Importing 3D Characters from Reallusion’s iClone 7 into Unreal: A Tutorial

As a freelancer contracted to a studio that specializes in rescuing certain projects I have faced a few seemingly impossible drop-dead dates and managed to survive with some of my sanity.

Some of these projects required long hours due to the extremely short production time allowed for the project to meet its original release date. Anyone that has done this type of work can attest to how grueling and physically challenging it can be. 

Throughout all of this, I had one tool I could rely on to speed up certain aspects of the work. One tool that could layout a scene, plot a shot-list (cinematic or photographic), block characters and more importantly, a tool I could count on to move the project forward.

iClone, for me, has been my “go-to” secret weapon for many years.

At first, it was just a tool in the toolbox but now version 7 has matured into a full-fledged animation suite capable of handling several types of motion capture along with key-framing and puppeteering.  

iClone7 and companion Character Creator will work with most major 3D applications including Maya and 3DS Max. The fast turnaround, easy-to-use character generator can pump out characters of many different styles, sizes and shapes by providing a basic, rigged mesh that can be imported into your favorite software package for reshaping and sculpting eliminating hours and sometimes days of character development work.

It’s not just characters. With iClone 7.2’s addition of FBX export you no longer need 3DXchange to get other 3D assets out of iClone for use in other applications.

Built-in menu choices allow the user to set up these characters, props, and scenes for export and use in major game engines like Unreal and Unity. In just a few steps your 3D asset is ready for action in your game engine of choice.

The following tutorial provided by Reallusion demonstrates how simple it is to import scenes and characters into the Unreal Engine.  After viewing these tutorials you’ll be utilizing iClone assets in the Unreal game engine for fast game development.

M.D. McCallum, is an award-winning commercial graphics artist, 3D animator, project director and Webmaster with a freelance career that spans 20 years and includes over 100 individual and team-based awards. Author of the iClone Beginners Guide (PACKT PUBLISHING) and the warlord720 YouTube channel.