Don't mean to be condescending, nor can I really address prices outside of the U.S., but here if you own a smart phone (and pay ANY kind of data plan) you are spending AT LEAST $700 a year (and much more, usually).

I already addressed your point about RL making it sound as if facial mocap would be part of 7.1.  So we're in agreement there.  I was just trying to put things in perspective for folks who do spend a LOT of money on things that aren't vital for existence.  Again, I can only speak for my own country, but most folks here own their own car even though when I was growing up a one-car family was about anyone could manage.  And we only had one television, if that, and nowadays it seems like every single person has a 55" LCD TV for themselves.  

But perhaps an even better comparison is a computer and graphics cards.  I own the 1080 card, and it cost nearly as much as this plugin.  Do I NEED the card to run iClone?  No, but it sure makes it run better.  And that's about where this plugin is.  You don't NEED it, but it sure makes iClone better.  The price is a bit steep -- I think the sweet spot would have been $500 -- but it's not onerous and not having the plugin doesn't make iClone worthless.  Given that RL could not develop facial mocap themselves (I knew that from the get-go -- they are a small company and I never expected they would have those kind of resources) they had to partner with *somebody*.  My hope was they were going to partner with someone like Brekel (I lobbied for this) who sell their own facial mocap for Kinect.  It would have required a Kinect (so an expense there) but otherwise was priced VERY reasonably (still is -- and STILL might be an option for someone like yourself, particularly once Python scripting comes around, as it might be fairly easy to write an interface to iClone).

They chose to go with Faceware and when I heard this I went "uh-oh" as their own prices are through the roof.  Look it up.  At that point in time (this was quite a while back) I knew we were facing a lot higher price, but I still hoped RL could keep it reasonable.  And I think they did, given the quality of the plugin.  That they went with an Aston Martin and not a Cooper (to use an analogy you might understand) is a two-edged sword.  We got the best... and the highest priced.  As I said, I think there is still hope for lower cost alternatives for people who won't be able to afford this.  But I'm sure glad we have this option.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

But don't you need 3dx 7 to setup the 60+ morphs that will be used for faceware?
I think 3dx 6 and below don't have that number of face morphs you can assign.  

I think even in the pre-release material it was always a separate plugin, which means costs extra money. The time and effort or make a working face tracking system in house from RL would means years before release.

So they did the smart thing they partnered with a well respected company that already had the cheapest solution that gives good quality results and then are offering a big discount on top of that while also adding some unique features that not only make it work better for iClone, make it the best version of Faceware Live out there.

So expecting it to be included for free was a LARGE assumption on people's part and does not take into account development time and cost. Expecting it for cheaper from a 3rd party partner means they have to go for a lower quality solution that I think would be more frustrating to users and in the case of some plugins also require special hardware. Instead they went with a solution that is the cheapest professional solution out there, works with basic webcams, and is extremely reliable and gives results equal to systems costing significantly more. All other professional face tracking solutions cost WAY WAY more and some require you to use their hardware which also costs $$$. 

Like I have said in other threads, if you can point to a solution that doesn't produce poor tracking and has less total cost of ownership, let us all know. I for one would be definitely interested. I have not seen anything on the market.

Also how much did you spend on your iClone purchase? If money is so tight that you can't save up for Faceware, why didn't you choose something else like Blender? Do you ever buy content or add-ins? Those add up. 





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I think a pretty good analogy to look at here is what happened with the Kinect iClone plugin.  I wouldn't hesitate to say that all but the RL employees find it a complete waste of time and money.

But it was an effort, and cost development time for the RL staff (I have to believe they did it -- would they really buy something that awful from someone?).  It was cheap and in this case you got what you paid for, which was basically something you couldn't even use.

I still think the sweet spot on price for facial mocap was a bit lower -- but that's just me.  I was willing to pay, without hesitation, up to $800 (beyond that I would have had to test it out first -- as it was, I bought it without even a moment's doubt and without testing it).  

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley