Reallusion software is about realism, and arguably the biggest aspect of human realism that we look for in renders is breathing. In order to be 'life-like', and not static or robotic, things like subtle movements and blinking are great, but the thing that would really seal the deal is breathing. It ultimately makes or breaks the overall illusion of life, in the end product.

In spite of this, it's impossible to animate a character to have realistic breathing in iClone currently, because that would require bone scaling, which iClone doesn't animate. If we could simply have the option to add breathing to a character the same way that blinking is already handled, with sliders for intensity, speed, etc., then that specific bone scaling could be handled as an allowable, specialized form of bone scaling, used only in that instance, within certain set parameters.

I've just spent hundreds of dollars on piece after piece of functionality, just to bring my characters to life. ...Only to find that they look plastic, artificial at the end of the process. I've been trying to put my finger on exactly why that is, and I finally realized that it's because they don't breathe, no matter what the other animations have them doing. Default motion clips which contain breathing contain very artificial-looking breathing, so I set out to make better ones. I finally figured out how to do it, but then spent a long time trying to figure out why mine didn't work.

...Only to find out that the reason why the default breathing animations were so lousy, is because you can't animate bone-scaling morphs. Ironically, the reason why they were excluded was likely for the sake of realism. But the problem now, is that increasing muscle size does NOT provide a viable substitute for an expanding chest cavity filling with air, and there's no way to render that without scaling some bones.

PLEASE don't wait to put this vital, fundamental aspect of character realism into iClone 8, put it into 7 so that we can all start producing truly realistic, life-like characters right now! Either that, or at LEAST allow bone scaling to be animated!