Dawn in Reallusion CC3!

[Ken1171]

It's now official! Reallusion has announced that HW Dawn will be fully compatible with their upcoming Character Creator 3 (CC3) as soon as next month (September 2018). Check out how pretty Dawn looks in their CC3 promo! ^____^

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As far as I could see, CC3 will ship with state-of-the-art content creation features that can leave Poser/DS on the dust, and Dawn will be there when it happens. This is very exciting! I have used iClone since version 4, and since then, Reallusion has been taking giant steps towards integrating the latest and greatest tech into it. So much that iClone 5 was rather mediocre in comparison to how advanced iClone 7 has become.

Coming from that, Reallusion has become one of the most exciting companies to follow nowadays, with very creative products such as CrazyTalk Animator and iClone. All of their 2D and 3D animation products render in real-time, where iClone 7 can do it with PBR quality, using some of the latest tech, such as real-time Speed Trees, DX11 GPU accelerated real-time tessellation, native support for Substance PBR dynamic materials, full body mocap, facial markerless mocap, real-time cloth and hair sims, and real-time GI (global illumination).

I have already been using Dawn in iClone for a while, but CC2 can only use the default Reallusion figure. So I have instead used Reallusion's 3DXchange to convert Dawn into an iClone figure. The process of converting her facial expressions would take forever to finish, so until now I have been using her without expressions.

All this will change with the arrival of the brand new CC3, which will already support Dawn, so we will no longer have to go through these cumbersome 3DXchange conversions. Based on the CC3 release previews, it will be able to convert, fit, and rig clothing to Dawn with features way more advanced than Poser or DS could dream of.

This, of course, means that Dawn will enter a new content market at Reallusion. I am eager to put my grubby hands on the upcoming CC3 and get into the exciting new features for clothing and character creators. It can get as simple as using dials to create your character, or to create your own stuff from scratch and add it to CC3 and iClone 7.

Kudos to HW for this new alliance with Reallusion, one of the most exciting companies to follow nowadays. Just think of it - Dawn will be the first figure to exist natively in Poser, DS, CC3 and iClone 7. Yay!

 

[Ken1171]

Extra info from the official Reallusion news - the HW figures that will be compatible with CC3 are:

• Dawn
• Dusk
• Baby Luna
• HW Gorilla

There is some clothing and hair that will be included, probably the ones from the Starter pack.

 

[Rae134]

looks neat Ken!

 

[Miss B]

It looks good to me too, but from what I saw on their site, the Character Creator software will be mostly for creating characters for gaming purposes. I wonder how well something like that would work for our purposes.

 

[Ken1171]

It looks good to me too, but from what I saw on their site, the Character Creator software will be mostly for creating characters for gaming purposes. I wonder how well something like that would work for our purposes.

That's just one of the many things that COULD be done, but for the most part, that's not what Character Creator has been used for until now. The "normal" use of CC is just to create new characters (using dials and dressing them up), and then use them in iClone. The idea of creating characters for games is a new concept or suggestion, and not the usual. I believe most people will just keep using CC to create characters for iClone.

 

[Chris]

Cool that the cat is finally peaking his head out of the bag! Lisa and I, and our team (Paul and Alisa that is) have been working on this for over a year now. It's been so difficult to keep all this under wraps as things have been developing.

I've been watching the Reallusion site and reading threads, and seeing HiveWire being mentioned, and watching the video showing their de-resolution of our HiveWire Huntress outfit created by Mec4D, but now the announcement today is finally showing some of what's to come.

Very exciting indeed!!!!!!!

Good stuff ahead, and this is great for our core content and all artists that create for Dawn, Dusk, Baby Luna, and our Gorilla.

More to be announced for sure as things develop.

 

[Alisa]

Yep, very exciting stuff! Nice to have it out in public now so we don't have to keep our mouths buttoned up

 

[Ken1171]

Yup, now Reallusion has made it public and official! The HW figures for CC3 are scheduled for September, which is around the corner now. This is so exciting, and I have so many questions!

 

[Chris]

Did anyone notice too, that CC3 will have the IRay renderer in it!

Wow, so very cool!!

