Hi,
We are trying to get our avatar to wave in response to a text tag. For instance, the text file along side the audio file contains something like "here is some text. Now it's time to wave {default|wave}. We want to associate an external hand wave animation with the wave tag. In order to do this, we have to successfully import a separate animate and get it to play in FaceFX. We are using Reallusion iClone 7 (animation software) and 3DXchange (Reallusion's export tool) to export the animation in FBX format. Using the @ naming convention for the animation files, we are able to get the animation (in this case, a hand wave) to import along side the base model. But when play the animation in FaceFX nothing happens - the model literally does nothing. We selected the animation (which was imported into the FBX@animations group) from the animation pulldown. I'm assuming this is because we don't have the details of the FBX file correct. Can someone provide guidance on how to set the properties of the FBX file? Any thoughts or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
If it's helpful, I looked in the fbximport.log file. I found a bunch of "Warning! could not find joint ____ in the scene!" messages. Most of there body joints, not face or head joints.
Have you looked at the Brute sample content? This is exactly what it does. The PunctuationEvents/* event triggers a point gesture, and the PunctuationEvents/& event triggers a sort of shrug. So when the following text is analyzed you get a point, and then a shrug:
* My dear fellow, whom do I see! & Ivan Vassilevitch! I am extremely glad! Eh.
When you load up Brute's FBX@Animations/angrypoint animation, you can see that he performs his point gesture. My understanding is that your character does not perform his FBX@Animation when it is selected and played. If you open Brute, then go to Plugins->Remove Bones, you will see that all of the bones in Brute's face (and more importantly ONLY the bones in Brute's face) are listed there. I'm guessing that if you load up that plugin on your character, you will see that all of the bones in the character, including body bones are listed there. If that is the case, you can probably fix the issue by simply using the Remove Bones plugin to remove the body bones. Alternatively, you could fix the FBX file with your bone poses in it so only the face bones move, then reexport your character. But if you intentionally have bone poses that are driving body bones you might have more of an issue.
It is important to note that Ogre is limited to 256 bones. If your skeleton has more bones than that, we do our best to pick the 256 most important bones (ones that are weighted to the mesh, or parents of those bones). But if you have a complex rig, you might have more than 256 bones, and then Ogre will not be able to move them. Because the full-body animation system in FaceFX relies on Ogre, this 256 bone limitation is an important limitation to be aware of.
As a final note, I'm not sure about the errors you mentioned in the log file, but let me know if you don't get on the right track with the Remove Bones plugin.
Hi Doug,
You are correct. When we import the model and bring in the FBX@Animations (in our case they are body animations...arm movements), none of them work. We want to add the body animations on top of the lip-syncing that FaceFX does. Yes, we are trying to do what Bruce demos. But I think it's more of an issue of getting the animations imported correct. We'll take a look at the Remove Bones and see what bones appear.
We tried this. Didn't work. The animation plays fine in Maya and in PlayCanvas (online game engine), but doesn't work in FaceFx. Other thoughts?
I think I need to reproduce this issue here to troubleshoot further