My first iClone UE Animation 😎 (Patreon)

Hello supporters 😁

I was going to post a couple of early  access video about Daz Studio, but sadly after an hour of editing we had  a power cut and Premiere didn't store any auto saves. I thought perhaps it's a sign to call it a day and switch over to my laptop. It only  has UE and iClone installed, and I thought I'd show you this rather  unremarkable animation instead.

While it won't win me any Michael  Eisner awards, I'm still super excited about it: I've made it with a  combination of iClone and Unreal Engine, in a process that was  shockingly quick and worked on my first attempt. With this workflow,  I'll be able to use iClone as an animation front end for UE. It allows  me to animate native UE characters, iClone/CC characters and also Daz characters.

I'll have to investigate the full options of course,  but so far I've been able to apply stock animations, blend them  together and adjust them with additional keyframes. Next I'll look into  something that lets me animate background characters within a  pre-defined region with simple behaviour and my game controller.

I've  only bought iClone last month when it was on sale and have been  spending a few hours every weekend to get accustomed to its ways. While  following this novel concept called a "written documentation" I was able  to send an iClone native character over to UE, then apply an animation  to him and record his motions via the Live Link integration (all on my  laptop). I used a native UE set for the background, sent the floor and  chair over to iClone as proxy objects so I could get the positions  right, then render everything out in UE.

This concept also works  with much larger sets, foliage, landscapes, lights and cameras. While UE  has a lot of animation tools built-in, they're often extreme overkill  for what I need and insanely complex to understand. I don't mind  complexity, but it adds up on larger projects - and as the saying goes,  less is more. The iClone workflow opens the door to more exciting  character animations in the future.

And Speaking of animations,  this Saturday my special guest on the Daz+ Pro Artist stream will be  none other than Dartanbeck! We met on the Carrara forums many moons ago  and kept in touch, he's a self taught animator and has some nice  workflow tips up his sleeve. Join me from 4pm EST (watch your email for a  link from Daz).

I'll get those videos edited over the weekend I'm sure (unless I get distracted by iClone experiments that is). 😂