Following the announcement at SIGGRAPH, Reallusion and Faceware Technologies are giving artist a new way to achieve professional quality facial capture that speeds up production time and character animation, with iClone 7 and Faceware Realtime for iClone.
This collaboration opens up new avenues for independent creators and studios of all sizes which can now access facial mo-cap tools that are fast, accurate and markerless — via webcam. The live or recorded performances can drive natural human facial expressions and head movements on animated characters, translating Faceware’s 42-point Face ID tracking to iClone 7’s current total of 60 Facial Morphs.
“Faces are one of the hardest parts of the human body to animate, but with iClone 7 and Faceware Realtime for iClone, the process is now drastically easier for iClone users and those just getting started in the profession,” said Peter Busch, VP of business development at Faceware Technologies. “The package is packed with powerful, yet intuitive, features that will enable animators at every level to produce some really great facial animation. We can’t wait to see what iClone users create!”
Available for PC, the solution is fast to set up with a simple one-click technology training and the ability to adjust on-the-fly for best results. It also has optional live audio recording during capture sessions, which can be used to generate lip synch data and in turn blended with the motion capture. And users get instant, dynamic feedback through tracking data meters.
Other key features include:
Custom Capture Profiles
– Default 60-morph capture profiles are optimized for StaticCam and HeadCam.
– Define expression style with morph sliders and save it as a Custom Capture Profile.
Feature-based Facial Strength Filters
– Globally or separately control the signal input strength for brows, eyelids, eyeballs, mouth, jaw, cheek, and head rotation.
– Easily capture stylized characters with proper strength settings for toning down or exaggerating features.
Optional Mocap Mouth Blend with Audio Lipsync Viseme
– Audio to Lipsync Analysis gives another level of lips and tongue accuracy, and allows detailed Viseme editing.
– With the options to choose the blend ratio between facial mocap and audio lipsync, and achieve the optimal result.
Refinement and Face Key Timeline Editing
– Edit face capture performances in post with the iClone facial timeline.
– Access the motion clip track to edit & offset with face keys.
– Expression Intensity control through slider bars.
FBX Character & Animation Export
– Import and take your characters with facial captured animation to any game-engine or 3D application via 3DXchange Pipeline.
– The exported FBX characters keep full facial blend shapes, and their animation data in time sequence. You can re-edit them in other 3D tools for further possibilities.
– Supports industry standard 3D character systems with the largest available face-rig ready character library and creation engine.
The Windows-compatible Suite is available now for $999 USD (list price: $1,198), which includes the iClone Facial Mocap Plug-in for Faceware ($599) and Faceware Realtime for iClone ($599). A free 30-day trial is available through the website.
Learn more here.
