iClone 4 Pro Review

“Most people will be impressed with the number of features available, and how easy it is to get started.”

iClone 4.0 Pro is a fully featured 3D animation studio that allows you to create spectacular 3D animations using the latest advances in motion graphics and video compositing.

If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at 3D animations, or even direct your own 3D film, but thought it would take months or perhaps even years to learn the art, then iClone 4 Pro could be the software you are looking for to get those creative juices flowing. iClone 4 Pro is designed to give amateur and professional animators alike a collection of tools to help make 3D animation accessible. Now you don’t need a multi-million pound budget to create 3D masterpieces, you can do it in the comfort of your own home.

iClone 4 Pro is aimed not only at professional animators, but also for the semi-professional and amateur users. It doesn’t bore you with complicated setups and hours of painstakingly creating scenes and characters. Most of this can be done on a drag-and-drop basis, particularly the large collection of built in props and 3D models, and creating new objects not found in the library is relatively easy. For example, it’s possible to create a 3D model in something like Google Sketchup and then import it into iClone 4 Pro as a model ready to be animated.

Naturally the speed of your computer will dictate how slick this software runs, but even on moderately powered machines iClone 4 Pro runs well. iClone is hardware optimised, so as long as you have a decent graphics card (which is assumed if you’re thinking of buying a 3D animation package) and a good CPU, you shouldn’t have any worries over speed. In fact, iClone 4 Pro does a fairly good job at managing system resources, and only the largest models with many polygons slow it down.

The user interface is neat and tidy, and doesn’t overwhelm you with options. Although, that’s not to say that the advanced features aren’t there when you want them. It seems a considerable amount of time has been taken to clean up the toolbars so that only the most common and most used options are visible to begin with. This actually helps to get the hang of the software at the beginning, as you’re not bombarded with options. As you learn more about what you’re doing, you can add more to the toolbars and customise the layout as you want it.

Features
The in-screen motion editing is really useful, as you can tell exactly what’s going on with your animation. You get plenty of 2D backgrounds with the software, and it’s easy to import your own from virtually any media type known. You also get an advanced lighting manager with many built-in modes that will make your animations look realistic. You may find the lighting difficult to set up however if you go for a custom lighting setup. It’s mainly trial and error and more luck than judgement, but you can get some very good effects with some perseverance.

In addition to lighting, there is a great deal of different textures to try out, all of which reflect correctly in the light to make them seem realistic. You can also set up custom effects such as wind, and any plants will move and sway automatically.

When you’re finished editing your backgrounds, weather and lighting you’ll find a good amount of features dedicated to animating your main characters too. This is the part where it gets daunting because there are literally hundreds of parameters you can play with, all to do with the movement of your “actors” as iClone calls them, and the clothes they are wearing. You get full control of your character’s hands and body, as well as a fully featured section dedicated to facial expressions. Again, you can use the built in ready-made characters, or you can create your own. If you want to import photos and images of yourself or friends to animate, then you can do this too, but be prepared to spend a while setting up your character’s face, along with all the parameters needed for moving the eyes, mouth, eyebrows etc. Actually to be fair, the software does a lot for you, but you’ll need to set aside some time to help it with the finer details.

The ability to animate your characters in real time, just like playing a video game, is a real bonus. It’s easy to do, and if you make a mistake you can just go back in the timeline and start again. Your characters can also interact with props – such as the ability to pick up something.

Once you’ve created your masterpiece and want to export it, you’ll find the number of export features quite extensive. HD support is included, and you can output to all the popular formats, with the exclusion of Quicktime. Export doesn’t take too long, and you’ll soon have your 3D animations uploaded to YouTube.

Overall
Whether you want to produce a full blown animated movie, or just a few small clips to impress your friends, iClone 4 is impressive and at the same time easy to use. There are a few areas that could be improved, such as the content library, but that’s just a minor niggle. For the most part, after spending some time getting used to it, you can easily create basic animations, and the more time you spend the more you’ll get out of it.

It’s unfair to say that iClone 4 Pro has too many parameters and settings for each prop and character, because that’s just part of the course with this type of software, although if you don’t want to play with all the advanced settings, iClone does a good job of selecting the defaults that most commonly work.

Most people will be impressed with the number of features available, and how easy it is to get started. 3D animation after all can get very complicated, and that’s why hundreds of animators are needed to produce the top 3D films. With iClone 4 Pro, you’re unlikely to be nominated for an Oscar, but you’ll probably have a lot of fun trying!

Check prices of iClone 4.0 Pro on Amazon,who have some great offers on this software.