Daz and iClone 7
tring01
Posts: 305
I'm interested in building props and scenes (based on G3/M3) in Daz, exporting them to iClone 7, and then animating and rendering them using the PBR render engine in iClone.
I'm a bit confused by their website and want to make sure I buy the correct package to accomplish my goal. Can anyone offer some advice?
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I'm also interested in iClone 7, but only if characters with geografts, like my beloved Minotaur 6 HD and the Lekkulions, can be transferred successfully and seamlessly.
Someone from Reallusion popped in here to post an ad, the locked post at the top of this forum, then I guess they disappeared. I would be nice if they would come back and show us some love.
Yes, they are confusing. I suggest you read all of the promotional material and more importantly try their trail offer to get a better ideal of what you want and what the minimal functionality of iClone can do for you (that being the trial offer).
Then I'd subscribe to their mailing list about 7 months and wait and hope for a big sale if you have the patience.
I think their most flexible pipeline cost $700 or $800.
Their pricing is strange. Seems crazy to charge for the importer. I could see having to pay for 3Dxchange Pipeline, but you'd think Pro would be free to encourage people to buy iClone.
I hope it's okay to speak of other companies' products here. Tring, I think you would need these things at minimum:
Indigo is an add-on renderer like Iray. It is not realtime, so you probably don't need that. The Pipeline version of 3Dxchange is for exporting objects to other platforms. If all you care about is importing into iClone, you probably don't need that.
For animating, you may want to check out the Curves editor when it becomes available.
HOWEVER:
Blender will soon have a realtime rendering engine, Eevee. If your major focus is finding a super-fast animation engine that can accept DAZ characters, you might want to wait a bit until the version of Blender with Eevee is officially released. Then it will cost you nothing.
One final thing about iClone. If you're hoping to use fantasy characters with add-on body parts like tails or hooves, or even just naked humans with naughty bits, I'm not sure you'll be happy with iClone. All the information I can find online about importing to iClone says to use the FBX format. But when I export from DAZ to Blender with FBX, the add-on body parts, the geografts, are offset a bit from the character's body, making a very visible seams. My minotaur looks like he's wearing flesh-colored thigh boots. This could be a problem with DAZ's exporter or with Blender's importer, or just me, picking the wrong export settings. I don't have iClone yet, so I can't test, and I don't want to start the clock on a 30-day free trial without learning more about whether geografts are fully supported.
geografts are very hit and miss
I got the centaur 7 in fine, I have a preset for 3Dxchange for its bone retarget and a trotting iMotion on the Reallusion forum
others may half work with limbs visible or just vanish but the bones remain
some tails work others do not, it seems inconsistent
the anatomical elements work.
I only have iClone 5 & 6
cannot afford 7
does anyone know if i need an export licence for importing Daz characters into Iclone 6 or 7? if so what licence is it and where will i find it?
thanks in advance
That is what I was thinking, and was worried about. Thanks for the input.
I guess I will have to set aside some time to try their demo version out.
Does Blender have any motion libraries? Not interested it building keyframe animations from scratch - and don't have the money for motion capture.
When we render, the renderer takes our 3D scene and produces one 2D image or movie from it. I don't think DAZ restricts you at all from exporting content for use in other programs to make 2D images/movies. I don't think you need to buy anything extra for that.
If you want to export to make a game or other 3D production program where the content would be transferred to someone else as a 3D mesh, that's trickier. You'd have to figure out which vendor produced each item you want to export for such a use and then buy the proper license from them. Search for "license" in the DAZ store to see many examples and their wildly varying prices.
OTOH, if you're asking about the export license prices you see on the Reallusion content store, those don't have anything to do with importing DAZ characters. Unlike DAZ, Reallusion charges a little bit extra for the right to export each object for use in other programs. But if you only have 3DXchange Pro (not Pipeline), you can't export anyway. And if you're only ever bringing stuff INTO iClone, you may not care.
often people use iClone content to make games in Unity and Unreal too and their export license covers that if cooked into a game, you would need a DAZ one in addition if doing that.
But yeah renders, videos are fine.
Just an update on geografts:
I got some help from a nice guy in the Reallusion Forum, someone who happens to own the same DAZ alien and monster characters as I do. He did test imports and found he could get the geografts to look right simply by hiding some surfaces after import into iClone. So I was convinced. I downloaded the trialware and futzed around with 3DXchange all evening last night, until I finally got the Minotaur 6 HD into iClone.
It looks fantastic! The render quality is better than the DAZ preview window, but of course not as good as Iray. For still scenes, you definitely want to stick with DAZ Studio. iClone doesn't do ray-tracing, so it sacrifices some realism for speed--but what speed! IIRC, I rendered 900 frames of animation in about 3 to 5 minutes. Minutes! Minutes!!!
I sure wish I knew what these supposed mind-blowing improvements to DAZ Studio coming in the second half of the year might be. It would be just my luck to plunk down $500 on all the iClone stuff I want, two months before DS comes out with high-quality realtime rendering...
