Out Studio is Evaluatiing the further use of FaceFX and we try to apply the generated and modified/enhanced Animations back onto the game-chars. however, we´re having problems applying the exported FBX Animations onto our CAT-Rigs.
So far i´ve tried to do the following:
As i can´t transport the animation from the Dummy-Bones of the FBX file onto the CAT-Rig, i´m using Dummies in 3ds Max, link these Dummies to the FBX Bones and then link the CAT-Bones to the Dummies.
As a next step i bake down the keys of the CAT-Bones, copy the keys via CAT´s Quad Menu, and apply them on a different Rig.
Here comes the fun part, once i apply the copied animation on the untouched CAT-Rig, the parts i´ve previously baked down jerk away for the rig and are twisted around the horizontal axis by 180 and on the verical by 90 degrees.
the animation of the parts looks fine itself and works well, just that it is out of place.
trying to realling these bones just causes them to be in the right place, the direction of the rotation of each bone stays the same (twisted on the horizontal and vertical axis).
i guess its some sort of hierarchy problem, but CAT has never been that rigig with it.
i´m still working on some solutions, and read about not using linear position controllers, but without avail.
thanks in advance!
Is it just the root bone that is being rotated incorrectly? Using the Slade.fbx file that ships with Studio in the samples directory, I can reproduce the root bone being off by 90 degrees, which seems to be a Y-up versus Z-up problem.
The difficult part about fixing a Y-up/Z-up issue is that FaceFX Studio does not know the source package or coordinate system that the model came from. The Ogre .SCENE files exported from Max have a -90 degree rotation about the x axis to display content correctly in the viewport, but other than that everything else is identical.
I'm trying to see if there is a better way to handle the FBX export, but for now, the best workaround seems to simply remove/modify the problematic key(s) after import. Scripting this should be fairly straightforward. I would like to confirm that this is the problem you are seeing however.
hi!
nope the rootbone seems to be just fine,
however importing the fbx file into a clean max file already causes the imported skeleton being tilted 90° forward. a quick rotation fixes this tho and matches the CAT Rig.
i´ve tried to deal with the keyframes, fixing the initial missrotation of eg. jaw. however, while the animation is playin, the jaw doesnt rotate in the correct way but to the side.
it looks correct in it´s initial (rotated position), so i guess it is some axis problem.
there are some further problems with this.
using the method as i described in my first post, correctly allignes the bones and the exported animation looks like it should and just like in facefx.
importing the whole FBX animation directly onto the CAT-Rig, creates problems aswell, which i can partially solve, by copy-and-pasting the base from from other layers.
however, the original pose is damaged (char is bend slightly forward) and can only be recreated to some extend by using dummy bones and aligning the chest and pelvis bones to these.
i solved this by importing the fbx file in a empty max scene, deleting the unneeded bones and exporting it back to fbx.
then import the new file into the CAT-rig scene.
it sets the head bone and the attached bones off, but a quick copy and paste of the base poses fixes this.
the face animation works, however i does not look like in facefx.
the bones seem to jerk and tug to much, compared to the way i described above, or in facefx itself.
looking into the curve editor shows that the values are shifted and scaled, resulting in that jerking.
i can manually fix this, but for several chars and 20+ bones.. thats tough...
i´ll be looking into this further.
atm, its pretty hard to create a fast pipleline with this setup, as there´s too much workarounds needed :/
Is there a reason you are exporting via FBX as opposed to using the "Import Animation" button on the Max plugin? You might have better luck with that.
In FaceFX Studio 2010, the FBX export option can only export Y-up FBX files. When Max tries to import these, it applies unwanted rotation to the root nodes. If you export a text-based FBX file (by setting the command's -format flag to 1), you can fix the issue by editing the text file and setting the UpAxis to 2 and the FrontAxis to 1. I'm adding a feature to the next version of FaceFX that will let you specify the coordinate system of the FBX file. You will still need to run the command manually to change this option, but it's the best I can do.
But I think your problems are not limited to the coordinate system of the FBX file. I'm not sure I understand the rest of the issues enough to help, so I might need some example content to get a clear picture.
Sorry, but what Import Animation Button do you mean?
the one in the facefx plugin? in the animations tab?
i cant really see how i can import an fbx animation there.
i will try what you´ve written about the fbx format.
You don't even need to use FBX at all. Maybe Doug's post was unclear about that. The animation data itself is in the .facefx file you load into the Max plugin. Just select it in the Max plugin and click the "Import Animation" button in the Max plugin and it will put the animation into the Max timeline. There's no need for FBX if all you want to do is get animation data into Max.
I'm talking about the "Import Animation" on the Max plugin.
If you use that button, you don't need FBX at all. The FaceFX plugin will set keys on your bones directly.
http://facefx.com/content/introduction-facefx-plugin-3ds-max
Watch that video tutorial. At around 4:15, an animation is imported into Max this way.
i´m trying to post an answer, but it´s being filtered by your spam filter... great ^^
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