Good to see the new forum and glad to be part of it.
I’m just starting out with Live link and CC rig and I’m trying to figure out the best workflow and how it all gels together.
Live link lets you transfer characters and animations seamlessly to Unreal from Iclone and I can then connect the two in live mode to adjust animations and positions on the fly. That all makes sense to me.
What I’m trying to get my head around is how I can integrate the CC rig with all this but still keep the flexibility of the live link. From the tutorials I’ve watched you need to bake the existing animations onto the rig. Is this correct and does it have to be baked? I like the idea of still being able to use Iclone to adjust animations but then use the CC rig if I want to make final tweaks. Is this possible or does it all have to be baked into the model before making those CC tweaks?
If anyone can share their workflow on how they go from Iclone to Unreal using these tools to effectively shape their scenes in a non-destructible way it would be very much appreciated.
You asked for a workflow… here is mine! This is how I export my characters into UE5:
Design the character in CC (the fun part )
Export it using the FBX exporter from CC, I only export the mesh, no animations (!)
Import the character mesh using the RL-Plugin (it’s very important to use the same skeleton on all imports, so the animations you already have imported into the project work on ALL characters)
Use IClone to animate (even more fun! )
Import the animations into UE: unfortunately this can not be done directly from IClone… instead you must save the animation to the CC/IClone Asset-Library, then apply it on the character in CC, and export it from CC!! This time only the animation - no mesh.
Import into UE using the built in FBX importer. And here again - make sure the right skeleton is selected on import (!!!)
With a workflow like this I can easily create all animations and meshes needed for a game production.
If you plan to use Unreal for rendering - then LiveLink is the best way to do this! Its litterally only a 1 click export from IClone to UE, then you can use all features from IClone and see the updates in realtime in the engine… its like magic
I think its even possible to record takes using take recorder directly into UE … but i have not tried that (yet).
What i really like a lot about LiveLink is the ability to see all animations how the finally look in engine! Also the exported camera from IClone automatically becomes a Cine Cam in Unreal, so you have all the bells and whistles of the Cine Cam (like depth of field, aperture, etc…)
For me this is a 3 stage process:
Character Creator → Hair and Makeup Department
IClone → Motion Stage
UE5 → Render Stage
Thanks for your clear reply C68. Very useful. I do use Unreal live and find it great. My thoughts were if there was a way to keep a clean pipeline between the rigging in unreal and the animation in Iclone but I believe you basically have to bake out what you want from Iclone and then continue any tweaking in unreal on the Blueprint version of the rig.
yw Peter! I’m not sure i understand what you mean by “baking out” … There are some differences between the standard CC/IClone skeleton and the UE5 Manny and Quinn skeleton. Its very easy to get this messed up and end in a “skeleton nightmare” So its definitly a good idea to have a clean pipeline for this …
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