Adding props to the scene

Unless you are a minimalist, you are into props and I mean really into props, or at least you should be. Props are one of the most important aspects of scene building for the purpose of luring in or perhaps keeping an audience during the initial moments of a scene.

You can also get props from a variety of sources. To use most of these props not made specifically for iClone, you will need a sister application to iClone—3DXchange, which converts props from 3DS, OBJ formats, and more importantly converts Sketchup props from the Google 3D Warehouse, which has thousands of free props from buildings to transportation, and so forth.

Free props are available as discussed in Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring iClone or there are websites like TurboSquid, www.turbosquid.com, that specialize in 3D props. Most 3D model websites have a selection of free props too.

So far you have discovered that props can be linked, attached, merged, and converted from certain 3D formats into an iClone compatible file. What we're going to focus on next is the face count of props selected for use in the iClone environment.

Reallusion recommends that as a general rule, props should have no more than 30,000 faces. Why? It is because of the load that a prop with a lot of faces places on the real-time engine. Does this mean that you can't use a prop over 30,000 faces? No it doesn't. In fact, it depends a lot on the computer that is running iClone. Older computers or computers with minimal RAM and lower performance graphics cards will not run without becoming sluggish as there are many assets in a scene, while newer computers with modern graphics cards running four gigabytes of RAM memory for 32-bit systems can use more props and props with larger face counts.

So what is a face anyway? A face is a flat triangle, but when grouped together forms a shape. This shape forms a polygon. Groups of polygons form the mesh. The iClone engine is a low-poly engine, meaning it works better with assets that have fewer faces. The more faces the more polygons, the more load on the 3D real time engine.

The maximum recommended face count is a rule of thumb to keep in mind. It's not set in stone. iClone won't shut down or crash just because you went over the minimum face count unless you got way over the recommended count. I have used multiple props in a scene with face counts into the hundreds of thousands without difficulty. It depends on the computer running the program. Also remember to reduce your render setting to Quick or Wireframe in the upper-right corner of the workspace to make the workspace more responsive under a heavy face count load.