To post this question under iClone or under Character Creator?
Since I'm busy animating, I chose the iClone section.

QUESTION 1:  What is the best way to give your CC person some expressions?
I want my character to smile, or frown.
Maybe as a "static" expression.
Maybe to look happy or angry while talking.

What is the best way to accomplish that simple-sounding task using Character Creator avatars?


QUESTION 2:  Where are the CC-compatible personas?
I probably just overlooked them, but I just wanted to add a persona to my CC person for basic things like walking.
The female has actions like "Catwalk start, catwalk walk, catwalk end" but how about the old  "Walk to this point" command.


I really hope I've just overlooked something embarrassingly obvious.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

For personas you can use Chuck and Gwyn as well. The G6 personas have to much "attitude" to be useful.

Facial animation, with all its current restrictions, works the same for CC characters as for any other.

There are facial animation profiles for CC characters in the facial puppet tool, and you can of course use key frames. In addition, if you have CT8 pipeline you can also create facial animation there and import into IC6. 

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@Animagic,

Thanks.  I thought for sure I tried "everyone" but maybe *cough* my mouse malfunctioned or something.  I'll try Gwynn again.

I guess I'll have to master puppeteering.  My attempts in the past have been less-than-satisfying (due to my lack up puppeteer skills, not an iClone shortcoming).

Hmm... keyframing via the puppet?  Is that what you're saying?  Because of my bad experiences in the past, I've sort of stayed away from that part of the interface and rarely use it.  I never thought about using it to set "one frame" if that's what you're saying.  I thought you had to press "record" and I never tried to set it for a single frame.  If I totally misunderstood you, please elaborate.  Meanwhile, I plan to go explore this.

ADDED:

D'oh!
I was trying to drag-and-drop the persona onto the avatar (and getting the "No" circle with a slash through it) and I was assuming that mean it wasn't compatible.
Double-clicking on the persona (with the avatar already selected) did the trick.

About the "smile"... I miss the "Control Points" we had before.  It seems like every generation (G4, G5, G6) of avatars has 75% of the functionality we want.  Gain something, loose something.  Which feature do you want to do without today?  The "Face Key" for G6/CC avatars is really limited, and I don't want to have to go through CT8 just to make a decent smile on an avatar I got from Reallusion.  It does get annoying at times.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

I highly recommend getting to know the facial puppet and face key. They're far better at alleviating "woodenness"  then they're made out to be. To get smoother puppeteering, I discovered you can set your mouse to its slowest setting for recording the motion.

They face key I know, and used to have good success with it.  But, unless I'm missing something again, it is really limited on the G6/CC avatars.

In the example below, you can see how serious creases appear at the end of the lips.  I know it's somewhat exaggerated to be sure the problem is visible, but it hardly takes any expression at all before the face is ruined.  (Before someone points out which "facial controls" I selected, I have tried numerous combinations of lips, cheeks, mouth area, and chin.  This was just a single example.)

With the control points, it was easier to make a more extreme (expressive) expression without getting cartoonish or distorted.  Right now, at least with this person, I need to keep the expressions very subtle.  Very subtle.

Maybe I'm just in a whiny mood tonight.

Thanks for the reply.  It motivated me to pound on the Face Key some more.  Even in it's limited state (with no control points for CC avatars) I might get by if I settle for gentler expressions combined with more extreme close-ups.

 

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Thanks for the kind offer, sw00000p, but I'll be alright.
I just got irritated when something that should be so simple, give the lady a nice generous smile, turned ugly.
If it was a face I modeled from scratch, and I made all the morphs and everything, then I would expect marginal results.
But it is an avatar made from Reallusion stock, ever-so-slightly tweaked in Character Creator.  Nothing extreme at all, except for the results I got when I tried to make her smile.
(She's pretty good at frowning, though.)
I'll just keep the smile more gentle and zoom in for a tighter close-up so the audience can see it.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

This is a very handy page for getting to grips with the facial animation pipeline.

http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/pipeline/demo_face.aspx

EDIT.
Wolfzones tutorial seems like a good place to start........

Homebuilt computer - Windoze 10, INTEL i9 9900 k @ 5.1 GHz, EVGA RTX 2080 TI XC ULTRA, 16GB 3100 MHz RAM, Asus  Maximus Hero XI motherboard, Sound blaster Z series. iClone6 & 7 Pipeline, Crazytalk 8, Crazytalk Animator 2, Facefilter, Pop video 3, Hitfilm 4Pro, Cubase 8.5 Pro,

A) I wasn't talking about phonemes, and I was not talking about blending phonemes.  That's a different topic for another day.  All I wanted was a simple smile, which I thought would take me all of 20 seconds to accomplish using the tools available to me in iClone.

B) I'm sure you could teach me other tools.  I learn lots of tools.  I was simply expressing a bit of frustration that trying to key or puppeteer a simple smile resulted in a ruined face before getting a nice broad grin.  If I decide it's worth my time to learn other tools, I'll know who to ask, but I'd probably spend more time with Substance Designer/Painter to absorb my non-iClone computer time.  After all, I only have 30 hours in a day. 

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

One of the often repeated limitations of facial animation in IC is cheek expansion and contraction and more lip, lid and brow control.

It actually takes 26 muscles in the face to smile, simply bending the lips upwards will never produce a convincing smile, In fact it will create a fake, contrived smile. Try this yourself by looking in a mirror or just touching your cheeks and make a big smile, notice how your cheeks expand. Another very limiting issue with IC is the lack of control on the lips on the face key editor, simply squishing or bending the entire mouth will never create a convincing smile, and often distorts the mouth into an ugly mess.

Here's a link to an article by - Science: How stuff works -  that will explain very clearly why CC characters in IC will never create a convincing smile, frown or any other realistic emotion in it's current build.

How many muscles does it take to smile

As several skilled animators in this forum have repeated time and again, Reallusion seriously needs to address this.



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

Per Webster, "phoneme" is related to speech.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phoneme
What sound does a smile make?

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD