CGSociety interviewed REPLICAS executive producer James Dodson and VFX artist James Martin, with a behind-the-scenes of the REPLICAS’s Film production. Read how Reallusion‘s ecosystem of tools drove the innovative previz, motion capture and postvis techniques at the heart of the REPLICAS movie.
Animation Studios often capture actor performances inside plain canvases with the use of generic characters, making it difficult to visualize the final scene and make corrections if necessary. But thanks to iClone’s Motion LIVE system, production studios now have the power to immerse their performers into 3D environments in real-time, helping them get a sense of the atmosphere and demands that the project requires.
See how Florida-based animation studio — Monkey Chow Productions has learned to employ bleeding edge technology to perfect and lightspeed animation production thanks to iClone’s realtime animation.
Tutorial
This tutorial will take you through the many tools and techniques available for facial animation in iClone 7 – including lipsync, keyframing, puppetry, and mocap – as well as timeline editing. I’ll also describe ways to mix the different techniques to improve workflow, as well as how to fix and refine animation at any point in the timeline.
Working purely in iClone 7 with a pre-built character creator model which has been additionally polished in Photoshop and Sculptris, the tutorial will apply to any iClone/ CC characters or any non-standard human characters which have been brought into iClone and correctly set up for facial expressions via 3DXchange.
‘Out of the box’, iClone 7 provides a uniquely comprehensive toolset for facial animation which can be used at many levels – from rapid ‘blocking in’ of expression keyframes through to subtle face puppetry and motion capture.
Probably the most important thing to understand is that these techniques can be used separately, or together – depending on the results you’re aiming for. You can produce decent animation extremely quickly just by using one of the tools – or you can spend time combining different tools and refining the animation, right down to the nervous twitch of a character’s lip or eyelid.
For more information about iClone and other Reallusion products, visit www.reallusion.com
Realm Pictures is about fusion, about combining two concepts to give birth to a new stronger one.
Their goal is to combine the resourcefulness of Independent Film with the impeccably high production values of Hollywood cinema. To combine the mystical tradition of British storytelling with the newest in digital and solid state technologies. In doing so they hope to choose a new path of strength, integrity and excellence.
In their production, they have chosen to use the iClone 3D Animation software for pre-visualization prior to the actual shooting of the film, along with character motion capture for their scenes.
Reallusion releases iClone 7, the biggest update ever in the iClone real-time 3D evolution. This giant leap empowers iClone users with the latest PBR/GI visuals, unlimited creation for 3D characters, professional animation for morph and curve editing, real camera system, as well as several significant technology integrations with industry leaders.
iClone 7 is now a virtual production platform with community inclusive tools and massive aggregation of real-time content, empowering indie filmmakers, pro studio crews, previs / VFX teams, writers, directors, animators, advertisers and anyone that wishes to quickly turn their vision into a reality.
Comparing to game engines enhanced with cinematic timelines, iClone 7 is much easier to start or include into an existing production pipeline as there is no need to have specific game development knowledge or coding capabilities.
Watch the iClone 7 New Features Video –
The movie is about a team of Navy Seals and Nasa astronauts working together to rescue the survivors of an alien attack the first major space station.
Tutorial
iClone and HitFilm combine with outstanding results for incorporating 3D animation, 3D models, and video editing. Here are the top 5 reasons I’ve found to use iClone and HItFilm together as a power-duo for 3D and video VFX.
iClone is a powerful 3D animation software, that stands out by being affordable, very intuitive and user-friendly. It has a surprisingly short learning curve, and it really boosts the performance of any animation process, allowing us to achieve spectacular results without the need of expensive and complicated resources.
” The realtime render software iClone from Reallusion is nowadays an essential part in the world of 3D programs.The advantages of iClone are obvious. The software is easy to learn and thanks to the real-time 3D engine, it is possible to produce movie clips in a short amount of time. iClone also provides a ton of animation-ready talking characters for direct performances. Any actor performance can be easily created with iClone’s intuitive animation tools.”