 

[Ken1171]

Right!! NVidia I-ray will be sold separately as a plugin, and I have already placed my pre-order! Reallusion has an offer to include both CC3 and I-ray with a nifty discount for pre-orders, and I think it was the best value. I was thrilled to see the new features for content creators. In the videos, they make the tools look very streamlined. They have included some stuff we already have in Poser/DS, and some that seem to go beyond them both. I wish I could participate in the beta to get up to speed with CC3 content creation for Dawn.

 

[Ken1171]

If you haven't seen it already, check here my animation using 2 Dawn figures in iClone 7. I made it last year, using the Digimi Game Tools in DS to decimate Dawn, the clothing and the hair down to mere 13K polys and a single map texture atlas. The animation was composed in Poser and then exported to iClone using BVH. I used 3DXchange to convert the low poly Dawn to iClone using the "DAZ Genesis" profile, since Dawn and Genesis share the same general body groups and bones naming convention. Unfortunately, that doesn't include rigging the hands and adding the facial expressions, but the animation didn't require that.

iClone had no issues rendering 2 Dawns in the scene with max PBR features in real-time. Note the dynamic hair animated in real-time with the built-in nVidia PhysX engine. That's HW mid-length hair for Dawn! iClone also has the Bullet engine built-in, the same used in Poser 11. I have spent some time creating the music, and then integrated everything in Flash to make the animation.

The whole process may look complex and intimidating, using many tools in different programs, but CC3 will greatly simplify everything. Reallusion claims they plan on phasing out 3DXchange in favor of doing everything in CC3, to include the model decimation and rigging conversion to iClone. Since Dawn will already come CC3 compatible, none of these will be needed. CC3 will allow converting outfits to the figures with what appears to be a complete set of tools to do the job right there. So far I have only seen the development videos showing the tools in action, and I have a vague idea of what they do and where. One of the most recent demo videos show rigidity groups in action in CC3 - something we have in DS, and I have been asking SMS to add it to Poser for years. That's what keeps small details like buttons from being destroyed by body morphs. It's small details like this that show me how complete CC3 will be when released. Poser is getting to version 12, and buttons still explode when we apply body morphs. It's things like that that get me excited about CC3 - besides the fact that these HW figures will now exist in native CC3 format.

Things in CC3/iClone look very similar to how things work in Poser/DS. The difference is that in Poser we do everything in one program, while in iClone we need CC3 to create the characters, apply morphs, dress them up, add hair and textures. Then we export the character to iClone and continue the scene from there. It's in iClone that we actually build the scenes and animations. As opposed to Poser/DS, everything is done in real-time in iClone, to include cloth and hair dynamics, and even the rendering. This used to look very lame in iClone 4 and 5, but things started to improve in version 6, and finally took off to PBR rendering in version 7. If you are still not happy with that, they have the optional Indigo rendering engine plugin based on high quality raytracing, which is slow but very realistic. By the time CC3 is released, there will be a new plugin for I-ray, which provides the ultimate PBR rendering quality and speed. That's the way to go if you prefer the ultimate quality over the convenience of real-time rendering.

However, as opposed to Poser/DS, iClone has much more advanced real-time physics. This includes something that has been seriously lacking in Poser/DS - foot contact with the floor, and IK that actually works. Foot contact happens automatically, which is what newbies expect to have in Poser/DS, but soon realize it won't happen. This alone makes scenes and animations easier and more realistic. How many times have you noticed a bit too late in Poser/DS that your character was floating in the air above the ground after a half an hour render? Have you noticed how cumbersome it can be to make your character actually stand on the floor with both feet without going through it or floating above it? In iClone we have feet contact with the floor automatically, and if you are coming from Poser/DS, that feels heaven-sent. LOL

 

[LisaB]

So exciting and a long time coming!

 

[Janet]

I checked out their web site. Will all of our content work in this? Poses? Clothing?

 

[Miss B]

I'm not sure exactly what's what with CC3, but I'm under the impression that we can create "new" characters and clothing with it, not that we can import what we already have into it.

Of course, I can be wrong, so we'll have to wait for someone in the know to say for sure one way, or the other.

 

[Bonnie2001]

This is very interesting, I will have to read up on the software as I know nothing about it right now.

