Reallusion iClone 6 - My First Animation

Late last year Reallusion released iClone 6 which was both great and annoying at the same time to me as I'd finally worked my way through the basics of iClone 5 after purchasing that the year before. Naturally I upgraded and promptly discovered my laptop running iClone 5 wouldn't run iClone 6.

Reallusion did release a patch shortly after that enabled iClone 6 to run on my laptop but it basically scaled back the software so that you couldn't use any of the powerful new features.

Fast Forward to June of this year and I decided to finally splash out and buy a desktop computer system powerful enough to take advantage of the full capabilities of iClone 6. Things like the new, enhanced G6 human avatars, access to the Indigo Render Plug-in for more realistic output, along with other features like tessellation, that take full advantage of DirectX11. (I really have no concept of what tessellation is and why I need it but it sure sounds important).

To be honest, I mainly bought iClone 6 to remain current as I intend to offer the power of iClone to my Animation4Business clients.

Much has changed with iClone 6's user interface. Initially it looks very different to iClone 5 but once you familiarize yourself with where the tools you use most often are, the new layout makes sense and it's not hard to find lesser used tools as they're logically located.

My first project with iClone 6 is a short 30 second promotional video for my Animation4Business website using my custom designed ToonMaker 2 Avatar.

Promotional Animation using my Custom
ToonMaker 2 Avatar in iClone 6.

Although it's a fairly simple video with just a single character talking to camera I did storyboard out the key moments of the video as a guide. It's been really useful working from the storyboard, recreating actual key scenes, rather than making things up as I go along (which is often my default working process).

I've also discovered it very easy to make simple custom props. In the image below you can see my character holding up a play icon that is made from a primitive box shape that I simply resized then edit the texture image in Serif's PhotoPlus X5 to be red with a white triangle arrow.

In the main window you can see my custom Avatar
surrounded by custom made props.

5 If you look closely you can also see an invoice prop created from an iProp blank piece of paper prop that I simply edited the texture to include the invoice printed on it. Took me about 10-15 minutes to create.

Thus far I've worked on this animation over 5 non-consecutive days averaging about 3-4 hours each day, including writing and recording the audio script and hand drawing the storyboard. Most of the character animation is completely from scratch using motion key frames.

I'm hoping to finish the video within the next couple of days. All I have left to do is one specific scene that shows a selection of different characters just standing around as a camera pans across from left to right. Then I'll refine some of the details of the entire animation and add some music.

Usually you wouldn't do an entire animation in one iClone file but since this project is so short and doesn't really do anything iClone isn't capable of it's makes sense to keep it all within the one program.

By my next post this animation should be finished. Look forward to seeing it along with a scene comparison with my storyboard and how the scenes actually look in the animation.

Should You Buy or Upgrade to MOHO 13? Spoiler Yes. Yes You Should!

MOHO 13's New Character Set. Smith Micro released MOHO 13 , their all in one, 2D animation studio, this week. The question is should you buy or upgrade to the latest version? Obviously I've already spoiled this in the title, so the actual question is why do I think you should buy or upgrade? To be clear, I'm only talking about MOHO 13 Pro. If you're considering MOHO 13 Debut be aware that you're missing out on some of the new features, and a lot of existing features that are only available in the Pro version. Debut is fine if the budget doesn't stretch to Pro, but, if you never want to be disappointed about not having a feature, it's Pro or nothing! The other thing I need to be transparent about is I'm not, by any stretch, a frequent MOHO user/animator. However I took the time to learn MOHO 12 Pro fairly extensively, blogging about my process and sorting out 104 free MOHO training videos into a logical viewing order in the process. I think I ha

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Review: CrazyTalk Animator 3 vs Moho Studio Pro 12

Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Smith Micro's Moho Studio Pro 12. Which of these 2D animation applications is right for you? Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a strong supporter, and fairly proficient user of CrazyTalk Animator since version 1. It's a great piece of software for producing 2D animations from purchased content quickly and, with version 3, is easier than ever to create animations from your own art. Lesser known is that I first purchased Moho Studio Pro 12 (then known as Anime Studio Pro 9) back in October of 2012 and have been upgrading it to the latest version ever since because I believed in it as an application for creating great 2D animation to TV quality standard. As such, it's a much more complex application than CTA3 that I only got around to learning properly late last year. I'm still in the process of blogging my progress . Despite this I feel I've learned enough of Moho to compare it to CTA3 to help you determ

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3. I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996. It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it. But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm ). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs . Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures , and Toon Hair , designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker. The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that w

TimeBolt: Fast Video Editing for Anyone Creating Online Courses, Podcasts, or Vlogs.

I resisted making tutorial videos for a long time because I don't like editing. Specifically I don't like editing me teaching as I step students through a process during a screen record. I have a tendency to insert long pauses not just in the middle of sentences but between multiple words in the middle of sentences as my pace matches what I'm doing onscreen. This makes for very long and very slow paced video tutorials. To counteract this I have to edit out all the pauses. This can take hours, or even days on particularly long tutorials. For example, when I created my main course, The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator , I literally injured the thumb on my right hand, operating my mouse, as I spent weeks taking out all my pauses (seriously, I had to wear a thumb brace for a few weeks to fix the pain). Recently I came across TimeBolt , a very affordable, fast editing application with the featured purpose of removing all the pauses from your video (and even

Creating a G3-360 Head From a Single Photo in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator

Source Photo from Generated Photos . Ever since Reallusion introduced the G3-360 Character Head into Cartoon Animator 4 I've wanted to see if their 360 Head Creator tool could be used to create an animated head using a photo. Part of the reason I've never given this a shot, until now, is that I just assumed it would be difficult, and require a lot of photo editing to blend out the sprite edges. It turns out, creating a photographic G3-360 head is not that much more difficult than creating a cartoon head, and can be done using a single photographic image using my own G3-360 head rigging system . While this article isn't intended to be a full tutorial, I'll run through the basic steps of how I achieved my photographic G3-360 head, shown in the comparison below, of a Cartoon Animator Morph-based head on the left, and my G3-360 head on the right. Pros and Cons Cartoon Animator's morph-based head system is ideal for animating photographic faces. It uses a semi 3D wire me

Animation and Video Life

Search This Blog