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Automate FA Custom Head Wizard
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Automate FA Custom Head Wizard // Feature suggestions
Post by tamtam // Jan 13, 2008, 5:49pm
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tamtam
Total Posts: 213
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I would really love TS if the Facial Animator's Custom Head Wizard would be able to have automatic facial feature tracking for the points on the eyes, nose, mouth, etc.. I don't like having to find each individual pont for my custom heads. I mean wouldn't you agree that it would be much easier (when using the FA) if it was able to find the features on any head (cartoony, monster, and human, for example) automatically? I dislike the facial animator in so many ways, but I will list three (about using the custom head wizard):
1.) It is hard to find the right points when using the custom head wizard on a low-poly head (which I am trying to make for use in games), and sometimes you have to use some points as other points too, that are close to each other.
2.) When you have a high-poly head (for movies/animations), there are too many points, so it's harder to find the exact point you need for the mouth of a head, for example.
3.) It doesn't do lip sync very well with the built in MS Speech Engine. It just doesn't look realistic at all.
Please tell me whether you agree with me or disagree about having an "automatic FA" feature in TS 7.6 or other future versions.
Thankyou
- tamtam |
Post by notejam // Jan 13, 2008, 7:00pm
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notejam
Total Posts: 191
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I think it is hard to use too. Also it would be nice if photos could be adjusted in size, and then be able to scroll them around, so the top line of pixels goes to the bottom. (This would allow easy alignment of photos)
Try iclone for good 3d lip sync, and crazy talk to turn a 2d photo into a talking 3d photo that you can move into iclone for a complete 3d scene.
Think the companys name is realusions? |
Post by Burnart // Jan 13, 2008, 7:38pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Facial Animator is a bit of a pain to use in some regards but I can't see how an automatic recognition system would work for every custom head - you have to feed it some information surely!
Given that its on the modelside (ie. "old" trueSpace) and that it was initially a plugin not a standard program component (I think!) I doubt there will be any future changes to this item. Also I'm not sure it was intended as a tool for low-poly game models. Sorry to say asking for refinements is just wishful thinking ....
- unless there is a new version/similar tool planned for the workspace side.... ? |
Post by notejam // Jan 14, 2008, 4:17am
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notejam
Total Posts: 191
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Completely automatic might not be possible, but all the current method does is let us mark where the vertexs are for corner of mouth,bottom of chin, etc.
It is doing this a point at a time, which makes it hard. If it just had an interface like the texture head interface, then we could drag all the mouth points as a group to close to the mouth area, then right clcik, which makes those points draggable, and move them to correct location. Scale position etc.
Much faster and easier than current method. then let it calculate weighting etc. Part of what makes it so hard, is it often does not provide any feed back when you click on the mesh where a point is to go, so you wonder if it even accepted the point you clicked.
Regarding low polygon heads. I am not certain yet if thats the problem, or do you have your head to small when you try to edit it? Try to scale it up, and zoom in with middle mouse button. But if your trying to make extremly low polygon heads, like the ball primitive, then I imagine that would give you the problems you have experienced, as theres no mesh to corespond to all the control points, so some mesh is going to get the wrong control points, and more than one.
Right click on any primitive you start a head with, will allow you to set the number of segments,both vertical and horizontal, so try adding a bit more mesh that way as you build a head, and hopefully you will have enough vertexs that each control point can have its own vertex to control. The FA also needs to do vertex counts on user heads, and warn them that the head does not have enough vertexs to work properly with FA.
Now if ssd just was allowed, or if ssd would allow the export of the divided mesh so FA would be fooled into considering the mesh non ssd mesh, we would have an easy way to bring up the mesh count when we have designed a head that does not work well with FA due to lack of enough vertexs.
Regarding lip sync: If you have truespace 6, it gives very good lip sync to a wave file. Just clicking in truespace 7.5 on the truespace 6 button will not do this for you, you must have a standalone truespace 6 for good lip sync.
Think this was also present in version 5? However lip sync never works entirely satisfactory since its difficult for recoginition software to recognize each phonme, correctly and adjust the lips correctly, therefore you always have to touch up some frams of any lip sync animation if you want perfect lip sync. But we are usually more picky on details in our productions than the person watching the video, so this really disturbs us rather than our viewers.
The greyed out load button just allowed you to load saved wave files, and is disabled in truespace 7.5 for some reason. Hopefully it will be fixed when a new upgrade comes out. |
Post by notejam // Jan 14, 2008, 4:26am
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notejam
Total Posts: 191
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After you have created a custom head, Go to the texture head option.
That will let you see if you have any tangled control points or points that cross over other points etc. It will also let you see just where those points occur, and allow you to adjust thier position by first right click, and then move cursor over point then left click and drag point to new location.
You will need to get your own photos or textures of front view and side view loaded into the correct ts directory, so you can load them when in this texture head option of FA. |
Post by stan // Jan 14, 2008, 6:33am
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stan
Total Posts: 1240
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The greyed out load button just allowed you to load saved wave files, and is disabled in truespace 7.5 for some reason. Hopefully it will be fixed when a new upgrade comes out.
because it was designed as a plugin you could try and install FA from ts66 or earlier if you still have it installed, then the internal speech engine is there, then you can load wav files. I didn't check to see if it had other issues ..worth a shot |
Post by tamtam // Jan 14, 2008, 11:32am
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tamtam
Total Posts: 213
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I just had a brain storm! (sort of).
There is a website called www.thegamecreators.com that sells game making tools, and their basic programming lanuages (Dark Basic Pro, and Dark Basic Classic). I've been wanting to get an "expansion pack" that they sell there, because I have Dark Basic Pro, plus many other packs too. The one I wanted is called Dark Voices, and does lip sync for any character that you make. You can load in a custom .wav file and see each part of the speech file. I've seen a screenshot from it where someone was using a character that comes with Dark Voices, and it looks great! I tried the demo with the premade character, and the lip sync was very well done, even when I loaded my own custom .wav file!
Any of you who program using Dark Basic should try the Dark Voices demo, although I think its somewhat limited. I'm also not sure of the price of the full version.
Try making a head in TS, and then use the Dark Voices demo (if you own Dark Basic) to animate the face of the head. I think the face animations are actually automatically calculated and generated!
One thing though about Dark Voices: you must export your model's body (I think), head, and all, together as a .x or .3ds mesh.
Thankyou for all your help
- tamtam :) |
Post by tamtam // Jan 14, 2008, 11:41am
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tamtam
Total Posts: 213
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Sorry, here's a screenshot of Dark Voices, and the price is about $50 |
Post by notejam // Jan 15, 2008, 5:45am
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notejam
Total Posts: 191
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Thanks TamTam, I have Dark Basic, but was unaware they had made this add on. I will have to get me a copy. I have not used dark basic for a long time, but it is a nice enhancement tool to go along with truespace, and I would encourage anyone here to get a copy, because it really does extend the things you can do with what you make in truespace. I also like the fact that programs one writes will run in windows and its easier to learn than visual basic. |
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