Holy cr… guys I think they heard us, on the new 25th anniversary page they posted updated licensing details… Check it out!
This is a step in the right direction for sure!
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It’s interesting that you say ‘you want to see a competitive market’ - we all do as 3D artists/devs - and that is pretty much the point of my post above: that Reallusion has had a monopoly on this workflow for years and have milked people for all it’s worth with their, quite frankly, greedy practices. They have obviously mainly targeted non-artists/users who can’t create their own assets, and it shows in their marketplace, and the low quality assets for high prices.
The point about the competitiveness is definitely apt here because I imagine that with the release of 5.6 Reallusion might need to take a look at their pricing structure and just how they try and milk customers for every little thing.
Of course it remains to be seen with the release of 5.5, but so far it just looks like they have upgraded the textures.
I posted because it needed to be said. And no, it wasn’t a ‘rant’. I was simply stating the facts. Instead of having your little childish tantrum, maybe you should have listed your reasons like a reasonable adult. I posted in seriousness and would have actually liked to hear your thoughts, but you decided to go the surly teenager route instead.
If you bothered to even read the first line of my post you would see that I am an existing, paying customer of CC and have had use for it. I was going to upgrade to CC5 until I tested the workflow in UE 5.6 and made an informed decision, based on practical testing experiments, that I more than likely would not be upgrading. I posted because I wanted to hear other user’s opinion’s - like the very well argued and reasonable response from @smwshort - and not some pis sy childish equivalent of sticking your tongue and blowing a raspberry.
I’m sorry, it wasn’t clear from your post that you were interested in opinons. You seem to firmly believe that UE is the better solution across the board and the way you presented it seemed final and did not seem to invite discussion. I was not going to say anymore but apparently that comes over as childish, so here we go.
My reason for using iClone and CC and continue to so is that I have been a user since 2006. Over the years I have accumulated thousands of assets, an investment that I have no reason to abandon. I am not interested in photo-realistic rendering, and I have other ways to achieve the look I want based on the iClone render. That look must appeal to some, because recently an animated feature film of mine won a Best Feature Film award.
There are shortcomings, obviously, so the challenge is to work around those. I applaud RL’s effort to establish connections with other 3D applications, as this obviously expands their user base, but there is no reason to look down on those who chose to stay within iClone and CC for their productions.
that Reallusion has had a monopoly on this workflow for years and have milked people for all it’s worth with their, quite frankly, greedy practices. They have obviously mainly targeted non-artists/users who can’t create their own assets, and it shows in their marketplace, and the low quality assets for high prices.
What “monopoly”?
The Daz figures look better and the Daz content is generally cheaper
we have free export plugins / addons for all of the major 3DCC’s an game engines.
the people who refuse to step outside of the Reallusion eco system comfort bubble have no right to complain about the Reallusion prices
You always have the option of LEARNING TO MODEL your own content and rig your own characters as I did years ago.
Now if the UE5 MH fits your needs that is fine as they are a great value.
However those who stay in the Reallusion ecosystem should understand how commercial markets work by this point.
“The monopoly is gone” owners of Epic Games:
Tencent (35%)
The Walt Disney Company (9%)
Sony (5.4%)
Kirkbi (3.2%)
Source: Epic Games - Wikipedia
BlackRock also invested into Epic.
And I’m sure the owners are not charitable institutions. They want to make money.
Thanks for the reply post and explaining more in detail your motivations. For your case it makes complete sense, of course. You are heavily entrenched in the ecosystem and have been using it as your entire pipeline sine 2006.
My points were more directed at people like me: relatively new to using CC, and as a small part of a pipeline that also involves half a dozen other 3D programs. That’s who my opinions were aimed at so I’m sorry if you took offence.
And congratulations on your award. 
I’m bot sure if this is aimed at me? Or if you misunderstood my post? Or maybe I misunderstood yours? I’m pretty much case of the opposite of what you’ve written so I’m a bit confused. 
I’m talking about the monopoly of workflow/pipeline/ecosystem tools as pertain specifically to artists/studios.
There wasn’t a monopoly. Epic wants to become the monopoly.
Don’t be fooled by them.
I’m not sure if this is aimed at me? Or if you misunderstood my post? so I’m a bit confused.
Indeed anyone who thinks that Reallusion
has a “monopoly” on pipeline tools for moving animated characters between 3DCC’s and Game engines is VERY confused about the definition of the word “monopoly”
I challenge anyone here to describe a feature or ability ,in the Reallusion software, that does not exist or cannot be done anywhere else such as Maya , Max ,Blender, C4D or Houdini
Even Daz studio has a far better joint deformation feature that is not going to be in CC5 and a better cloth simulation system.
I’m not ‘confused’ at all. I’ve been in 3D since the early 2000s. Maybe you’re relatively new to 3D, but the ease with which you can transfer rigs between DCC packages and engines these days used to be a nightmare.
It’s only in recent years that a lot of this transfer workflow has become so much more efficient. I think the fact that the Reallusion ecosystem is so popular proves the point that the DCCs and the transfer between them wasn’t just a few clicks.
Install some 10 year old DCCs and set up rigging and cloth sim and a fully rigged facial blend shape system manually, and then transfer the setup into another DCC or game engine from that same period and let me know how that goes for you.