 

[Rowan54]

3D Animation Software | iClone | Reallusion
This is the link I found for it. I had never heard of either Real Illusion or iClone before this thread and so went to look.

 

[Ken1171]

I checked out their web site. Will all of our content work in this? Poses? Clothing?

Content-wise, Poser is as compatible with iClone as DAZ Studio. You may convert the clothing, but it will take some work. As you can see from my earlier post above, the link shows an animation I made with Dawn wearing the HW tanktop and skinny jeans, using the HW mid-length hair, and the sneakers from 3DU Willow. All of it came from Poser, and was used in iClone. The thing is, by the time I made that animation, CC2 did not support any figures except for the default one from Reallusion. That is changing with the arrival of CC3 in the following weeks, where 4 of the HW figures are now certified for compatibility. This doesn't mean you can get Poser Dawn and drop her in CC3, but instead that there will be a Dawn version already converted to CC3, or a script to automate the conversion like they did in the past with DAZ Genesis. Since CC3 isn't yet released, I am not sure how this will be.

For those new to Reallusion, they are the creators of iClone and CrazyTalk Animator. There are other products, but I think these are their flagship applications. In a way, iClone is very similar to Poser, but their figures used to be rather primitive until version 5, and quickly evolved in v6 and v7 to something quite comparable to what we have in Poser/DS, to include dropping old-school clone skin in favor of the more familiar conforming clothing and hair. While Poser/DS are used mostly for producing still images, iClone is primarily meant for cinematic animations. Some studios use it for storyboarding, while some companies use it for forensic reproduction of a case to be used in court. With the recent improvements on figure quality and rendering capabilities, some studios are now making full featured animated movies with it.

In the past, iClone was used by hobbyists like us to create short animated movies, where the quality was equivalent to some of the older game engines visuals. One of the main features was iClone's ability to render in real-time, so making a movie wouldn't require any rendering time. As it happened with Poser and DS, rendering quality has evolved over time, and iClone 7 can now render with PBR quality, and still in real-time. The last 2 versions have incorporated a slew of state-of-the-art technologies we usually only find in high-end software. I have listed some of the most impressive ones in previous posts above. I am not easy to impress, but I have to admit, I am impressed - considering how mediocre version 5 used to be not long ago. It went from mediocre to better than Poser + DS together.

Perhaps iClone's sudden improvement leap came from Reallusion being connected with the industry that uses their software, getting feedback and improving from there, based on the users needs. People from movie studios and directors who use iClone for storyboarding. If it didn't evolve, they would use something else, like it happened with Rooster Teeth studio, who used Poser for RWBY season 1, but soon after moved to Maya for all the subsequent seasons because Poser wasn't good enough and was just not evolving fast enough for the pace the industry moves. It is this kind of 2-way communication with the industry that moved Reallusion iClone from mediocre to amazing so quickly. I am not saying it's perfect, but it's certainly impressive by the pace it's evolving, and also for their choice to adopt the state-of-the-art tech the industry has to offer nowadays.

Coming from the rather stationary Poser, it has been very exciting to follow Reallusion through the last few years - and I am not alone on this. Hivewire3D has noticed them too, and managed to get 4 of their flagship figures to be certified compatible with the upcoming CC3 that will be released in the coming few weeks. So far I could get away with Dawn in iClone using the partially compatible DAZ Genesis profile, which ends up without hands and facial rigging. With Dawn being CC3 compatible, we can now make use of her full range of motion, facial expressions, and even lip sync speech in iClone. All this while taking advantage of Substance dynamic materials, real-time cloth and hair sims, and real-time PBR rendering. If you don't like real-time renders, you can render with Indigo, or instead with I-ray, which has become nowadays industry standard.

If you are new to iClone, you can check Reallusion's channel at YouTube, where they have a large collection of free webinars covering all sorts of things. I have attended to many of their public webinars, where we can ask them questions in the end. Reallusion is out there quite often making free public webinars, and I have talked to them all the time, asking them questions directly. In comparison, I had to become an SMS beta-tester to be able to talk to them about Poser development in private forums. Reallusion is coming up with innovations so quickly that sometimes it's difficult to follow. In one month they came up with FaceWare, which allows markerless facial mocap with a regular webcam directly into iClone. And then with a USB device that can capture full hand and fingers mocap directly into iClone. This month they came up with a neural network artificial intelligence that can do facial mocap with your iPhone X in real-time. I was reading about this scientific research just a couple of months ago, and Reallusion already has it.

