Has anyone tried using Rocketbox Characters HD with FaceFX? Those seem to be high quality models and they are also available ready for the Unity game engine. The HD characters also have facial animation setup realized with bones ... but I'm just wondering if that facial animation setup will play well with FaceFX.
Also, it seems that quite a few of their animations already include the facial animation. In other words: Gestures and facial animation combined in one animation. So the question would be how to modify those animations so that they could also be used in FaceFX (i.e. remove the part that drives the facial animation)?
Description of the HD product line (this includes information on the facial animation setup)
A preview of the animations (this includes the animations I mentioned that are mixed gestures + talk)
I just met with Rocketbox at I/ITSEC and plan on creating a sample face graph setup to use for their characters. Because all Rocketbox characters share a single skeleton and the bones in the face are animated with translation only (except for jaw and eyes), a single .facefx should work for all characters. My goal is to have something by the end of next week.
As far as getting FaceFX to overwrite an existing animation (at least for the bones in the reference pose), it should be possible, but I will have to look into it. I believe that FaceFX animations are currently added onto existing animations, but I have to check that. I'll be working in the Unity integration next week, so I will have to report back on that front too.
Thank you - that sounds really good!!!
I've created a preliminary .facefx for the default Rocketbox character. It has only been tested on a single character and it just has a basic setup for lip-synch so it's still a work in progress. Rocketbox will be distributing the FaceFX file to its users upon request, so email them and ask for it. When it's ready to go they can send it along.
As far as overwriting an existing animation with FaceFX data, you just need to modify the FaceFXControllerScript.cs file on line 253 where we set the animation layer of the "loop animation". By default this was set to "-1", but increasing it to "9" did the trick for me. The "bone poses" are played on layer 10 and they are "additive", but they require an underlying animation to be playing at all times. This is what the "loop animation" is for, which is just a simple animation that plays the reference pose. So if you give priority to the loop animation over the full body animation, it works. Make sure your reference pose only contains bones in the face if you want the underlying body animation to show through.
Hey jashan,
I'm actually working with these characters and putting them into Unity right now. I've found that the existing rig/bones work great in FaceFX. We're using the HD RocketBox characters, but none of their animations (ours need to be a bit more custom). Essentially, if you follow the basic procedures as outlined in the tutorials on this site, they work perfectly fine. There were no changes needed whatsoever to the default RocketBox characters. Our pipeline is currently:
- 3DS Max -> Setup key animation poses
- Export actor as .facefx file
- Open in FaceFX Studio -> Set up face graph and animations
- Collapse Face Graph
- Export XML Actor
- Drop it in Unity and everything is happy
It has been surprisingly painless and we have really enjoyed working with FaceFX.