FaceFX Plugin

[micahpharoh]

In your binaries folder you'll find various plugins, including an ActorX plugin for 3ds Max 2010, and a FaceFx plugin for most major 3d modeling apps. I installed it, but I can't figure out how to use it at all. Anyone want to give it a try?

edit: Looking at it again, I think you still have to place all the bones yourself, it just imports and exports the animations and poses.

[R2D5]

a tutorial or documentation about this would be great

[WOBBLER]

m3fs has a few facefx tutorials at http://treadster.com/blog/?cat=16.

[micahpharoh]

it doesn't explain rigging the face at all, though

[geodav]

my set of FaceFX tutorials do cover must of it (UT3), as for the rigging/skinning of the face its the same as any other rig/skin, you create a rig by placing bones/objects where you want them to be then link them all to a "basebone" or head bone then apply a skin modifer

[neilkevins]

hi there...

Developer OC3 has announced that in partnership with Softimage, it has created a new audio lip-syncing plugin for Softimage Products called FaceFX, to help game developers and 3D animation artists create realistic talking characters with more precise facial expressions and lip-synchronization.

[Denny]

I just want to give a headsup that you don't need to use FaceFX if you're going to make cinematics or similar. There are now morph target tracks which you can animate in Maya (Max is not supported yet), just saying that you have an alternative if you have the time to manually do things.

[sueds]

or you can just use a face rig... I mean isn't it more simple ?

[Denny]

or you can just use a face rig... I mean isn't it more simple ?
To get the highest quality facial animations you need to use both the face rig, morph targets and material blends. This has only been possible with FaceFX before, now you can do it manually per animation sequence as well.

[doublemint]

Isn't the advantage of the FaceFX editor to allow easy lip syncing?

[Denny]

Easy and easy, depends on how you look at it. The setup process with FaceFX can take some time to learn, but when it's done you get the whole automated process going. With automation comes less control and sometimes lesser quality though, so it's up to you how you want to work.

There are ups and down with FaceFX, you just have to find out about it.

[micahpharoh]

With automation comes less control and sometimes lesser quality
well, that isn't really the case with FaceFX, though. You can edit the automated sequence, which gives you a high level of control. Plus, if it's set up right, the material will change automatically for the pose. In UT3, for example, they characters would get "crows feet" normal maps when their eyes squinted.

[Denny]

FaceFX uses base poses to generate a lipsync, like "ee", "eff", "aah" and so on. Even though they generate enough of quality it's still not as much of control as if you were animating the rig frame by frame in Maya.

I'm not saying FaceFX is bad, quite the opposite, the point I'm trying to make is that the perfectionist details are harder to make in FaceFX rather than if you did it from beginning to end in a 3d application.

It's the same as when you look at a texture/normal map and instantly notice that it was generated in Crazy Bump. It's most likely enough, but it lacks that oomph that you're looking for.

[m3fs]

The most success I have had with faceFX is to manually manipulate each phoneme, not saying it's the right way tho. If you try to make it automatic it comes out looking like crap. Once you do it a few times though it goes pretty quick. I even wrote some code that creates the text file for me to import using the sound names I have defined.

The rigs I use were built from scratch. I recommend you watch some vids on them (http://store.cgsociety.org/product/000337/) if you want to learn some great stuff!