This may be a stupid question, but...
Since the ARENA system can export markers as rigid bodies, why can't I take the facial marker rigid body information into Motionbuilder and use Motionbuilder to calculate facial mocap?
Am I missing something, or is this doable?
Facial mocap with Motionbuilder?
Facial mocap with Motionbuilder?
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Re: Facial mocap with Motionbuilder?
you could probably fake out the systems to let you do it, but classically, you don't use rigids for facial, as the face doesn't move as a rigid. the points move pretty much independent of one another. Or at the very least, they can move very independent of one another if they don't all the time.
That being said, putting a large number of markers on a face into a rigid with a very high slack factor could potentially fake out the system enough to get it to ID the markers for you and output them. Its probably worth trying. However, motionbuilder's current facial mocap is a little strange. if you dig into it, you'll find that it tries to decipher the opticals and use them to drive a specific set of blendshapes. Very odd approach. Not what I'd want to be using in production.
That being said, putting a large number of markers on a face into a rigid with a very high slack factor could potentially fake out the system enough to get it to ID the markers for you and output them. Its probably worth trying. However, motionbuilder's current facial mocap is a little strange. if you dig into it, you'll find that it tries to decipher the opticals and use them to drive a specific set of blendshapes. Very odd approach. Not what I'd want to be using in production.
Re: Facial mocap with Motionbuilder?
Hello:
Yes, you can try and fake it out, and set the Rigidness to be very low, it kinda works. We did a test out to FaceRobot with 28 markers and it was fun to try. I would not recommend it for any serious use at this time.
We are working on a Facial extension for Arena, but we haven't got a date for it yet.
Yes, you can try and fake it out, and set the Rigidness to be very low, it kinda works. We did a test out to FaceRobot with 28 markers and it was fun to try. I would not recommend it for any serious use at this time.
We are working on a Facial extension for Arena, but we haven't got a date for it yet.
Re: Facial mocap with Motionbuilder?
ouch... face robot... tell me you got a freebie on that license 
$90,000 is a lot of cash.
At the product launch, Mike Isner set up the analogy:
shovel is to bulldozer
as
other facial animation methods are to Face Robot.
Then he revealed the price and in independent unison, the Los Angeles 3d community did the math and decided to re-evaluate the use of shovels in construction work.
Ok, thats an exaggeration. We actually evaluated it for some work. Our final analysis was that we'd need to do about three high quality facial animation jobs a year to justify the cost in licenses. And that was assuming that we were only using artist licenses ($15,000 a pop) and the mocap vendor was the one who had purchased the big one ($90,000). We didn't have that kind of production throughput, so we looked to other means. More specifically:
http://www.image-metrics.com/
we could subcontract/outsource to these guys on a project per project basis. If we were to ever get the demand for the kind of high volume facial work where face robot became economical, we would consider it at that time.
$90,000 is a lot of cash.At the product launch, Mike Isner set up the analogy:
shovel is to bulldozer
as
other facial animation methods are to Face Robot.
Then he revealed the price and in independent unison, the Los Angeles 3d community did the math and decided to re-evaluate the use of shovels in construction work.
Ok, thats an exaggeration. We actually evaluated it for some work. Our final analysis was that we'd need to do about three high quality facial animation jobs a year to justify the cost in licenses. And that was assuming that we were only using artist licenses ($15,000 a pop) and the mocap vendor was the one who had purchased the big one ($90,000). We didn't have that kind of production throughput, so we looked to other means. More specifically:
http://www.image-metrics.com/
we could subcontract/outsource to these guys on a project per project basis. If we were to ever get the demand for the kind of high volume facial work where face robot became economical, we would consider it at that time.
Re: Facial mocap with Motionbuilder?
Brad:
Very interesting. We did the test with a partner who has the license, but I think they paid way under list for it, as I made the same observations about shovels and the like to him! Maybe it was just the artist license they had, as they took in our C3D data.
Very interesting. We did the test with a partner who has the license, but I think they paid way under list for it, as I made the same observations about shovels and the like to him! Maybe it was just the artist license they had, as they took in our C3D data.
Re: Facial mocap with Motionbuilder?
Its possible. The main difference is that the artist license is for animators and the full deal is for actually rigging the faces in the first place. Our thought on the matter was that it would be nice if a mocap vendor like house of moves dealt with the full license cost and handed us back face robot rigged faces along with c3d data, so we would only have to buy artist licenses for animators. We were hoping to deal with the rigging as a service rather than having to shell out for the full license.
This was perhaps idealistic though, in that it is unrealistic that we'd hand a character mesh to any vendor and get back a facial rig we would be happy with. We're going to want to tweak the rigging ourselves no matter what. So ultimately, we'd have to buy the full license anyway.
According to the guys at Softimage Special Projects, the support and maintenance roles of facerobot will be moving from Special Projects (located here in Venice) to the main office in Montreal over time. As facerobot becomes less of a burden to Special Projects, the price will come down. Its possible there has been a drop already. I don't know how far along in that process they are.
Side note: if you do need someone to demo for the SI Special Projects facerobot guys at any point, I can walk to their office from here. They know me, I know them.
This was perhaps idealistic though, in that it is unrealistic that we'd hand a character mesh to any vendor and get back a facial rig we would be happy with. We're going to want to tweak the rigging ourselves no matter what. So ultimately, we'd have to buy the full license anyway.
According to the guys at Softimage Special Projects, the support and maintenance roles of facerobot will be moving from Special Projects (located here in Venice) to the main office in Montreal over time. As facerobot becomes less of a burden to Special Projects, the price will come down. Its possible there has been a drop already. I don't know how far along in that process they are.
Side note: if you do need someone to demo for the SI Special Projects facerobot guys at any point, I can walk to their office from here. They know me, I know them.