- Easy for novices with little to no animation experience.
- Simple-to-modify preset models.
- Categories of ready-made animations.
- Intuitive editing and importing.
- Great options for advanced animators.
- Preset walk cycles are a tad unnatural/stiff.
- A little harsh on resources on mid-to-low-end PCs.
- Facial profiles can be hard to tweak.
- Moving beyond presets can be hard for novices.
- iClone is a tool for creating customizable talking character animations.
- Rich with 3D environments and soundtracks, and an enormous library of preset animations.
- Use cameras and lights to add perspective and ambience to your scene.
The program is easy to navigate, taking you through building your characters in stages from features to bodies to accessories, before you even start animating. Each task that you set to undertake--such as importing a digital photo to put a new face on a character--walks you through it in easy steps that make creating and editing simple.
It's a great program for hobbyists and beginner-level point-and-click 3D animators, perfect for making this "arcane art" accessible to the everyday animator. It's even a fun toy for intermediate animators, who are willing to learn the more advanced editing techniques required to go beyond point-and-click customization.
Maya or 3D Studio Max, however, it is not; this is a tool for mid-level animation, but not for cinematic or gaming animation and effects. As a character animation program, it lives up to its promises, allowing you to customize avatars much in the way one customizes paper dolls--a little snip here and there, add a piece, take another piece away, adjust this bit here. There are limits to what it can do, and limits to how far you can customize--but for what it offers, it finds its own unique niche and fills it excellently