@Inkubo
Please can you explain better what surfaces are to be hidden for importing geografts ? Can you do an example or share some links ? I guess this would work the same for any fbx importer, including Blender.
As for real-time BPR I feel this is the future for animation since it really makes the difference. It's simply a CGI revolution. I guess DS will jump in soon since iRay already provides a real-time engine.
I could not resist, as well, and bought iClone 7 Pro pack.
Below is my first renders in it - Grutilda with Chace hair.
https://www.daz3d.com/grutilda-for-genesis-3-female-and-genevieve-7
https://www.daz3d.com/chace-hair-for-genesis-3-female-s-and-genesis-2-female-s
3DXchange 7 Pro recognized Genesis 3 Female, but one still needs to fix eyes, lashes and hair.
At least, the iClone 7 animations works well on her.
... below is an iray render of her from Daz Studio.
And yes, the speed is amazing, I also get just like couple of minutes for rendering 900 frames full hd (1920x1080) animation.
But, I am not so sure, if it is a good investment, right now, because of Daz 3D promise of releasing some amazing stuff later this year.
Yes, I've awaiting DAZ Studio too, and the Unity and Blender improvements that are in the pipline too...
Yes, lots of amazing stuff is in the works.
Zane (iClone 7 character) inside Dark Star environment:
https://www.daz3d.com/the-dark-star
Rendered in iClone 7.
... and with Jade - another iClone 7 character.
Well since we are talking about IClone 7, let me throw my two cents in here.
Now, I'm working on some short CGI films and I want to include decent lipsync. My process includes the following.
1) Building the characters in DAZ Studio
2) Animating, lip syncing and posing them in either DAZ Studio or IClone 7
3) Moving them to 3DS Max for the final environment and render (Because I love Mental Ray just a bit more than IRay)
4) Moving the finished movie into After Effects/Premiere for Color Correction, Lense Flare, special effects, etc...
Now, on the Iclone website, there are quite a few different packages to choose from. Which package should I get, given everything I want to do?
Those are nice cartoon looks from iClone
I believe you need a minimim of 4 programs to build a pipeline from iClone ($700 for that suite of 4) :
https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/download.html#free-trials
So iClone 7 & it's 3 plugins.
Thanks a lot, nonesuch00.
Another render from iClone 7 - Opus Magnum room: https://www.daz3d.com/opus-magnum
@Padone, it's pretty easy. iClone has a texture picker (with an eyedropper icon). Pick the surface that doesn't look right and crank its Opacity setting down to zero.
On the minotaur, zoom in on the thighs until you see the seam where the "flesh-colored boots" pull away from the thigh; use the eyedropper to pick the lip of the boots, then reduce opacity and the legs should start to look good.
Sometimes you may have to try more than once. Around the tail, there's another section of bad-fitting flesh on the buttocks. Click with the picker in that area and reduce opacity, and you may see a gap appear in the model as if the tail has torn away. So you change the opacity of that section back to 100% again and click with the picker in another place. Eventually you'll find the right spot.
As for my testing with iClone, all the difficulties I've had with non-human characters seem to have had easy fixes. It has been very nice to encounter what seems like a huge roadblock, then have the problem vanish when I learned the right place to click.
However, now I'm trying to use DAZ human characters with clothing, and I'm finding that with my current level of understanding, pokethrough is a real problem. With large items of clothing that pretty well cover body parts, you can edit an opacity map to make the body under the dress, coat, or whatever, become invisible so it cannot show through the clothes. But I haven't yet found any good way for a typical user to deal with skimpier items like the chest armor from https://www.daz3d.com/leather-warrior-for-genesis-3-male-s or skirts/kilts as shown in that same outfit. With skirts/kilts you can turn on physics and edit a weight map to indicate which areas of the cloth are pinned down and which are free to move; but when you turn on the physics sim, the clothing falls right through the character body and pokethrough is worse than ever. You can add collision meshes to the body parts, but oddly enough, it seems iClone doesn't calculate the most efficient, form-fitting collision meshes for you; you have to futz with them yourself, and I could only make the kilt stay outside the character's legs by adding collision meshes that created weird bulges and wrecked the look of the kilt's fit.
Someone on the Reallusion fora pointed me to some instructions on how to export to other programs to create clothing morphs, but it sure looks like that would be an extreme hassle.
<<Sorry, please delete, wrong forum>>
I was considering iClone 7 for my animation work on Daz characters, but.... I heard about this: http://www.3dtoall.com/products/daztomaya/
I spoke to the programmer and he said he solved all the problems of exporting Daz figures. I am in heaven. Daz to Maya to Arnold renderer. The plugin will be released this week.
I'm a hobbyist. I'll have to find a solution that doesn't cost $2000 per year.
Tell the programmer to get one going that works for 3DS Max as well. They are both autodesk products, it shouldn't be super hard, right?
Probably no harder than Maya, but as you know, all roads lead to Maya in professional motion FX. I'm just happy if he can get Genesis out of Daz. From Maya, it's just a simple .fbx export to anywhere else.