I’m not ‘confused’ at all. I’ve been in 3D since the early 2000s. Maybe you’re relatively new to 3D,
I have been in 3D since the late 1990’s
My IMDB film credit was for my part in an indie film hand keyed with Poser and rendered in Maxon C4D 13 years ago via a (now defunct) plugin.
I think the fact that the Reallusion ecosystem is so popular proves the point that the DCCs and the transfer between them wasn’t just a few clicks.
Reallusion making it easier (for biped humanoids ) does not fit the definition of a “monopoly”
I can transfer a character from the VROID vtuber software to Blender and have a fully functional Character with facial visemes and bone dynamics
for the hair and clothes with two mouse clicks at a cost of $62 for the Auto rig pro addon for blender.
I can use the FREE diffeomorphic addon to import any Daz genesis figures from G3-G9 into blender with full facial FACS RIG intact and then use the FREE live link video face capture to animate the face
from any clean video source… No $250 for”accuface “or even NVIDIA GPU required
And I can import four legged animals from Daz and have them talk unlike Iclone/CC4
And I don’t need DAZ figures because with the $75 dollar Faceit addon
I can rig any character
(Not a few clicks though) to have a face rig that accepts Live link , Apple ARKit &NVIDIA audio to face while the the Auto rig pro body rig can retarget motion from any Biped source
I can create ragdoll simulation in the Poser software
(that cost me $60 from Ebay)
Export that ragdoll simulation to DAZ
or Blender,C4D or Maya etc
and all of this does not even include using USD or Alembic .
And Auto rig Pro for Blender has a rock solid Game rig exporter for UE ,unity & Godot
Install some 10 year old DCCs and set up rigging and cloth sim and a fully rigged facial blend shape system manually, and then transfer the setup into another DCC or game engine from that same period and let me know how that goes for you.
Why use solutions from a decade ago when I have so many today in 2025?
So with Blender ,Daz Studio and around $200 dollars (for addons) I can do everything you do in Iclone/CC4 (and frankly even more) for the cost of CC5 alone.
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Yes, you can do all of those things easily NOW. And that’s my point. In fact, that was my original point. You couldn’t do any of those things easily 10 years ago (or however long ago CC came along), and with your experience you know that as well as I do.
And your examples above pretty much prove what I’m trying to say about the whole Reallusion ecosystem. It is overpriced in today’s market. The easily accessible and widespread availability of alternative solutions means that, yes I’m going to use the word, the ‘monopoly’ they once had has ended.
Epic gets at least $35.000-$50.000 from a game company that makes $1M revenue per year for using Unreal Engine and takes 12% revenue share from developers using other engines. Steam generally takes 30% or $300K. But Reallusion is overpriced… I don’t think so.
It may be that you’re a hobbyist without much money. But other hobbies cost money, too.
If you’re talking about the epic games store with regards using other engines, then yeah they have a cost affiliated with being part of their storefront/ecosystem the same as Steam. They are both storefronts and the utilities provided by them are invaluable for self published game developers.
This is a genuine question because I’m not familiar with the Reallusion marketplace policy, but does RL not take a cut for letting you sell assets on their marketplace?
I’m only jumping in here because I think this a bit of an unfair comparison, there is no upfront cost to the developer using Unreal Engine. If you don’t hit $1million in revenue then you never have to give them anything, and they are providing the entire unreal engine software completely essentially free of charge until that threshold is reached. I don’t disagree with some of your other points about epic wanting to be a monopoly, they definitely don’t want you to have to go outside of the engine if at all possible I imagine. But, RL is basically doing the same thing with icontent, making it substantially cheaper if you stay within their ecosystem. These companies, RL or Epic, do not have the good of the consumer in mind at all. They are profit driven companies.
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You couldn’t do any of those things easily 10 years ago (or however long ago CC came along), and with your experience you know that as well as I do.
Reallusion released CC1 in 2015.
your assertion that Reallusion had some abusive “monopoly” since 2015 make no sense.
Look at the video game scene back in 2015
the most popular titles by sale were:
Madden NFL 16,
NBA 2K16,
NBA Live 16,
WWE 2K16,
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,
Bloodborne,
Undertale,
and Fallout 4.
produced mostly by AAA studios probably using some combo of Autodesk Maya, Motion builder or 3D Max
And the most popular places to get pre-made content was Turbosquid, CG trader and the Unity & unreal market places.
I use Maya indie I have an older Maxon C4D R25 perpetual and of course Blender.
Today in 2025 you can go into any of the online forums for those softwares and mention Reallusion or even Daz
and wait for the sound of crickets chirping.
That said is the Reallusion Ecosystem “pricey”compared to using Blender or UE5 for the same purposes
(game content dev & animated films)
I would say yes, but that comes with entrenched habits and your refusal to venture outside of the ecosystem comfort bubble.
However there was never a time where Reallusion dominated the Game dev or animated film content
market and certainly never held a “monopoly" position.
In my opinion Unreal Engines architecture isn’t catered to single developers doing hobby projects or small games. If you decide to use that technology and release something you likely have a large enough budget to hire multiple developers and artists. And you probably have the budget to get some assets from Reallusion without needing it to be free before earning $1M.