Hello!

I'm an artist that focuses on characters, and have recently rigged a custom character. I have both iclone and character creator, as well as some of your addons.

I'd like to preface this by saying, I love the suite, and think it's a great system for creating humanoid characters and producing models, but I feel there are a few features that are underutilized, or inaccessible for reasons I don't think need to be when working on models I've imported. I also may have misunderstood some of the steps and created my own problems. So, if I am explaining a self-made problem, please feel free to let me know so I can avoid the issue in the future.

For some context: I was rigging a kobold (little lizard man) with ears and a tail that need to move. I used the CC4 version of Accurig, and it was wonderfully successful, but some hurdles gave me pause.

Accurig:

I only have a couple issues with accurig. I cannot assign extra bones in the process, (For tails or weird ears and the like), and I cannot define how many toes the character has, as well as defining whether or not the characters toes are complex enough to act as hands. I think having the option to add extra bones, even extra limb options innately in the system would be a great boon, so we wouldn't need to export to finish the job outside the program.

Characterization:

I feel like the largest problem I ran into stems from the inability to add bones in accurig. due to this, I had to export the character to blender and add the extra bones, and apply the skin weights manually. This also stops me from being able to reimport the character as a CC character and lead to most of the following issues I ran into.

The characterization system, specifically the hands, requires trial and error for repositioning. I'd love an option to tell the characterization process that my character's hand bones deform along a specific axis, rather than having to reposition them, and hope the results look good after application. It'd be even better if it recognized the rig is a CC character rig with extra bones, and just defined them as unused bones. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but if a character is modeled and rigged with splayed hands, using accurig, and then exported to add bones for things like tails, the reimport process requires characterization.

Other problems (CC4):

The inability to transfer skin weights for custom imported characters onto clothing. This one would be a great quality of life add if you can manage it.

The inability to define custom clothing for custom imported characters as "clothing" was a big roadblock. this cut me off from being able to use the hide meshes tool underneath my clothing layers, which led to lots of clipping issues. (the character had a shirt and coat, which clipped through each other a lot) This led me to give up on doing anything involving the clothing simulation in CC4, and instead just animate the character. I plan to then import them into an external program at a later date to make the clothing work.

The character expression addon, 'zbrush Face Tools' would be a great boon for custom character meshes if you can make that work.

IClone:

I'd like the ability to scale the character by their root. reproportioning them causes problems when they have parts like the ears and tail.

Finally, I'd like to end on the positive notes. The Accurig system is awesome, and what initially brought me to using your products. I think with some streamlining and more open options in CC4 for non-standard characters, this is going to be one of the smoothest ways to bring characters from the modeling process into practical use. I enjoyed the process overall, and am impressed by what I'm able to do in both CC4 and iClone thus far. especially the facial capture tools.

Thanks!