Reallusion releases iClone Unreal Live Link 1.3
Reallusion has released iClone Unreal Live Link 1.3, the latest version of its plugin linking iClone, its real-time animation software, to game engine and real-time renderer Unreal Engine.
The update adds a new option to bake iClone animations to a single Unreal Engine sequence, making it easier to transfer crowd simulations, and introduces support for parallel processing.
Live-link iClone to Unreal Engine for real-time rendering
First released in 2019, Unreal Live Link is a plugin – or strictly, a set of plugins – live-linking iClone to Unreal Engine.
With them, users can render animation created in iClone in Unreal Engine without the need to export and re-import the data manually, making it possible to see changes in real time.
The workflow supports full-body and facial animation, with timecode sync, and also transfers props, lights and cameras.
Bake entire crowd animations to a single sequence in Unreal Engine
New features in Unreal Live Link 1.3 include Bake all animations to sequencer.
The new export option bakes all of the characters, motions, props and cameras – although not currently lights – in an iClone scene to a single sequence in Unreal Engine’s Sequencer editor.
The workflow is intended to speed up the transfer of crowd animations created using the new crowd simulation features added to iClone’s Motion Director toolset in iClone 8.4.
Parallel processing lets users edit scenes while data transfer is in progress
In addition, the live link now supports parallel processing of data between iClone and Unreal Engine, making it possible to continue to edit a scene in iClone while data transfer is in progress.
Users can also now exclude facial morph targets in scenes where characters will only be seen at a distance.
On its website, Reallusion suggests that the changes speed up the transfer of a crowd scene with 50 characters from “2-6x”.
Pricing and system requirements
Unreal Live Link 1.3 is compatible with Unreal Engine 4.20+ and iClone 7+ on Windows 7 and 10, although some features require iClone 8 or Unreal Engine 5.0+.
The plugin is free to indie users with revenues of under $100,000/year; full licences have a MSRP of $1,490.
iClone itself is available for Windows 7+. New licences have a MSRP of $599.
Read a full list of new features in iClone Unreal Live Link 1.3 in the online release notes
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