After Mixamo pulled their stunt with removing the Unreal set up for thier characters I shopped around for something similar and found iClone. The current Character Creator is good but they just announced the release of 2.0 Heres the details on some of the updates: here it is
These are the main things I found exciting about it:
Just thought I’d put this out here in case anyone wanted to check it out.
Just installed the iClone 2.0 CC and inported one of my Iclone 5.1 characters to test it out. There is an option in the 2.0 to convert the bones to UE4 which I did and exported the fbx. I then installed it to my MoCap Ninja Project file I purchased from those guys and used the Unreal Skeleton as my skeleton during inport. I placed their High Kick anim in the starter map and replaced the mesh with my character. It worked perfectly with no distortion, wierd effects, nothing. As I’m not an animator this saves me a lot of time.
I was gonna do a video on it here in a short while as I’ve got a lot of people asking me about it on fb as well. Need to get coffee in me and shake off the cobwebs first heh
Heres a video showing how to get it working quickly. I haven’t used iClone but for about a month so some of the things I show regarding that may be inaccurate. This should work in 4.13 and 4.14 as well. I tested it in 4.15 so those others will need to be checked.
I’ve had iclone for a while now. You could export before but you had to retarget the bones. You could get it to work but it was a real pain.
I just installed CC2 this last weekend. Not only does it now have Unreal export, it supports PBR materials.
Reallusion is advertising iclone 7 coming soon. If you can export/import their animations (to Unreal skeleton) that would be a game changer.
Thats what I was looking forward to as well. I also seen the videoset where you can inport the Mixamo anims to 3d Exchange and send them to iClone onto one of your characters. So the possibilities for a nice sized anim database are pretty high right now.
They offer various packages. I think just for iClone 7 Pro’s preorder it’s like $200 (US). The various suites come with different add ons but the Character Creator comes free I believe. The suite I purchased came out to just over $500 (US) and included Pro, 3d Exchange Pipeline, Character Creator , and both Clothing and Character Morph tools. Also came with a Clothing Bundle, but it’s for Content Creation only, no export. Best bet is to look on their site and see which package best suits your needs. The iClone 7 is a pre-order so when you purchase whichever suite you get the iClone 6 versions free with your purchase. This page has all the info on each.
If it can do face morphs (including lip sync), LOD levels for crowds, animatable wrinkle maps (for example to make forehead wrinkled when angry), corrective morphs for smoother animations, supports UE4 physics and IK (I think it should because it uses the same rig, right?) then I might buy it.
Also, does it actually use the same rig as UE4 skeleton or a more detailed but compatible rig? UE4 rig might be too basic for more detailed animations.
In the end, it is somewhat expensive (although having a discount currently), considering that iClone Character Animation Pipeline bundle with 3DXchange pipeline is required for full FBX support. But if you compare it to DAZ Studio - well, DAZ developer licence usually costs the same.
I’ve been using iClone for 6 months or so now to record animations (Perception Neuron mocap), create characters and edit animations. I don’t have much experience with this, but it seems to do this quite well. As said above, it also exports to the UE4 mannequin skeleton, which is great! The problem is, **it doesn’t export animations to the UE4 mannequin skeleton correctly **- it misses the root bone. This isn’t a problem for everyone, but if you’re thinking of using it for exporting root motion animations, be aware you will need to do this manually.
Adobe really ruined Fuse. Also they have no plans at all to make the CC Beta a full working program like 1.x was when it was Mixamo. If you ask in the forums they actually get mad now which is sad and infuriating cause I paid for Mixamo service and now all that is for nothing cause since 4.16 even with tricks mats are hit or miss for the models and animation and importing them is a nightmare. iClone and it’s Character Creator is awesome but if you want all the options and resource packs your looking at about $2k USD atm its on sale for I think $1820 marked down from $2400 with the new face building add-on and unless I have overlooked it they dopn’t offer a sub service like other companies do so it’s sadly not Indie budget friendly which is a shame.