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FaceFX 2009

Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:25 pm
by dpakatheman
Hey everyone,

OC3 Entertainment has released an updated version of our FaceFX facial animation tool that uses Ogre 1.61. FaceFX has been used in over 100 triple-A game titles, and our tool is looking better than ever now that we switched to OGRE.

Here are some screens:

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The last one is an evolver character. Evolver just launched and sells fully rigged characters for $69. One of the output formats is "FaceFX", which is really a Maya file but it includes 77 blendshapes which are very good for facial animation. Here is an example of our output from an audio file on an evolver character. That's an untweaked animation generated with FaceFX from audio & text.

Currently our package is a bit too expensive for the average Ogre developer (we charge per game title, and we are coming out with a standalone version that will cost about the same as Max or Maya), but feel free to download an evaluation copy and let us know what you think. We are working on making solutions for developers with all sorts of budgets so stay tuned!

Note - If you do try to load your own Ogre content up in FaceFX, the content needs to have shared vertices turned on in your exporters. The next version will hopefully not have that restriction.

Re: FaceFX 2009

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 11:00 am
by madmarx
Pretty damn sweet!
I thought that blendshapes where not that used anymore and that bones animations + animated normal maps were the way to go, but it seems once more I was completely wrong. :lol:

Re: FaceFX 2009

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 3:13 pm
by jacmoe
This is awesome! :)
Who would have thought that - very glad to see Ogre being used in such a top notch product. :D

Re: FaceFX 2009

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 4:25 pm
by dpakatheman
Thanks for the kind words fellas. With respect to bones & normal maps vs. morph targets, we still haven't seen a consensus. Even in Unreal Engine 3, where our FaceFX implementation makes bones and normal maps easy, and titles like Gears of War and Mass Effect are leading the way with bones & normal maps, you still see quite a few developers using morph targets.

In FaceFX 2009 with Ogre, we've implemented the FxMaterialParameter node which can drive parameters in your .material file. If you look in that evaluation I posted and check out the Slade-Maya.material and add_color.cg files, and you look in Slade's Face Graph for the "Red", "Green" and "Blue" nodes, you can see how to set this up. Those nodes just change the color of the character, but driving normal maps is possible using the same principles. We haven't had a chance to demonstrate that in Ogre yet, but it's on the todo list. There is definitely a free license of FaceFX Studio to someone that sets it up for us :)

Re: FaceFX 2009

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 4:51 pm
by sinbad
Nice! I've certainly heard of FaceFX before, so I'm very glad to hear you're getting benefits from switching to Ogre!

Certainly in the Ogre-based projects I've seen doing facial animation, there's a mixture of bone and morph-target approaches. I'd personally probably favour the bone-based approach now, both because you only have one technique to worry about overall, and especially since we supported the ability to use sub-skeletons per submesh (same skeleton, just that the matrix palette is a subset based on the bones that the vertices of the submesh actually references) - this means you can use large skeletons including fine detail but still fit the matrix palette into reasonably-sized shader constant arrays.

Anyway, glad to have you in the community!

Re: FaceFX 2009

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 7:28 pm
by Praetor
Looks great. It's very motivating to see Ogre being use such professional products. I'll definitely have to check out your evaluation.

Re: FaceFX 2009

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:03 pm
by madmarx
Sorry, I did not realize sooner that it comes with your LGPL Ogre exporter for maya and max.
You guys can do such great products!