I think I'm making progress.  I need to repeat some of my random efforts and take notes this time.

I was able to get IK Animation to work on a simple prop.  I was also able to break it.  The difference seems to be how much "resetting" I do (Transform, Rotation, Scale) and exactly when in the process I do it (before or after doing Attach action, and before or after Merging the sub-props).

So many variables, and so many ways to do it wrong.  But there's hope.

Speaking of hope, I hope to summarize what I've learned when I can consistently get the results I'm looking for.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Yeah, the big thing about Clone Cloth is that you have to match generations. G2 for G2, G3 for G3, G4 for G4, G5 for G5. I always wondered if there was a possibility of doing cross-generational meshes?

And while there are plenty of different "styles" of Clone Cloth out there (G5 definitely has shown improvements in this area), it'd still be nice to be able to custom create cloth meshes without having to spend 4000 on the program that supposedly does it.

Blender (free modeling and animation software) could, I'm sure, but then it's a matter of translating functions between 3DSMax and Blender. In other words, for making a cloth mesh in 3DSMAX, do this, this, and this....ok...some functions are differently labeled or even differently handled in Blender....so what would be the proper function to execute in Blender?

Thankfully, I think I recorded the video tutorial that was made a couple years ago, but again, I believe it was for 3DSMAX....so it would be a matter of sitting down, watching the video, going through what I can step by step in Blender, and then figuring out where the differences are to achieve the same result. :)



"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

Thanks for the clarification.  Not a factor to me (not yet, and not even for the foreseeable future) but my curiosity has been satisfied.  Ahhh.... that, and a nice cup of coffee... a great way to start my day.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

What I meant was that you cannot apply CloneCloth to non-standard characters.

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CloneCloth is just RL's name for a separate sheet(s) of UV mapped polygons that are part of the avatar. DAZ figures, in effect, have "Clonecloth" if they are not naked. As do any built from scratch that have multiple layers of Polygons not connected to the body.

Viking, that's about the only question I CAN answer in this discussion...:w00t:

Although, the difference used to be more clear-cut...:unsure:

A standard human character is one that is native to iClone, indicated by its generation (G1 through G5). A non-standard character started life outside iClone and has been imported via 3DXchange. The big difference between the two kinds USED to be that only standard characters could talk, but with the latest updates non-standard characters can also have the gift of speech. The one remaining difference is that only standard characters can be clothed with Clone Cloth. But that may change one day as well.

BTW, I'm following your experiments with props and bones with interest. I wasn't aware one could do this.

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At the risk of confusing myself ahead of time, a couple of thoughts and questions are:

• How does the merging, and animating parts prior to merging, work with the "Perform" command?
• I remember someone talking about having actions (not sure if they were the "Perform" actions or not) on props vs. sub-props.  I might have to look that up again.
• Getting back to my original two gears (at the start of this thread), when I attached my gears to a "parent" object, I'd get errors when I tried to animate them using the Perform method.  That's a bit vague, but maybe with my newly emerging skills I'll be able to get it to work, or phrase a more intelligent question on that topic.

Thanks again for the support.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

This is cool!

You can animate each part before merging, as long as you do not hit the "rescale". Not sure if there is any advantage to animating the parts first.

Once merged, you have to edit the bones to animate it.

Glad you got it!:)

I usually leave out some critical step, especially if it's something important.

@Rampa,

I'm not sure exactly what I did differently, but I'm starting to see bones!  I swear I've done the same steps before.

Yeah, no 3DXchange yet, but it's behaving in iClone.

Interesting "extra bone" that appears between the props, allowing me to "separate" them a bit.  I even have some IK working.  That page you linked to was great for that, I never would have guessed how to do the IK.

Still seems odd that the bones go away when I drop the prop into 3DXchange.  Even if there's no need to do it, it seems strange that it loses them.

I'm very encouraged that I might be able to use the IK on my prop.  I'm going to go play around some more.

P.S.

Still curious about difference between a normal and a non-standard human.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD