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For those who don’t know the tool: RTX Render is a path-traced rendering mode integrated into iClone 8 and Character Creator 5. It places physically based look development beside Reallusion’s character creation and animation tools, while the host applications continue to exchange assets with Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine and Unity. Rhe engine uses NVIDIA RTX Path Tracing, but it remains a Reallusion implementation with its own controls, conversions and beta limitations.
Two engines, one scene
Reallusion has opened public beta access to RTX Render, a new path-traced engine inside iClone 8 and Character Creator 5. It runs alongside the existing DirectX 11 renderer rather than replacing it. Artists can select DX11 or RTX from Project Settings or the toolbar, and the chosen engine drives both the viewport and final render. Switching back to DX11 restores the original scene settings.
This is more than a new panel attached to the old rasteriser. Path tracing changes how light moves through the scene, how reflections and transmission behave, and how source size affects shadows. RTX Render adds artist-facing controls for sampling, light bounces, physical materials, camera depth of field, procedural skies and display transforms. The supplied beta documentation does not describe a dedicated RTX Render API, so studios should distinguish the documented interface from iClone’s broader Python support. A button is not an SDK, even when both live in the same application.
Conversion is not absolution
Opening an existing project in RTX mode starts a conversion process. Reallusion remaps digital-human shaders for skin, hair, eyes and teeth to path-traced equivalents. Simple props may convert quickly, while dense scenes and multiple characters take longer because each material must be translated. Path tracing has introduced reality, including the part where reality takes time to initialise.
The converter translates Glow Map Strength into the new Emissive Strength control. Lights loaded through Content Manager as prop or light-room items are not converted automatically. Reallusion also provides a Clamp Light option that reduces light multipliers above five, which can prevent an inherited DX11 rig from immediately bleaching the scene. It may also alter deliberately exaggerated lighting, so the result still requires inspection rather than ceremonial trust.
Live Substance 3D materials are not supported in RTX mode. The application bakes their textures during conversion, and procedural edits require a return to DX11. Reallusion recommends loading projects containing Substance materials in DX11 before switching engines. Roughness migration needs similar care: older projects should retain the previous 0.66 gamma correction, while newly loaded textures and FBX assets should use 1.0 to preserve authored roughness.
Samples, bounces and denoising
Render Export provides separate Preview and Final values for most quality controls. Artists can use lower settings while framing and lighting, then raise them for output. Denoising is the exception and does not receive independent Preview and Final values in the documented interface.
Steps set the number of samples per pixel. Bounce Count ranges from one to 32 and controls repeated reflections and transmission, while Diffuse Bounce Count governs the spread of indirect diffuse light. An information overlay shows current and maximum samples during convergence. These are direct artist controls, not hidden quality presets with encouraging names and mysterious consequences.
Reduce Brightness Pixel Noise suppresses isolated bright pixels, commonly called fireflies. Reallusion notes that disabling it preserves a more strictly physical result. The denoiser removes remaining grain, but low sample counts can soften hair, fabric and other fine detail. Production users should therefore treat denoising as the end of a sampling strategy, not an invitation to render six rays and ask the algorithm to invent the rest.
Materials become optical
RTX mode replaces the usual material interface with a dedicated panel. Blend modes include Opaque, AlphaTested, Transmissive and Transmissive AlphaTested, plus an Auto mode that reacts to opacity and transmission use. Shadow casting can be disabled per material. Reallusion warns that the first adjustment of some blend controls may briefly pause while the required shader path is prepared.
Transmission covers glass, liquids and thin translucent surfaces. Specular Transmission provides refractive behaviour, while Diffuse Transmission creates a simplified frosted response for materials such as lampshades and thin fabrics. Index of refraction, attenuation colour and attenuation distance control refraction and absorption. Because attenuation depends on the distance travelled through the object, scale now affects the material physically. A bottle modelled ten times too large is no longer merely a layout error. It is also a different optical experiment.
Thin Surface removes volumetric thickness and refraction for shell-like materials such as bubbles. Coat adds a separate specular layer with its own weight, roughness, tint, IOR, normal strength and mask. Sheen supplies fibre-style highlights for velvet, silk and linen. Emissive combines colour or a glow map with intensity, and emissive surfaces can illuminate nearby geometry under the path tracer.
Hair receives dedicated absorption, longitudinal roughness, radial roughness and alpha controls. Absorption can retain depth in dark hair, while the two roughness parameters shape highlights along and across strands. Reallusion notes that lowering Alpha Multiplier can currently thin the crown. Alpha Power works in the opposite numerical direction, with higher values increasing transparency. Anyone building shared presets may wish to label those controls before the first review session becomes a philosophy seminar.
