Tips for Beginners – iClone 8

There are a lot of questions out there that don’t merit an article but deserve an answer and when combined with other tips and tricks can smooth out your animation journey. With this in mind, there will be some future articles like this one that focus on multiple tips having to do with iClone.

In this article, we are going to focus on some tips for beginners to provide some easy alternatives to more complex actions until your skills have improved. Some of these may also save some time and frustration for longtime users too.

Using Visibility to Simplify Complex Actions

Sometimes experienced animators can forget how confusing linking and attachment is to new users with no 3D background. New users might not even know those tools exist as there is so much to learn, but they can grasp visibility on and off very easily. This is an alternative method to linking as both can accomplish the same task, but visibility works without having to know anything about Reach Targets.

For example, take the simple everyday task of picking up an object like a drink. This is one of those motions that, unless necessary, should be implied with camera cuts that show everything but picking up the drink. The actor is shown approaching the object, looking at it, then the camera cuts away to another view and then cuts back with the drink in hand.

An easy fix, but depending on the script or direction, you may be forced to show the entire interaction of picking up the drink. If you have to keyframe most or all of this motion with Reach Targets, then that gets into intermediate to pro-level experience, but visibility can save the day.

We will use two drinks. One drink in the character’s hand with visibility off and one drink on the table or countertop where the drink will sit with visibility on. 

I’m generalizing from here (refer to the video for more details).

Place the drink into the character’s hand first by positioning and attaching it to the hand. Then use a motion or keyframing to get the character to the table or countertop. You can just have the character already standing at the table by the drink if you wish.

NOTE: In this example, I used two motions from the Shopping pack.  Market_CustomerBasket_Pick_M_01 and Market_CustomerBasket_Pick_M_01 edited in the timeline for the parts relevant to picking up an object.

The whole thing hinges on TURNING ON the visibility on the drink attached to the hand and TURN OFF visibility for the drink sitting on the table. This must be done on the SAME FRAME so one is instantly visible while the other is instantly invisible. No timing issues, no Reach Targets, and minimal keyframing.

The plus side is it is easier to duplicate the drink in hand for the static drink with easy placement since it’s just detach and toggle off visibility.  Again, see the video below for more details on the process.

NOTE: When allowed, it might be more judicious to use a camera cut to show the character within reaching distance of the drink instead of approaching it to eliminate the extra animation of handling the drink when a camera cut will fulfill your needs. Don’t over-animate.

Radial Blur to Mimic Circular Motion

Not all motor vehicle props have free-moving wheels that you can animate. Other props like pulleys or any rotating part fall into the same category. While you might get away with not having animated parts on props you cannot say the same for car wheels.

In some cases, the wheels, tires, and everything else were exported as a single mesh that cannot be extracted for whatever reason. This is where the radial blur image steps in. Use your image editor to edit the diffuse map and apply a radial blur to the tire and wheel texture. This implies the spinning of the object.

You can alter the other maps like normal, metallic, and roughness, but you can remove those maps if necessary for the car wheel and tire.

It’s not an elegant solution but it works as long as the spinning objects are not close to the camera. This also eliminates more manual animation.

There is yet another solution such as placing a separate tire and wheel prop over the original, then animate the movement.

Image Manipulation

I’m not implying that no one reads the manual. In a perfect world where all of us intensely studied the manual versus the real world where some of us don’t even know a manual exists… I highlight the simple tool of the RIGHT CLICK MENU when dragging and dropping images into an iClone scene.

This is an often-overlooked tool for beginners who are already learning as much as they can as fast as they can. This has been covered before in articles and tutorials but is worthy of mention again as so many users seem unaware of this right-click menu option.

Instead of using the usual LEFT CLICK when you grab an image to drag and drop into iClone, use a RIGHT CLICK instead and you will be presented with a menu about what to do with the image.

Dummies for… Lots of Things

Dummies are basically proxies or go-betweens to get something done that is not native to the application. In its basic form, a dummy is a low poly object like a box (four faces that are not visible in the render) that can be attached to or between objects for more control over attributes like transform and scaling. You can attach Particles to a dummy which the Prop Distribution tool can then see and utilize.

There are many uses for dummies including:

• Positioning and Scaling: Dummies can be used to precisely position and scale objects within your scene. Instead of directly manipulating the objects themselves, you can use dummies as reference points for alignment and sizing or group scaling.
• Animation Control: Dummies can act as control objects for animating other objects or characters. You can parent objects to dummies, allowing you to manipulate them collectively or independently during animation sequences.
• Camera Targeting: When setting up camera movements, dummies can serve as targets for the camera to focus on. This allows for smooth and controlled camera movements, especially in complex scenes.
• Proxy Objects: Dummies can be used as stand-ins for more complex objects or characters during the initial stages of scene creation. This can help improve performance while you’re still working on the overall composition of your scene.
• Organization: Dummies can help organize your scene hierarchy by acting as parent objects for groups of related elements. This can make it easier to manage and manipulate complex scenes with multiple objects and characters.
• Scene Center Point or Checkpoints: Dummies can be used individually or in groups to center your camera on to jump around within a scene. This can speed up scene creation by providing shortcuts to work areas without having to manually reposition the preview camera every time.
• “Look At” Control: A dummy can add more versatility for cameras or props to look at as they can be animated independently of the target to do things like view certain parts of another prop. This can add a small measure of control beyond the built-in “look at” feature in iClone.

As iClone has matured there is less need for dummies as many functions are built-in, but there is a lot to keep up with and they have their place in the right situation, particularly for beginners that might not know all the available tools and functions.

Linking Versus Attaching

This has been covered many times, but it is always worth going over again as the concept is very simple but necessary knowledge. If you want to save items with a character, then ATTACH them. They will become accessories parented to the bone you selected during the attachment process.

If you want to animate the accessory like dropping it or letting it go, then you will need to switch to a LINK as ATTACH is not editable on the timeline where Link is as far when to Link and Unlink.

NOTE: There is an attachment hierarchy to keep in mind. You may find yourself attaching an accessory to another accessory, but it attaches to the character bone NOT the accessory. To attach one item or accessory to another you need to DETACH the main accessory and then attach the second item to that accessory. After this reattach the original accessory to the proper bone and the parenting will be correct for pivot points.

These are just a few of the tips I’ll be passing along because they’re small details that make for better animations and create a pleasant animation experience. A lot of tips that work in earlier versions of iClone still work in the current version.

Not everything can be documented in the manual, because… you know… we all read that immediately, right??? Seriously, it’s hard to keep up with everything and even if you did read the manual first, you’d need almost superhuman comprehension and retention to remember everything.

Hopefully, some of these tips will help smooth the road ahead for you and if you have a tip or trick you want to share then please do so in the comments.

NOTE: There is an excellent tutorial on advanced mesh level extraction and attachment for Character Creator. See the video below for more information.

MD McCallum – WarLord

Digital Artist MD “Mike” McCallum, aka WarLord, is a longtime iClone user. Having authored free tutorials for iClone in its early years and selected to write the iClone Beginners Guide from Packt Publishing in 2011, he was fortunate enough to meet and exchange tricks and tips with users from all over the world and loves to share this information with other users. He has authored hundreds of articles on iClone and digital art in general while reviewing some of the most popular software and hardware in the world. He has been published in many of the leading 3D online and print magazines while staying true to his biggest passion, 3D animation. For more information click here.

WarLord’s Workshop