Importing Face Mocap Data Into Daz
Dark45
Posts: 76
Hey guys,
I am hopeful that Dartan or someone who is in the know a bit more than me can give me a little clearer view on where to go for a project I am working on for someone. There is currently a workstation here for a bit with Iclone 8 and CC4 on it so I have gotten to play with it finally. It has the face live plug-in and my results on my Daz G8 characters is quite good thus far. I am trying to find a way to retarget them so I can bring them into Daz Studio to keep working with my current animations that I do in Daz.
I've been able to successfully retarget body animations for Daz but this is my first time trying to do face mocap outside of Face Mojo.
Where I do like Face Mojo, I find myself doing a bit more cleanup than I would like with every take I do so I am indeed curious about other solutions outside of facemotion3D (I may still buy that one day soon).
Back to the topic though, if I remember correctly, the only way to get face mocap data would be with FBX and we all know how much Daz loves that file format. Also, I do beieve Maya has a "send animation to daz" ability with it's bridge but I do not own Maya and do not have access to it currently. Would that be the only way of retargeting from Iclone to get the facial mocap into Daz?
Sorry for all of the questions, I haven't had a chance to test alot of the theory's I have on how this could work yet so... just kinda needing a good direction to go.
Ultimately the pipeline that I am trying to do is Daz > Character Creator > Iclone > Export back to CC for animation only FBX export or to FBX with Geometry from Icone > (Something capable of retargeting rig to Genesis 8) > Daz..... I think.
Please don't say blender.... ptsd due to blender lol.
Thank you guys in advance for any brainstorming or ideas you come up with. I am interested in getting back to animating for the project so hopefully this hurdle can be figured out.
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Comments
well Dartanbeck like me has used Poserecorder the only non iPhone option in store for Genesis 8
interestingly Blendshapes DO FBX import into DAZ studio too if you can get the mesh in without it turning into frightful mesh
I am only an iClone 6 user and I have actually gotten Blendshapes in https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/532406/iclone-blendshapes-import-animated-into-d-s-but-there-is-a-catch
@Dartanbeck uses Daz studio & Animate 2 exclusively, so he would not have any useful advice for a Reallusion/Daz workflow.
To be clear when you “bring” a G8 character into iclone you are only creating an ICLONE NATIVE,look alike copy of your gen 8 Character via complex shape projection and automatic UV remapping.
This is why your facial animation works so well in iclone because it is using the iclone native tools on an Iclone native figure.
And as most Iclone facial animation is based on the native morphs of the iclone figures there can be no useful translation
of an Iclone facial mocap performance back to Daz studio.
Now before you ask.. the only reason you can send Iclone body animation back to Daz studio (as BVH) ,is because it is all bone rig retargeting based on the Daz figures “Characterization profile” built in iclone just as we do it Maya or Motionbuilder
AFAIK your only option for facial mocap in DS are the aforementioned pose recorder and face Mojo of course.
But You can render a really good front facing facial animation in iclone and use it for the source video with Pose recorder.
IIRC I got some "decent"results using that method with Pose recorder.
There's also FaceMotion, which judging from the promo videos is the best of the available solutions, but I can't speak from experience about any of them. FaceMotion and Face Mojo were originally the same project, but Laylo3D decided to use different blend shapes for whatever reason, so FaceMotion became a separate product.
Wow, FaceMotion looks impressive!
I've been using Facemotion for years, it's fantastic and is worth every penny.
Unfortunately the performance of FACEMOTION Live is not that good... I ever contacted Kenneth Choi for checking if there's any related update in terms of performance... nothing so far.
Oh, I never tried the live version of it, I just act things out in facecap and use that file.
Yeah, I'm not interested in the live functionality myself.
Thanks for all of the replies guys. This was a misunderstanding by me thinking that the face bones / joints were the main drivers behind the face performances however so much of it is dependant on the morphs themselves. This makes much more since as to why every program uses different techniques for face mocap.
Already having Face Mojo is good enough even if it is not as accurate as I would like, it's still pretty good. I have looked at Facemotion3D for a very long time even before I bought Face Mojo but there was a sale sometime back and couldn't help but get Mojo.
I appriciate everyone helping me understand a bit better as to why it is more difficult to get face mocap into Daz from outside sources.
I know of being able to edit the .duf and change the morph names but I am very lost on which morphs to change and am at the point of thinking that could be more work than it's worth as it would take less time, even with clean up, using Face Mojo.