Product Reviews

If you assume that producing a 3D animation-based movie demands a film studio with dozens of professional artists working with expensive, cutting-edge technology, think again. According to Reallusion, all you need is a reasonably up-to-date graphics card and the latest version of iClone. And it's a claim, remarkably, that appears to be true.

Launch the program and you're presented with a clean, modern interface built around a main icon bar that provides drill-down access to all the functions. Select the Scene icon, for example, and you can choose from a range of 2D backdrops or 3D sets, including new outdoor options with LivePlants that move in the breeze, or you can import or build your own. Select the new SFX icon and you can quickly add customisable particle-based effects such as fogs, fountains and fire.

Setting the scene is important, but iClone's main focus is rightly on its actors. The previous version's range of characters has been expanded by two: Jane and Jack. They're built on iClone's new G2 technology, which offers greater realism through superior rigging and higher resolution textures. Further G2 characters built on different body shapes are available to buy, but you can get a long way by customising the provided presets - resizing body, head and hands, swapping eyes, hair and so on.

More importantly, you can completely change the appearance of your avatars simply by editing various clothing texture maps. You can do this in iClone by using sliders to change global factors such as brightness or hue, or you can load the bitmaps into an editor such as Photoshop. A major advance is iClone's new support for CloneCloth in which avatars are built on dual layers - one for the outer garment and one for the inner skin. This means you can produce totally new styles of clothing simply by editing the CloneCloth opacity layer.

iClone's ability to customise clothing is impressive, but its ability to customise faces is extraordinary. Again, this is based on texture maps, which means you can use an existing photo. For this to

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work, the bitmap face must be mapped precisely over the facial geometry. An onscreen wizard walks you through the process of adjusting the facial boundary, angle and orientation, and then pinning down eye, nose, mouth and eyebrow features. Better still, iClone can manipulate the new face to bring it alive. You can record your voice or load a WAV speech file and iClone will automatically analyse the file and create lip movements based on it. You can even apply emotional moods such as anger or humour, and iClone will adjust facial movements accordingly.

You also need to animate the avatars themselves, and this is easily done by applying motions and poses from a range of around 100 presets for walking, idling, dancing and so on. As these are based on captured motion data, the results are surprisingly natural. Sadly, iClone doesn't let you go beyond these presets to create your own animations.

However, there is a solution. The Studio version of iClone ($200) includes a dedicated Motion Editor module, which lets you merge existing animations and poses, and create your own by manipulating the avatar's skeleton. It also provides greater control over face-shaping and particle-based effects, a basic timeline editor, integration with Reallusion's dedicated lip-synch software CrazyTalk and direct integration with 3ds max.

Such extensibility is clearly a plus, but it begs a question: if you already own 3ds max, why wouldn't you use its greater modelling and animation power to produce your movie? The answer is sheer speed. Character modelling, rigging and animation is the hardest 3D task going and, once you've laboriously set up your project, you then need to render it, which can take days.

By comparison, all 3D handling in iClone, including advanced support for bump and normal maps, reflection and soft shadows, happens onscreen in real-time, which makes setting up your animation a richer experience. And when you do come to render your project to video format (AVI, WMV, RM and MP4), even at HD 1080p, it's blindingly fast.

Ultimately, the speed, ease and sheer fun of iClone come at a price: the results are clearly computer generated and in the wrong hands can be really naff. In the right hands, the results are still mid-range computer game rather than Hollywood movie. This prevents us from giving it a full recommendation (and serious users should opt for the Studio version), but it's still a fantastic achievement at this price.