Question about animating in iClone

[gertruse]

Hi!

I am in the process of making my first visual novel and I'm very confident in my skills with DAZ, but after reading many threads on here and elsewhere, I've been convinced that if I am going to add animations to my game, i should probably make them with another platform. I've looked at blender, but the thought of having to hand-rig every single character for many hours seems really scary and counter-productive. I've been looking at iclone, and it seems really interesting! However, I just have a few questions for anyone that has experience using it. Number one is, if i load two G8 characters into iClone and do all the proper set-up, can I (relatively) easily create sex animations on my own? And do these animations render within iClone? Like, can I render a nice animation in iclone and just add it to renpy without having to bring it back into daz, or exporting it to another 3rd party software? I am willing to put the time in to learn how to make my own animations in iClone, but the platform is a little bit pricey, so I want to know what to expect before I buy it.

I am actually pretty ignorant about the whole process of animating, so I apologize if my questions are a bit stupid!

Thank you so much!

 

[mickydoo]

Hi!

I am in the process of making my first visual novel and I'm very confident in my skills with DAZ, but after reading many threads on here and elsewhere, I've been convinced that if I am going to add animations to my game, i should probably make them with another platform.

Unconvince yourself

I've looked at blender, but the thought of having to hand-rig every single character for many hours seems really scary and counter-productive.

I am unsure of the blender process but I doubt you would have to hand rig anything.

I've been looking at iclone, and it seems really interesting! However, I just have a few questions for anyone that has experience using it. Number one is, if i load two G8 characters into iClone and do all the proper set-up, can I (relatively) easily create sex animations on my own? And do these animations render within iClone? Like, can I render a nice animation in iclone and just add it to renpy without having to bring it back into daz, or exporting it to another 3rd party software?

The answer to all that is no, no, no and no and another no in case I missed something.

If you are an expert in animation, iclone, blender, whatever, anything but DAZ, us porno hacks should stick with DAZ. The process of getting things out of DAZ is painless, getting them back in is another story, and no you can't simply render it in iclone or blender, well you can, but it will look different than all the other renders you have done in DAZ.

You will spend weeks learning how to animate in iclone and be no better at than doing it in DAZ itself, it's no magic bullet.

 

[Rich]

I am in the process of making my first visual novel and I'm very confident in my skills with DAZ, but after reading many threads on here and elsewhere, I've been convinced that if I am going to add animations to my game, i should probably make them with another platform. I've looked at blender, but the thought of having to hand-rig every single character for many hours seems really scary and counter-productive.

You don't have to hand-rig. Daz themselves publish a

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that will transfer a character complete with rigging. And if you don't like that, there's

You must be registered to see the links

.

I've been looking at iclone, and it seems really interesting! However, I just have a few questions for anyone that has experience using it. Number one is, if i load two G8 characters into iClone and do all the proper set-up, can I (relatively) easily create sex animations on my own? And do these animations render within iClone?

Easily? That calls for a judgment on the part of the witness. What constitutes "easy?"

Like, can I render a nice animation in iclone and just add it to renpy without having to bring it back into daz, or exporting it to another 3rd party software? I am willing to put the time in to learn how to make my own animations in iClone, but the platform is a little bit pricey, so I want to know what to expect before I buy it.

Yes, you can absolutely render an animation in iClone. But, visually, it's not going to match stills that you render in Daz Studio. Even if you use their iRay renderer, you're going to have trouble with material conversions, lighting, etc.

I am actually pretty ignorant about the whole process of animating, so I apologize if my questions are a bit stupid!

They're not really stupid questions.

One of the problems, however, with "design the animation in other packages" is that right now there's not a great path back to Daz Studio if you want to keep your renders consistent. Even though you can import a Daz character into iClone and keep the Daz skeleton, and even though you can then export a BVH of the animation, iClone doesn't "understand" the Daz "twist bones." As a result, unless you post-process the BVH file, it doesn't import correctly back into Daz Studio. And the Daz-to-Blender bridge makes changes in bone orientations that mean that BVH's or FBX's exported from Blender don't work when put back into Daz Studio either. I'm actually (slowly) trying to work on a solution for that, but I keep getting distracted from it...

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Yes, you can absolutely render an animation in iClone. But, visually, it's not going to match stills that you render in Daz Studio. Even if you use their iRay renderer, you're going to have trouble with material conversions, lighting, etc.

This is my primary concern. Animating in iClone looks amazing. Being able to automatically pin down the feet, hands or midsection, having the character walk on the ground and the puppet feature are amazing.
However all of that is useless if that lighting and materials look nothing like your Daz stills. Animating in Daz feels like trying to build a ship in a bottle with tweazers.

Is there any solution for getting renders in iClone to match a set of stills rendered in Daz? What about only lighting a scene with HDRI to keep it simple? Would rendering *all* stills and animations in iClone instead be a viable solution?

 

[TheEroticRabbit]

There is an iRay plugin for both iClone and Character Creator, so assuming you are borrowing the software from the internet, no worries. If you're paying for the software, it's a pretty expensive way to go.

That said, the built in renderer is fairly nice, but ultimately if you aren't using iRay you'd be better exporting your final sequence as an Alembic file to another application to render (in your case it sounds like Blender would be the option)

 

[Rich]

Is there any solution for getting renders in iClone to match a set of stills rendered in Daz? What about only lighting a scene with HDRI to keep it simple?

There is an iRay plugin for both iClone and Character Creator

Matching renders from two different program is very, very difficult. Even if you're using iRay in both applications, you have the issue of getting the materials the same in both applications - the shaders that Daz Studio and iClone use aren't the same. So, you'd be forced to try to recreate the Daz Shader in iClone, which is a task I wouldn't want to attempt.

Would rendering *all* stills and animations in iClone instead be a viable solution?

Yes, this would be an option. Or do the same with Blender. In other words, abandon Daz Studio as a rendering vehicle, and just use the Daz assets, converted to either Blender or iClone.

There would definitely be a learning curve here - having used all three programs to at least a limited extent, I have to say that Daz Studio is by far the easiest of the three when it comes to materials, lighting, etc. Of course, "easy" is in the eye of the beholder - your mileage may vary. But there are people who post here regularly that are much more seriously into Blender than I am, for example, and who might be able to give you advice.

(I mention Blender because it's very good at animations as well, and it's free...)