iClone or Blender or UnReal Engine

iClone or Blender or UnReal Engine

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https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic553850.aspx

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By lenfoley37 - 2 Years Ago

Hi Everyone, I notice a lot of film makers creating characters in Character Creator and then exporting to Unreal Engine or Blender to produce actual scenes.
I am curious... Anyone here using iClone8 to produce and render actual footage for a film?? Is it a viable option or should I not even bother trying and get better at working with other animation programs??
I love this software, but I need to make a decision on which is the best to produce my animated movie.
Thanks so much!! Len Foley

By AutoDidact - 2 Years Ago

lenfoley37 (7/19/2024)

it is completely subjective and predicated upon what kind of animated film you are making

You need to look at the best iclone native animations you can find and compare them to what you see being rendered in unreal engine or blender.

And factor in the additional labor involved in sending your characters & props over to another application for every scene.

By c68 - 2 Years Ago

Personally, I find the rendering capabilities offered by Unreal Engine to be far superior to those of IClone. The Global Illumination in Unreal alone is truly worth seeing! However, the process of getting a character from CC into UE5 is not exactly straightforward.

To render a character in Unreal, you first have to export an FBX from CC, then you need to install an import plugin into your Unreal project, and only then can you load the FBX into your Unreal movie project. To get the animations from IClone to Unreal someone must use the content library to get the aimations into CC, and then export from CC ... there is still no direct animation export possible in IClone without exporting the entire 3d-mesh, ...

Nevertheless, I think it's worth going through this complicated process - if only for the images :) Since version 5.4 of Unreal Engine, it is now also possible to animate characters imported from CC directly in Unreal's Sequencer with just a few clicks!

And one should not forget: it's definitely not a bad idea to learn something new (Unreal Engine). So why not give it a try?? :)

By animagic - 2 Years Ago

lenfoley37 (7/19/2024)

I use iClone and CC exclusively for my films and have been for years. I render in iClone and then do post-processing in After Effects to arrive at the graphic novel look that I aim for.

I have had several of my films shown at film festivals, so there must be something that people like about them. At a recent short film festival in Charlottesville, VA, I was in a block of four other movies (which were previously shown at Sundance), all of them with very different looks, none of them hyper-realistic. What they all had was a good story, well-told, and interesting characters, which is the first thing to worry about. Also, keep in mind that the more realism you aim for, the higher the demand is for realism through-out. So if your character looks very realistic almost undistinghisable from a regular human, the slightest deviation may make it look "fake".

I have used iClone for a long time and it has its peculiarities and frustrations at times, but I still think that as far as at least animating your characters goes it is a good start. I also like the possibilities that CC provides me to develop my characters. They are regular people, so I don't need things like six fingers or three arms...:unsure:

I think nothing is lost to start out in iClone to develop at least a draft of your movie using iClone and CC. You can then consider where you want to go from there. Possibly the most direct way to get more realistic rendering results is using Omniverse, but that requires an Nvidia RTX card.

By AutoDidact - 2 Years Ago

Also, keep in mind that the more realism you aim for, the higher the demand is for realism through-out. So if your character looks very realistic almost undistinguishable from a regular human, the slightest deviation may make it look "fake".

This is a very good point Job, which is why I a prefer a more stylized look.

Going for “photorealism becomes a tedious and endless pursuit IMHO because even if you manage to nail down

realistic lighting and human skin now you better get the hair uber realistic in appearance AND movement or it won’t match.

as well as the clothing in appearance AND movement or it won’t match.

and the grass in appearance AND movement or it won’t match.

and the flowing water in appearance AND movement or it won’t match.

It is better to focus on telling a good story and if you need a better render engine, and have a decent RTX, card then exporting the scenes to omniverse is probably worth it

But still won’t be truly realistic due to the limitations of iclone’s cloth & hair systems

By Rampa - 2 Years Ago

c68 (7/21/2024)

The Global Illumination in Unreal alone is truly worth seeing!

You may want to check that GI is turned on in iClone.

See more GI tutorials here:
https://courses.reallusion.com/home/iclone/visual-and-lighting/lights-and-shadows

By vislaw - 2 Years Ago

We have found the workflow using iClone 8 and the LiveLink plugin in Unreal to be fantastic. Moving Characters from CC to iClone 8 is a seamless process with one click and LiveLink allows you to bring your scene geometry from Unreal 5 into iClone with a single click. That allows you to animate very precisely in iClone 8 using its great tools and then send the characters, complete with all materials and animation into Unreal for rendering. A huge game changer for character animation in Unreal and we've found the latest version of LiveLink to work perfectly every time.

By lenfoley37 - 2 Years Ago

I really appreciate that advice. Thank you! My only issue is I've invested SO much money already in many of the iClone animation templates (I think I own most every major one). Are these animations useable in Unreal Engine as well? Or would I need to make additional purchases to make it work?? Thanks again for you advice :)

By lenfoley37 - 2 Years Ago

Oh, I just noticed this reply... Thank you! So it IS possible to animate characters in iClone and then send them over to Unreal Engine... that is really great advice. Thank you!!

By c68 - 2 Years Ago

After reading Vislaw's post I gave the Live Link Plugin for Unreal a try... and im must say it's really awesome! With the plugin its easy to use IClone for all animation parts while having a full in camera view of the scene in Unreal. Its even possible to animate camera movement in IClone and render it in Unreal! Thank you Vislaw for this tip!