We're currently trying to add lipsync animations to existing animation in our game. The way I understand the documentation, the idea behind "body animations" is to have a voice animation as "primary" animation and add body animations as secondary animations via events. That's the "other direction" compared to what we need:
We have an existing animation which has all gestures, sometimes walking around and so on in one long take. What we need, then, is to be able to add voice / lipsync as an "event" to this. Usually, we trigger the audio-files in Unity at around frame 5. In other words: The "body animation" is what starts the voice-acting at some point in time while the body animation is already playing.
Is that workflow possible in FaceFX studio?
Also, can we then "bake" the lip-sync animation onto the main animation so that we end up with an FBX file that we can use in Unity just like the original file / animations but with the lipsync animations added? We would prefer that over using the FaceFX Unity integration.
If you are trying to generate body animations procedurally (which is difficult), then the approach is to use events to trigger full-body gestures.
In your case, you simply want to use the "preview animation" to view the body animation while you tweak the facial animation. Then export a full body FBX file with the combined face & body animation.
http://facefx.com/documentation/2015.2/W231
You bring the preview animation into FaceFX by using the base_file@animation_name.fbx syntax when you drag your base_file.fbx file onto FaceFX. See Brute.fbx as an example.
http://facefx.com/documentation/2015.2/W246
Ok, so preview animations is the way to go. One issue we're still facing is that our voice-acting usually does not start on Frame 0 and so far, we haven't found a way to have the procedurally generated facial animation and/or voice-file start later during the animation.
In other words, what we'd need is a way to tell FaceFX: "Here is the preview animation, start the voice-acting animation at frame 5 (or 10, or 15)"
Is there a way to do that within FaceFX?
Yes. Use the previewanim command -starttime flag:
https://facefx.com/documentation/2015.2/W232
previewanim -starttime 2.0 -animation "mypreviewanim";