I suppose we have become complacent with Poser/DS, where PBR rendering is the latest and greatest, and most of the rest is the same. That's what motivated me to look into iClone. It was easy for me because I was already using CrazyTalk for years, by the time when iClone was still mediocre. With iClone 7, things got exciting again.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

I've been looking at Reallusion's site, but I'm still not sure what advantage there is to me for getting CC3. From what I've read, iClone is great for animators, but I don't see where it would benefit someone who doesn't do animations. Or, am I wrong about that?

CC3 looks really cool, but is it a useful tool for a content provider who creates characters for use in Poser and DS?

 

[Chris]

Great stuff there Ken. It's so good to see you out and about and connected in this manner. Kudos to you for keeping an eye toward the future, and to your support of HiveWire products as well.

The folks at Reallusion are impressive too. Maybe more so than there software offering even. The kindness they've shown to Lisa, Alisa, Paul and myself as we've had several Skype meetings with them has been fantastic. We've had the attention of their CEO, VP, Marketing Manager, Product Managers, Content Manager, Developer Relations Manager, and still several others. They are a professional and attentive group of talented people. We greatly appreciate what they see in HiveWire and our content. They see our content as the crowning jewel to what they're looking for to enrich and accompany their software and content offerings.

I believe we match up very well with Reallusion. You'll see more to come with the release of Character Creator 3, that would be premature to mention here.

A few more things I'd like to say. Reallusion has established a pipeline to convert DAZ Studio content into CC3. This pipeline will be laid out to us so that we can convert additional HiveWire content to CC3 and make that available on their premier Content Store. We currently plan to make additional HW content that is CC3 ready available at HW as well. This same conversion method will be available to our CAs if they'd like to convert their DAZ Studio content for CC3. More details to follow with regard to this process.

I've been skimming thru the forums at Reallusion on content topics, and in their CC3 General forums. Many folks have been converting DAZ content for some time now, and want that to continue in a big way. Some of them are familiar with HiveWire content, but not too many. It will be a great thing for us to get our foot in the door to the current DAZ Studio users, that are also iClone and CC3 users. My hope is that when they see our HiveWire content for CC3, some of their early notions will be dispelled about our offerings, and that they'll grasp our content value. Knowing too that in CC3 Reallusion has made it so easy to fit soooo many other clothing items to CC3 figures, that Dawn, Dusk, Baby Luna, our Gorilla, and others can be fitted with new content from so many other stores. As long as that content can be read into CC3, you can fit it to HW content easily with CC3 methods.

In my Reallusion forum reading, it's being touted that the coupling of IRay with CC3 renders faster than that of Iray in DAZ Studio, just FYI.

I think the people at Reallusion are wizards actually. They have so much available, and their software is so feature rich. Smith Micro and Poser could learn a great deal from them, as to what software could and should be doing for the customer. The folks at DAZ already get it, and are on a solid trajectory with both software and their content in general.

 

[Chris]

I've been looking at Reallusion's site, but I'm still not sure what advantage there is to me for getting CC3. From what I've read, iClone is great for animators, but I don't see where it would benefit someone who doesn't do animations. Or, am I wrong about that?

CC3 looks really cool, but is it a useful tool for a content provider who creates characters for use in Poser and DS?

Just look at their Content store and you'll see a myriad of 3DU products offered there. These are also products that he's made available in the past and specifically for Poser and DAZ Studio users.

3D Models and Assets - Reallusion Content Store

This will tell you that it has indeed been worth it to Steve Corder to pursue this added revenue stream. Steve has asked us in the past if we had plans to make Dawn and Dusk available for iClone and CC. Then those products like Willow, Alexis for Dawn, and Axel for Dusk would be of added value to him. This has been a process for us, and one in which we're more than happy to enter into. I firmly believe this will be of value for you as well.