iClone4 Pro

Christian Darkin explores 3D stills and animation for anyone who doesn’t do 3D

iClone4 Pro is a 3D and video effects application, aimed at people who don’t do 3D and video effects. It allows you to take still images and video clips, and combine them with virtual actors, 3D models and scenery to create still images or animation. It’s about as easily approachable as a 3D package can be. Just drag sets, props and actors in from the Content Manager to the left of the screen, customise them, then direct their action using the timeline and the tabs at the top of the screen. You can then export your movie or still for further editing in Photoshop.

Content
The package is built around a drag-and-drop interface, and content such as 3D characters, sets and furniture can be easily added to build up your scenery. The program accepts still and video imagery, but unfortunately not in PSD format. If you want to add 3D content, you can buy it ready-made from the iClone Content Store, or you can buy the iClone 3DXchange converter to make use of 3D objects from Google SketchUp and other model libraries.

All the content appears at the correct scale, so it’s very quick to set up and edit scenes. Some content even has built-in animation

Characters
Creating and animating characters is one of the most important iClone4 features. You can set up a relatively realistic human actor in a couple of clicks and customise them incredibly easily, changing their clothes, hair, body shapes and poses. You can even add automatic animation for clothing, hair and soft body parts. In version 4, you can now use the Facial Puppeteering tool to modify expressions and mouth movements. These can be animated, for example, to lip-sync with audio files, but they also work well for creating expressive stills.

Option set: Swapping clothes or hair is just a matter of selecting them from the library

Visuals
iClone4 makes a lot of its new High Dynamic Range (HDR) effects and Image-Based Lighting (IBL) tools. HDR allows you to create a greater range of brightness in your shot, which practically means realistic glows and light-blooming effects in your renders. IBL lights your scene using an image file projected onto a globe surrounding it, giving you natural light and shade coming from all around your objects for softer, more toned lighting. Both are well implemented and easy to use, but a real-time rendering engine limits effects.

High Dynamic Range effects allow you to create beautiful glows and image blooming effects quickly and easily

Textures and objects
iClone4 improves texture handling and you can now drag any texture from your hard drive onto any object in your scene. This even works with video files, as long as you have mattes for them. To superimpose a 3D actor into a real video, you simply drag the video clip in behind them. Likewise, to change a building from brick to concrete or metal, simply drag the appropriate texture onto it. You can even turn an image into a 3D object or at least a 2D placard, which can be positioned in your 3D scene. So if you cut out a series of objects in Photoshop, you can now bring them into iClone4 and painlessly create a 3D scene.

Finish your image
iClone4 allows you to output your finished scenes as still images, image sequences or video clips. Video in AVI, RealMedia, WMV, MP4 and FLV formats can be rendered in a range of sizes. You can also output widget files for showing your animated work online. Rendering is done in real-time and consequently the look of iClone4 files tends to be a bit like that of a videogame. This would be fine except you can’t export your 3D models and scenes into Photoshop – or any other graphics package – as OBJ files and take advantage of Photoshop’s 3D features to improve upon realism.