The beta content library contains 55 RTX materials across clearcoat, transmission, subsurface-scattering and fabric categories. It also includes 18 studio-lighting presets and demonstration projects. Because the preset parameters remain editable, the library doubles as practical documentation rather than a collection of sealed look buttons.
Lights gain dimensions
Under path tracing, light size affects shadow softness. Directional lights gain an Angle control, while point and spot lights use radius to define their physical extent. Sources with non-zero radius can appear in reflections and may intersect nearby geometry. The light has acquired physical presence, which is excellent until it appears in every chrome panel in the shot.
Image-based lighting now casts shadows, so interiors built around IBL alone may appear darker after conversion. Light Range is not supported, and rectangle and tube lights currently render more slowly. Rectangle and tube spotlights also lack some angle and falloff controls. These differences mean that an existing DX11 rig is a starting point, not a binding contract.
The camera uses an f-stop control for depth of field, with lower values producing shallower focus. The procedural sky acts as a light source and exposes sun position, angular diameter, brightness, cloud density and cloud movement. Reallusion lists excessive background exposure at high sky-brightness values as a known beta issue.
Colour, not certification
RTX Render offers Standard, Raw, ACES and AgX view transforms, together with gamma, white balance and false-colour exposure monitoring. Artists can also inspect All, Direct and Indirect lighting contributions separately. Standard is intended to remain closest to the DX11 look, while Raw removes tone mapping.
The unsupported list matters
The open beta does not cover the complete DX11 feature set. Unsupported content and texture functions include terrain height maps, displacement, AO maps, particles, PopcornFX, SpeedTree, live Substance materials and UV animation. Missing visual functions include ambient occlusion, toon shading, fog, legacy GI settings, lens flare, motion blur, sky meshes and effect exclusion. It is a beta, after all!
Character-editing restrictions include Edit Mesh, normal editing, skin weights, AccuRIG, Facial Profile Editor and SkinGen while RTX mode is active. Unsupported lighting functions include Light Range, volumetrics, IES profiles and falloff attenuation. The beta also excludes stereo 3D, panoramic rendering and alpha-channel export.
Windows, RTX and sufficient patience
The beta supports Windows and requires NVIDIA RTX hardware with DirectX 12 and DXR. Reallusion does not list macOS, Linux, AMD Radeon or Intel Arc support. The minimum and recommended workstation specifications are substantial enough that facilities should check both VRAM and local storage before distributing the build.
Reallusion’s guide recommends NVIDIA Studio Driver 610.62 for this beta. That is a documented test recommendation, not a promise that every board, driver revision and scene will behave identically. Facilities should validate the driver against their complete application stack before changing a working production image. Especially when evaluating beta-version.
Beta projects need quarantine
Access begins through Reallusion’s open-beta form, after which the download link is sent by email. RTX Render is integrated into the beta applications rather than installed as a separate renderer plugin. A supported shipping installation of iClone or Character Creator must remain installed, and the package must match the user’s licence type.
Reallusion explicitly warns that beta-saved projects may not remain compatible with future official releases. The beta build is also not intended to exchange projects interchangeably with the current shipping build, as this may cause compatibility problems or data corruption. Keep isolated project copies, source assets and backups. Beta software is allowed to be exciting; it is not allowed to be your only copy.
A useful second renderer
RTX Render reduces the need to leave iClone or Character Creator purely to obtain path-traced lighting, transmission, clearcoat, fibre sheen and more physically responsive digital humans. For portrait animation, previs, character look development and compact scenes, that can shorten the loop between animation, lighting and review.
The beta is therefore best approached as an integrated look-development and rendering option whose suitability must be judged shot by shot. That is less glamorous than declaring the end of offline rendering, but considerably more useful in production.
| Product | RTX Render |
| Developer | Reallusion |
| Release status | Open Beta 1 |
| Access | Registration form; download link delivered by email |
| Supported hosts | iClone 8 Perpetual, Subscription or Personal; Character Creator 5 Perpetual or Subscription |
| Operating systems | Windows 10 20H1 and Windows 11 |
| Minimum workstation | Six-core Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5; 16GB RAM; GeForce RTX 3060 with 8GB VRAM; 100GB free SSD space; DirectX 12 with DXR 1.1 |
| Recommended workstation | Eight-core Intel Core i7, Core Ultra 7 or AMD Ryzen 7; 32GB RAM; GeForce RTX 4070 Super with 12GB VRAM; 100GB free SSD space; DirectX 12 with DXR 1.2 |
| Recommended driver | NVIDIA Studio Driver 610.62, as specified in the beta guide |
| Beta packages | iClone8_RTX_Beta1_0725.zip; CC5_RTX_Beta1_0725.zip |
| Documentation | Getting started, render controls, content library |
| Pricing | RTX Render open beta is free for eligible users; a supported iClone or Character Creator licence is required |
