iClone 8 New Features Introduction

For iClone 8, we strove to keep strengthening the core values of character animation with Motion Director game-play controls and powerful editing capabilities, such as animation layer editing, bi-directional blending, reach target offset for interactive motion, end effector editing, and more. With the latest innovative update, iClone 8 makes it easy to create animation in an enjoyable and productive manner. 

Besides providing a smooth pipeline to mainstream animation and game engines, iClone’s real-time render has been enhanced. iClone 8 can also connect to NVIDIA Omniverse – a RTX GPU-based path-trace render engine, which supports USD (Universal Scene Description) data architecture for collaborative design projects. With it, users will be able to generate commercial-quality visuals directly from iClone 8.

You can check the 3D Character Creation & Animation webpage for more information about presale orders, feature comparison, and FAQs.

The following are the new features revealed in Part One of Work-in-Progress Preview:

• Motion Director – Play to Animate
• Motion-based Innovations
• Enhanced Real-time Visuals
• Performance & Productivity
• Real-time / Path-Traced Render with NVIDIA Omniverse

Let’s take you for a tour for a new feature highlight…

If you are interested in diving deep into the details, you can refer to this document.

More information – Feature comparison of iClone 8 and iClone 7.

Motion Director – Play to Animate

The new Motion Director system debuts game-play controls to drive characters, apply motion triggers and dynamic cameras to direct scenes in real-time.

Motion-based Innovations

iClone 8 offers massive innovation for motion creation and editing. It provides powerful editing capabilities while keeping the process simple and intuitive. No matter if you are new to the 3D industry or if you are a veteran of professional tools like Maya or MotionBuilder, you will find the best of worlds in the powerful motion functionalities of iClone 8.

Auto Motion Alignment: Have the motions flow smoothly from one to another.

Motion Direction Control: Use the transform gizmo to directly adjust the direction and position of the character during motion clip transitions.

Bi-directional Blending for Smooth Clip Transition: Allow vastly different motion clips to blend seamlessly in a more natural sequence of transitions.

Motion Blending: Showcase the practical applications for the three aforementioned functionalities. The character in the video automatically transitions from walking to snapping a camera. In the cleanup phase, the motions can be trimmed and matched to create one smooth connected motion. 

Auto-extend Looping Animation: Automatically extend the hip motion and perform position matching.

Multiple Animation Layer Editing: Movement will be pivoted at the hips with the ability to adjust the pelvic floor. You will be able to add as many layers as you desire for maximum flexibility, and freely inspect all aspects of the motions for simplified management.

Mirror Motion: Helps when the motion pivot goes astray during motion chaining.

New Control Rig: Comes with a new look and added control range to increase handiness.

End Effector: Designed for professional hand-key motion and non-realistic animation creation.

Reach Target Editing for Interactive Motion: For creating reach offset, offset layer key transitions, and creating dummies.

Motion Correction: Reach target prevents over-extension and determines the duration of the locked effectors, which is useful to prevent slipping.

Curve Editor: Curve Editor used with effector controls, makes for a powerful combination. It supports HIK effectors, and it’s useful in fixing animations such as foot slippage, off-kilter walk, off-pacing, etc.

Motion Pipeline: Drag and drop! Any FBX motion data format is compatible, which largely removes platform barriers for motion data and makes it all compatible.

Enhanced Real-time Visuals

iClone 8 real-time render has been enhanced with the following updates:

Volumetric Light: Added visible volume to directional, spot, and point lights. Not only can light illuminate, it can also add a sense of atmosphere to the scene.

Light Enhancement: Light and shadow strength multipliers offer greater flexibility.

Lens Flare: Quickly apply various cinematic lighting effects to add visual tension.

Mirror Reflection: Simulate realistic mirror reflection with various control settings like opacity and blur.

Motion Blur: Blur for fast-moving objects is a common technique in movies and animations. Adjustments for blur intensity and frame-blend effect is also available.

Performance & Productivity

The software architecture of iClone 8 has been optimized, and more new features will be introduced to handle big-scale projects.

• Support for GPU computation for skin bone character animations. 
• Hidden objects will not be processed in the background.
• Support isolating object(s) – a quick way to isolate selected objects for editing.

Long known as a professional animation production tool, iClone has been missing some basic functional requirements for a while. In this version, we have worked tirelessly to make up for this with one function at a time, in order to improve the overall productivity for its dedicated users. The added functionalities include:

• Flexible frame-rate for virtual production: export with any frame-rate, frame-accurate video compositing, and match move.
• Merge Project: merge objects across different projects, which will benefit collaboration, and facilitates working with existing projects.
• Collection Manager: freely categorize objects in the Scene Manager, so users can quickly and easily show/hide defined groups. 
• Addition of Hotkey Manager.
• Device mapping for cameras and object-based transformations (R.T.S.)

Real-time & Path-Traced Render with NVIDIA Omniverse

iClone 8 and Character Creator 4 can connect to NVIDIA Omniverse – an RTX GPU-based path-traced render engine, which supports USD (Universal Scene Description) data architecture for collaborative design projects. With it, users will be able to generate commercial-quality visuals directly from iC8 and CC4.

Watch this video for an overview of Omniverse rendering.

Those who have purchased iC8 and CC4 will have free access to Omniverse Connector, and a preliminary version will be provided for early experience.

For more details:

• Character Creator 3 Omniverse Connector
• iClone 7 Omniverse Connector (coming soon)

You can check the 3D Character Creation & Animation webpage for more information about pre-sales orders, feature comparison, and FAQs. If you have further questions, please contact our Support Team, or join the discussion at Reallusion Forum.