FaceRig - character animation in real time
FaceRig - a program that allows you to manage emotions and the voice of an animated character from a webcam, for ten days collected claimed 120.000 dollars in a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. While the program is at an early stage of development, but the authors have managed to attract almost more than five thousand fans, due to the rather detailed development of the animation and promising features in the full version of the application.
The creators of the program state that their long-term goal is to research and create a control and visualization system accessible to ordinary people for the whole character (now it’s just the head and voice), using various input devices and two-way feedback. According to them, they understand that this is a rather bold and revolutionary statement, but it is a long-term goal, but for now they offer a small application for controlling the character's emotions through a webcam, because in this way they want to make the project accessible to anyone.
')
In its work, the program uses the state of the art real-time tracking technology of the Swedish company Visage Technologies , which is combined with the cross-platform animation engine and real-time visualization of its own designed by Holotech Studios from Romania (the site of this small indie studio is not yet open, but with them can be contacted via other channels).
The resulting video output can be sent to any chat application, such as Skype and the like, or you can record a video with the result. In addition to character animation, the program allows you to change the voice and background, but so far there are only four characters and backgrounds. Now the character is controlled by a webcam, but later the authors of the application intend to include in the program support for interfaces such as Neurowear - brain activity monitor, LEAP motion - tracking movements of hands and fingers, Kinect 1 and 2 - for processing body movements and as a distance sensor, and also Asus Xtion, Carmine PrimeSense, in short, almost all the interfaces on this topic. The developers themselves, in response to the question of whether they are going to cooperate with other companies to create some kind of joint projects, say the following:
Among other things, the fundraising campaign aims to attract character designers and scenes that will be included in the paid software update packages, and soon a community will be created to support self-development using this framework.
It is planned to release several versions of the program, among which will be a version of FaceRig Studio, aimed at game developers and motion designers, where it will be possible to work with other professional applications, such as Maya and 3DSMax, and use a variety of tracking options using motion capture technology. Also, developers are going to implement a mobile version for iOS and Android, but they immediately declare that the desktop and mobile versions will be very different.
It should be noted that in the comments on Indiegogo many words of support from the participants of Furry Fandom , who, for obvious reasons, liked this development very much :)
If you are interested in this application, here are the useful links:
FaceRig official website
Fundraising for Indiegogo, now there are still 40 days left
FaceRig on Youtube
The creators of the program state that their long-term goal is to research and create a control and visualization system accessible to ordinary people for the whole character (now it’s just the head and voice), using various input devices and two-way feedback. According to them, they understand that this is a rather bold and revolutionary statement, but it is a long-term goal, but for now they offer a small application for controlling the character's emotions through a webcam, because in this way they want to make the project accessible to anyone.
This is what is happening at the moment.
')
In its work, the program uses the state of the art real-time tracking technology of the Swedish company Visage Technologies , which is combined with the cross-platform animation engine and real-time visualization of its own designed by Holotech Studios from Romania (the site of this small indie studio is not yet open, but with them can be contacted via other channels).
The resulting video output can be sent to any chat application, such as Skype and the like, or you can record a video with the result. In addition to character animation, the program allows you to change the voice and background, but so far there are only four characters and backgrounds. Now the character is controlled by a webcam, but later the authors of the application intend to include in the program support for interfaces such as Neurowear - brain activity monitor, LEAP motion - tracking movements of hands and fingers, Kinect 1 and 2 - for processing body movements and as a distance sensor, and also Asus Xtion, Carmine PrimeSense, in short, almost all the interfaces on this topic. The developers themselves, in response to the question of whether they are going to cooperate with other companies to create some kind of joint projects, say the following:
We are fascinated by the work of the program in its current state, and we like where our development goes. Imagine a League Of Legends online conference hosted by its characters; or imagine motion sensors installed on the Oculus Rift, which will allow you to control your character's emotions with a very high quality of work, but without any special technical problems. In general, there are a lot of opportunities, and they delight us and push us to further work.
Among other things, the fundraising campaign aims to attract character designers and scenes that will be included in the paid software update packages, and soon a community will be created to support self-development using this framework.
It is planned to release several versions of the program, among which will be a version of FaceRig Studio, aimed at game developers and motion designers, where it will be possible to work with other professional applications, such as Maya and 3DSMax, and use a variety of tracking options using motion capture technology. Also, developers are going to implement a mobile version for iOS and Android, but they immediately declare that the desktop and mobile versions will be very different.
It should be noted that in the comments on Indiegogo many words of support from the participants of Furry Fandom , who, for obvious reasons, liked this development very much :)
If you are interested in this application, here are the useful links:
FaceRig official website
Fundraising for Indiegogo, now there are still 40 days left
FaceRig on Youtube
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/207748/
All Articles