I was able to make a pretty close matching clone of a real life person with headshot.  The only problem I'm finding may be a bit complicated to solve.  I sculpted the face and it looks bang on.  The character is smiling a bit and the expression looks very recognizable.  But a huge part of "cloning" someone (for lack of a better term) is their expressions.  As soon as I change it to a frown or use a preset expression it suddenly doesn't look like the real person near as much. 
So to animate and add speech I need to find a moderately easy way of keeping her facial expressions recognizable.  
If I'm not mistaken proper way would be to remap all the visemes and expressions in 3d exchange so they're tailored to this person's expressions?  
I'd be ok with just custom making a few of the basic expressions and winging it. 

Does this make sense?  Where would I do this in CC3, iclone, headshot, or 3dexchange?  
I'm just not quite sure if this is as simple as I'm hoping. 
Basically as it stands I have a great lookalike character as long as she's  paralyzed from the neck up. 

That's really a "performance" you're talking about, and your best bet is to mocap someone who can "do" that personality.  It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to simply map expressions across (a person't "persona" is far more than simple expressions -- it even goes down to the viseme level, as people pronounce things differently as well as form visemes for the same pronouncement in different ways).

That's why us actors are so valuable <g>.

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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

I don't have really high expectations but I I just want to have several different face poses I can use as a base. There won't be a lot of dialog so I'm not too worried about the visemes.
I haven't spent much time working on facial animation in iclone but if I can lay in some base expressions and then put the speech over top of that then I can just spend some time tweaking here and there. 
As long as there's still a flicker of recognition. 

I downloaded all the trial software and used your Manycam trick and ya..... It was pretty clear within about 10 seconds  that Mocap is the only way to go.  I just can't shake the feeling that spending all that money on all the components needed to do this one thing right now is like buying a blockbuster video franchise 10 years ago. 
If I even had an iPhone I might have considered it.    

If what you're suggesting is there will be better, cheaper solutions down the road... absolutely.  That's the nature of progress.  When I look back at 3D Studio (DOS version) it cost me $3K 1990 dollars (so, maybe 5 or 6 thousand nowadays).  That would have paid for nearly everything I have in my iClone suite including my iPhone AND two PN suits.

So, yes, it will improve.  But what you always have to decide is... how long do you wait.  I don't think facial mocap will get substantially cheaper in the next five years, but it will get better.  So for a couple of thousand five years from now you'll probably have a much richer and comprehensive capture solution.  Same for body -- I see all kinds of new stuff arising but it ain't cheap, just better.  Cheap MAY come but it's doubtful because it will always be a niche market for professionals (IOW, it's unlikely that amateurs are willing to spend the money for mocap).

I have both Faceware and Live Face but, if I hadn't had an iPhone X to begin with?  Unlikely I would have sprung for the total package (although I will say my iPhone X is by far the best smart phone I've ever owned, and I've owned every single iPhone since version 1).  Everyone needs to decide for themselves what to spend their hard earned money on and I would never criticize anyone's decision (some folks spend thousands on golf clubs and fishing boats -- just ain't my thing).

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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

You could bring your character into 3D Exchange and customize the facial morphs to match better.  If  you are unsure on how to do this just let me know and I can make a tutorial.

Please make that tutorial! I would like to know as well!

I was thinking of perhaps doing facial morphs in 3dxchange.  I saw it very briefly shown in a tutorial a while ago.  For what I'm doing I would just want to do a limited amount of work and try and get the most bang for my buck.  From what I remember the number of expressions in 3dxchange was a bit overwhelming.
That would probably make a useful tutorial though. 
I'm usually bumbling through everything when I use 3dxchange and take about 10 tries before I accidentally do something right. 

On a more scientific note I'm wondering which ones would be the most effective to edit if you only had time for a few? 


As for the price of mocap software it's really just been in the last 2 or 3 months I've started thinking it's going to get cheap soon because I've tested out some deep learning programs. The voice cloning technology seems to be figured out now but so far I don't think there are any free or cheap apps.
 I did try out deepfacelab though which I believe is open source and as a non-programmer I'm just guessing that in it does most if not all the work that the current combination of expensive apps and add-ons do.  The goal is just different.   I was able to run DFL on my old graphics card which was a gtx970. 
I might be wrong in my assumptions but it doesn't seem to me like its much of a leap get a deep learning app that maps and exports facial animation.

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