Reallusion has brought iClone a long way from its humble beginnings almost twenty years ago. With all the new animation and character tools grabbing the spotlight, motion files have been somewhat overlooked by some of the user base but not Reallusion. Their Studio Mocap Series for iClone and Actorcore was created to bring industry-level motions to the user base without the need for extensive knowledge or experience in animation.
Reallusion’s new Hand-To-Hand Combat Pack is a further step in the direction of superior motion-captured animations for users to drag and drop, slice and dice, and mix and match. Hand-To-Hand combat in general is not an easy motion to string together unless you have motions paired with each other as Reallusion has done. Even then it could be tricky to time the impacts of punches and kicks unless the motions were very smooth.
This pack takes all the worry and work out of the process. The only things the end-user has to do are line up the characters at the start of the process. By this, I mean distance from each other and the direction each character is facing. A little trial and error and this are quickly worked out.
Reallusion’s new Hand-To-Hand Combat Pack is a further step in the direction of superior motion-captured animations for users to drag and drop, slice and dice, and mix and match. Hand-To-Hand combat in general is not an easy motion to string together unless you have motions paired with each other as Reallusion has done. Even then it could be tricky to time the impacts of punches and kicks unless the motions were very smooth.
This pack takes all the worry and work out of the process. The only things the end-user has to do are line up the characters at the start of the process. By this, I mean distance from each other and the direction each character is facing. A little trial and error and this are quickly worked out.
The motions are labeled to know which motions are paired up, but I just set my right-side menu to two columns, and this displayed them in rows of matching pairs. All I had to do was drag and drop motions onto the combatants and position them at the beginning. Positioning can take a little more time if you have extremely tall and extremely short combatants in the same scene as the reach of the arms and legs would be a bit more difficult to match up, but this is a problem with all fighting motions.
For the most part, it is simple drag-and-drop, tweak the orientation and distance from each other and you have just animated part of a fight scene. Like all fight scenes you will want to use multiple cameras with close-ups and medium shots to emphasize drama points or what you the audience focus on.
One of the great things about iClone motions is how easy they are to break apart and mix with other motions. If you want to do a slow-motion effect with an existing motion all you need to do is break the motion apart at the beginning and end of the area you want to slow down. This breaks the motion apart into three pieces.
Take the end piece and slide it up the timeline for now (to get it out of the way). With the middle section, the one you want to slow down, select the Speed button on the timeline and stretch the motion out to slow it down. There is a limit to how long you can stretch one motion out but that has never been a problem for my usage. The longer the motion, the slower it is.
Once you have the motion stretched to fit your needs you back up the timeline and grab the end piece that we put there to get out of the way. Line the beginning of it up with the end of the last motion and you are done.
All in all, this was a very pleasant motion pack to experiment with. The type of pack that makes you want to purchase it even if you don’t have an immediate need for it just so you can play, uh… experiment with it. The motions are all professional-level quality with jaw-dropping takedowns, knockouts, and sparring.
M.D. McCallum, aka WarLord, is an international award-winning commercial graphics artist, 3D animator, published author, project director, and webmaster with a freelance career that spans over 20 years. Now retired, M.D. is currently working part-time on writing and select character development projects. You can learn more about MD on his website. 
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