Reallusion has released iClone 8.6, a point update that focuses on deeper integration with Character Creator 5, introduces a new generation of shaders for digital human eyes, and delivers extended export options for Unreal Engine 5. The release also refines facial animation, improves rendering performance, and resolves a series of stability issues that had been slowing down production workflows.
CC5 Compatibility
The most noticeable addition in iClone 8.6 is its extended support for Character Creator 5. CC5 HD characters and facial profiles are now natively supported inside iClone, while MetaHuman facial animations can be imported directly if CC5 is installed. Compatibility has also been broadened to include CC3+ Extended-Plus corrective shapes, which means that facial rigs can now carry far more nuance into iClone without requiring additional workarounds. The result is a smoother connection between character creation and performance animation, making the two tools feel more like components of the same pipeline.
Eye Shaders
Reallusion has reworked one of the most critical details in digital humans: the eyes. iClone 8.6 introduces two new shader types designed to remove long-standing artifacts. The Digital Human_Occlusion shader closes the gap between eyeball and socket, preventing hard intersections that tended to break realism under close-up lighting. Alongside it, the Digital Human_Tearline shader brings a corrected UV layout and sharper specular highlights, which makes tear lines react more naturally to illumination. These changes elevate the look of close-up shots and address one of the more distracting weaknesses in earlier versions.
Export and Animation
Pipeline exports have been updated to match current production environments. New FBX presets are included for Marmoset Toolbag as well as multiple Unreal Engine 5 targets, with UE5 Skeletons, UE5 Mannequins, and UEFN all receiving their own dedicated profiles. The existing Unreal preset has been renamed to UE4 Skeleton to avoid confusion. This makes it easier to match exported assets to the correct rig on import, reducing the time artists spend reconfiguring skeletons or poses.
Animation work also benefits from fresh controls. A new Facial Parts Strength option in the timeline allows animators to amplify or reduce expression intensity on specific regions of the face, rather than adjusting entire performance tracks. Subdivision controls for CC5 characters have been introduced, offering finer mesh smoothing for close-up animation. Motion LIVE now supports non-linear curves in facial animation, giving higher fidelity to CC5 HD and CC3+ Extended-Plus characters when recording live input.
Rendering and Workflow
Rendering improvements in iClone 8.6 may not be headline-grabbing, but they address key pain points in everyday use. A dynamic mipmap option has been added to real-time rendering, reducing noise when working with detailed wrinkle maps. Project files are also lighter thanks to mesh and animation compression, though iProject containers themselves remain uncompressed. Together these changes improve responsiveness without altering the core look of the renders.
Fixes and Stability
The release also closes several long-standing bugs. FBX export from iClone now correctly aligns controllers for UE5.6 control rigs, while crashes linked to specific imports have been eliminated. Motion editing functions such as Edit Motion Layer and Motion Direction Control have been stabilized, and the issue of characters growing in size when flattening animation layers has been resolved. Rendering has also been corrected: AVI exports are once again properly compressed, and DLSS no longer introduces mosaic artifacts.
What’s Next
Reallusion has confirmed that a compatible AI Render plug-in for both iClone 8.6 and CC5 will be released on September 1, 2025.
