to integrate a ray-tracing renderer and while Iray is not bad, there are known limitations that have never been addressed. Also, once introduced, Iray wasn't further updated to keep up with newer developments.
Time and again, we see a promising third-party tool or asset introduced (I'm thinking about PopcornFX, SpeedTrees), which then never gets updated to the latest version available. This is my one major gripe with RL, although I also realize that the development team is relatively small.
So for now, our best bet is that the workflow with Omniverse is improved, as that is a solution that has continued development by Nvidia.
Yes, I'm not holding my breath, there. I guess there is also the Blender pipeline. Working in Blender makes me break out in a rash, though.
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By R Ham - Last Year
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I have to say I'm disappointed in this, both in the decision and in the way it was done.
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