Just as iClone has matured and improved over the years so has its motion-capture development. Motion capture with professional performers is the driving force behind them. The best part is there is no cleanup as these are ready-to-use, drag-and-drop motions that in many cases can be strung together for longer animations.

One of the great features of the iClone timeline is the ability to break and stretch out a part of a motion to slow the motion down or shorten the length of the motion to speed it up. There are limits to how much you can stretch or shorten a clip, but the method is very simple. A beginner-level skill that will make your motions more customizable and adaptable to your needs. 

To get started we need to load the animations into each character. This example uses the KO3_Attack_Hammer Fist_01 and KO3_Fall to Ground_SideUp02_01 from the Hand-To-Hand Combat pack. They have matched motions in action/reaction. Initial character placement is trial-and-error but there will be a future tip on how to place your characters more accurately when initially lining them up.

As you see above one motion is considerably longer but that won’t be any problem as long as we break them in the same location on the timeline. If you have never used the Break command before then it can be a little tricky at first to select the point of the break without jumping a frame or two forward or backward of the intended frame.

It may take a few trial-and-error clicks until you know where to click to get the exact frame you are looking for. It is important that these motions remain in sync. In a lot of cases being off one or two frames won’t make that much difference but it’s always better to be in perfect sync when possible. 

Move the play-head to the point on the timeline you want the slow motion to start and right-click on that location and choose BREAK. Do the same with the other characters' timelines breaking at the same frame. The example below shows where I chose to break the action.

We now have a customized motion that we can save with Collect Clip for future use if necessary. It’s not a bad practice to save these custom clips as you will find your library of motions growing over time. You can blend the motions by overlapping them at the beginning or end of the clip but the motions you get from the Reallusion Content Store are so well made you won’t need any blending since all we did was slice and slide.

 Final Animation