While there may be some improvements, I don’t think RL has the resources required to put into the development of a better render engine that would be on par with UE (or other third-party render engines) in addition to those needed for improving the rest of iClone and CC (and the 2D stuff).
And even if they did have the resources, personally, I would not use even an improved iClone render engine because I don’t want to render in iClone in the first place, because that would mean I had to “finish” my projects in iClone and that is a no-go for me.
Of course, others may be fine with an improved iClone render engine (or even with the current one).
Personally, I would not be interested in an “improved” renderer in iClone if it would mean greatly increased render times. For my films, I have developed a graphic novel look that combines the iClone render output with post-processing in After Effects, which suits me thus far. The only thing I would like to see is improved physical effects, such as water, explosions, etc. Better cloth simulation would be welcome too. But for now, I work around it.
As I said in the past, almost no existing 3D/Character software company
is developing a new high quality render engine from scratch these days.
not only is it prohibitively expensive but it makes no sense unless you are a major Hollywood VFX studio using only your in house proprietary material systems and getting multi-million dollar VFX contracts.
(or a new game engine of course)
Arnold for Maya-not created by Autodesk
Redshift or Vray for C4D-not created by Maxon
Iray for Daz studio-not created by Daz. etc etc.
I get it that Iclone users really ,really prefer to stay inside the Iclone eco system comfort bubble without having to deal with other programs.
However Reallusion has no incentive create a new render engine as they have invested so much in their exporters for the other engines.
Well, it is true that Maxon did not original start the development of Redshift but ever since they purchased Redshift some time ago, Maxon has been doing the ongoing development of Redshift as well as providing the support in house.
UE can provide some impressive render times. However, if RL decided to implement a ray-tracing or path-tracing render engine, I would expect render times to increase significantly.
Apart from that, I agree with @AutoDidact that it very unlikely that RL will develop a new, better render engine from scratch. If anything, I would expect more or less marginal improvements to the internal render engine at the most.
do you realize reallusion has stop developing and improving on every other thing? that is related to simulation, physics, trees, water and particles? so its not only about render quality they stopped improving on other features they only focus on animation for gaming industry they are not concerned about you an animator.
Perhaps you care about simulation, physics, trees, water, and particles in iClone but I don’t. For the same reason I don’t care about the render quality of the internal iClone render engine: I don’t use these features in iClone and do all that stuff in other programs and not in iClone.
As I have said before, as far as I’m concerned, iClone and CC are just pipeline tools to create/dress and animate characters, so I only care about those iClone features that are related to that. For example AccuPose is of benefit to me, a better water simulation in iClone would not be; so, I’d rather see, for example, ragdoll physics for characters introduced to iClone than improvements in the render engine. Or something like “AccuAnimate” (i.e. physics-based animation tools like in Cascadeur) would be a feature I’d care about.
I don’t work for Reallusion or have any insight into the behind-the-scenes stuff. But, as a user, I would expect iClone 9 to have a few improvements, one or two new features, some bug fixing, and an incrementally better user experience than version 8. I don’t expect anything new that would wow me. It’s pretty much the same thing with any software (or physical product) that has reached a certain level of maturity over the years: there is comparatively little to distinguish one version from the next.
I have only been an iClone user since version 7, but, as far as I can tell, the main selling proposition of iClone has not been the quality or speed of its render engine. So why would a better render engine be required to market iClone 9?
I have been with iClone since version 1.52 and every version has had improvements. There are also improvements during the typical life cycle of a release, often quite substantial, where other products would be tempted (and often are) to issue a new paid release, sometimes just because another year has passed.
I have my gripes obviously, and I think that content is becoming too expensive in some cases, but I also understand the need for a steady cash flow to pay staff.
NOTE: It would be nice to fix the “internal server error” thingy! I can’t post this…
iClone originally billed itself as a “3D Movie Machine” (at least, since V4 when I started using it). It’s wonderful if people want to invest time/money learning other pipelines and going through the gymnastics required to get PART of their projects transferred, but some of us just want iClone to do everything as intended, since we have invested a LOT of $ in props, characters, etc.
The main issue I have with exporting is that I don’t have a single project that I can export without receiving an error message, such as “Export license unavailable for this product” or “Need to buy export license”, etc. This doesn’t matter if you are using Blender, Unreal, whatever… I already spent the money to use it in iClone – I shouldn’t have to pay more just to see it in a different renderer (I’m not making games, just films). RL should make an effort to improve their own product, not rely on other companies to do it for them. After all, why should we buy RL props if they look “inferior” once they are exported? So we should just buy the “better” props from someone else. In that case, RL loses a big portion of their revenue (their “printer ink”) by expecting everything to be exported.
As far as increasing render times, I’m sure they could provide options as to output quality so that you can decide what render time you can live with.
RL won’t be getting my $ for Version 9 unless it include an improved render engine…
I get that.
You can render in iClone without leaving the program. However, RL never promised high-end quality renders (or did they?) so perhaps you need to moderate your expectations. The calls for an iClone render engine on par with UE or other “big boys” is, in my estimation, simply not realistic, no matter how much you or anybody else spent on characters, props, etc. So if that is your expectation, I think you may be disappointed with iClone 9 (besides, not all of the “LOT of $” has gone to RL, has it? So I fail to see why that is an argument for RL to create a better render engine.)
(BTW: Just because I use iClone/CC as part of a pipeline does not mean that I did not purchase a ton of content/assets, as well.)
Have to agree with you on that, no point in upgrading unless the render engine is improved big time. The way AI is improving, I can imagine someone will create an AI that will take any animation from any clip or film and apply it to a character.
Hopefully soon AI will have the ability to accurately restyle
your animated frame sequences with fidelity
it can already do one offs but we need batch processing to other styles
Do you have iRay? Many years ago I posted a comment on using Depth Map generated by iRay here: Depth Map
Also this comment posted by Rampa around the same time:
It’s actually really easy to create a iClone render depth-map as welI. You basically just (turn-off) the lights in your scene and turn on the fog set to white. Adjust the fog range so the far away is as white as you like, and the immediate foreground is black (not effected by white fog).
I was going to mention to fog option but people are so quick… There are a few more things to check: turn off IBL, make sure there is no glow or self-illumination and also disable any emissive surfaces.
