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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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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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By animagic - 8 Years Ago
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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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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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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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By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
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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.
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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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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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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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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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By TheOldBuffer - 8 Years Ago
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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........
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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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sw00000p (4/26/2016)
I stated, long before ic6 was released....
• Blending phoneme to phoneme.... piece of cake.
• Blending viseme to phoneme... Many Problems, here.... as you now see for yourself.
I wish I could teach you how to create facial animation (WITHOUT) settling for less!
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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By VirtualMedia - 8 Years Ago
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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.
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.
As several skilled animators in this forum have repeated time and again, Reallusion seriously needs to address this.
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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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sw00000p (4/26/2016)
Please Think.
[snip]
BTW:
Whenever you move the lips.... that's a phoneme procedure
Per Webster, "phoneme" is related to speech.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phoneme
What sound does a smile make?
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By animagic - 8 Years Ago
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@Viking: your question prompted me to explore some more and there is another approach you could try.
It turns out the CC avatars come with a bunch of facial morphs that can be controlled with the Expression Editor. (I don't know if this is standard or requires the Essentials pack, which I have.)
Load the character in 3DXchange and open the Expression Editor:
On the left are the familiar presets that can be used in the Facial Puppet in 6 groups of 4 (Up, Right, Down, and Left with the mouse). On the right are sliders that let you adjust the contribution of each morph. In addition, you can select the RL_G6_JawRoot in the Scene Tree (the silvery triangle is the jaw bone) and adjust the jaw. Once you like a set of morph settings, you need to click Set to keep the expression.
I think you will find that you have more control this way. There are 24 expressions you can set. You then need to export the character back to iClone, where the expressions will be available. You can also save the expressions as a profile file, which you can then apply to other CC avatars. This also allows you to change profiles to have a larger repertoire.
There is one other adjustment you need to make. Under your Reallusion folder, navigate to Template\iClone 6 Template\iClone Template\Profile\3DX_Custom. In the 3DX_Custom folder, there are 6 .ini files, which determine the initial settings if you select a custom profile in the Facial Puppet. You also need to adjust these because they give you big head movements, etc. There need to be some values, but they can be small. What I did was edit the .ini file, such that the beginning looks like this:
[TIPS]
Tips=001 (Q)
[HEAD_]
Ori_0=0
Ori_1=0
Ori_2=0
[EXPRESSION_]
GROUP_0=0
GROUP_1=0
GROUP_2=0
GROUP_3=0
GROUP_4=0
GROUP_5=0
GROUP_6=0
GROUP_7=1,1
GROUP_8=1,1
The bolded values have been changed. Group 7 and 8 are the eyes, so you will have only minute eye movements when you apply your custom morphs. However, any parameter will do as long as there is at least one non-zero value. (You could keep a copy of the original .ini file as a precaution.)
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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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@Animagic,
Wow, that's very interesting. I didn't think of going through 3DXchange to "reveal" something that's already 98% there. I wonder why we have to do it rather than Reallusion having it already there for us. Isn't that why we buy things from Reallusion? (Even if it's a default character, it's not one I modeled from scratch outside of the iClone suite.)
Anyway, I now have something else to explore. I find myself in the delicate situation of do I finish what I'm currently working on first, or follow that bunny trail and interrupt the progress I'm currently making? I think I'll tuck this away for a few days, since it might lead to a domino effect of one thing after another and I don't want to risk too big of an interruption right now. But soon I'll be in a good position to dig into it.
Great info, and thanks, again.
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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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<Ignore>
(Accidentally hit "Reply" in the wrong thread.)
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By dogged2003 - 8 Years Ago
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another great tut's:
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By TheOldBuffer - 8 Years Ago
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@dogged2003
Thanks for the vids, very informative and very useful.
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By pmaina - 8 Years Ago
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This thread is a goldmine. Many thanks to all contributors.
@sw00000p humble request please... can you post an example of what your approach can achieve (as in the final results)? You being an under-the-hood expert, I am guessing you can whip up something in no time. Would love to have a point of reference to compare all the different techniques discussed here. Thanks in advance.
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