I think a lot of reason why people are saying the facial animation looks kind of wooden is because there is no dynamic wrinkling.

If there were forehead wrinkle maps that were brought up in strength when the brows were raised it would greatly enhance the look. The facial animation tools are actually quite powerful, they just don't quite match people's expectations of skin movement.

So, I'm going to ask for dynamic wrinkle maps.

From the video I see how this would help, but I don't think this would solve the underlying facial animation limitations in IC. Many if not most animated toon characters don't have wrinkles and can have very convincing facial animation. I also wouldn't want to add wrinkles to a toon just to mask a limited set of facial animation tools.  More control of the lips, lids, brows and cheeks are really needed to create more believable animation.

I do like however like your idea rampa and think it would make a nice addition for certain types of IC characters.

-Thanks for your video tutorials on Youtube, I've found them very helpful.


Virtual Media® / VTV® / The Virtual Entertainment Network...
http://VTVLive.com

I fully support this, in fact I've been looking on and off for a video to post here since he poted this thread, one that was done in Lightwave 3D that demonstrates this, but with a tutorial as well.  If you saw the tutorial you would realise how useful and powerful this stuff is.  What Rampa is suggesting is to take away the wooden feeling, he's not suggesting it as some sort of replacement system.

The only think I would add to what Rampa posted is that it would be cool to be able to link stuff to animated maps, not just static maps, so that you could have a sequence of normal map that is driven by whatever.  Imagine a video normal-map that only moves forward and backward through the frames as you move whatever it is you have it linked to, backward and forward.  If you stop moving something, the video normal map stops playing, and the speed it plays is linked to the speed of your movement.  If you animate something backward and forward and link it, the video normal file will play backward ond forward as you animate it.  In other words, the video normal map doesn't have a fixed FPS, it just plays at whatever is needed for the movement situation.

Might be hard to get your head around, but believe me, its incredibly powerful stuff, it's exactly the same as what Rampa has requested but with the added ability to drive a normal-map based video file.

I found a decent video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc7ADD4b8_0

The facial movements here are easily accomplished with the iClone tools. See how much more expressive it gets with the addition of the dynamic wrinkle maps.

Very nice result!!! But seriously I will never understand why it's easier for a computer to deal with 10 normal map textures , scripting with more than 100 nodes for compensate the lack of hirez polycount.... In real life it's a true wrinkle making shadow on the skin. The logic way would  be to make true wrinkle with hires mesh but curiously it's too much for our graphic cards.... Strange world isnt'it???

Thanks for sharing this Rampa, I think I can actually do it in Carrara with the ERC plugin!!!
No help to iCloners sadly but maybe one day.

Thanks for your suggestion, Rampa, keep them coming. Just ignore the naysayers, who will always find fault...

---

@Animagic 

Is because people express their thoughts in a public forum in a kind funny way are naysayers?????
Do you have problem with me Animagic???? 

@sw00000p
How many more times, this forum is for feature requests, but that does not mean Reallusion will implement or prioritise a certain thing over things they give more importance to!
Relax man, you do that all the time, a feature request is just that, it's a feature request, no one is jumping the queue or will get it prioritised

You know BigDaddyRL by now, they will ultimately do it their way, they are the only ones who will prioritise anything, not us, all we can do is make suggestions and hope they agree!



@Rampa
Cool demonstration, but bear in mind that you would have this feature anyway if they implemented this :
https://forum.reallusion.com/274654/Concept-for-Implementation-of-CC-Keyframe-Toggle-

That feature would enable you to do exactly the same thing as long as you toggle Normal Maps as an animatable parameter

It won't drive them automatically by joints, but that's why I wanted to see Joint Driven Morphs, best system ever, dead easy to use, and not a single person supported it :
https://forum.reallusion.com/277077/Joint-Driven-Morphs-

I think the problem is when people look at this sort of stuff, it looks impressive so they assume it must be difficult.
Nothing could be further from the truth, it's super-easy and efficient!

I agree they need to fix everything they already implemented, but like I said, these are just requests for them to think over.
There's no guarantee if or when any of the requests will be implemented.