iClone Faceware Facial Mocap Available?

iClone Faceware Facial Mocap Available?

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https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic342064.aspx

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By VirtualMedia - 8 Years Ago

Just seen several tutorials on Youtube with links to purchase, however it's only bundled with IClone 7 and 3DX. I've already purchase these products. Where can I find the Faceware Mocap plugin and early purchase option for existing owners of RL V7 Products?

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

Yeah, I'm guessing we're seeing the slow rollout of this and by the end of the day (hopefully) we'll see the price for those of us who are loyal RL customers (and I sure hope they don't screw US around -- don't punish us for buying and supporting RL by retroactively making it that we should never have bought iClone 7 and Pipeline in the first place).

Fingers crossed.

By VirtualMedia - 8 Years Ago

Downloaded trial and installed, it won't allow me to connect to server? Any ideas why this would happen? I even disabled security software no luck...

By Peter (RL) - 8 Years Ago

Kelleytoons (9/19/2017)

To find the standalone price just visit the page below and click the "Add-On's" tab. If you ensure you are logged into your account and you will see the special member price.

https://www.reallusion.com/store/product.html?l=1&p=ic

By Peter (RL) - 8 Years Ago

VirtualMedia (9/19/2017)

Downloaded trial and installed, it won't allow me to connect to server? Any ideas why this would happen? I even disabled security software no luck...

Are you still having this problem? If so can you post a screenshot of the error message.

By LPmoviestvs - 8 Years Ago

seen it for $699 on it own

By VirtualMedia - 8 Years Ago

Peter (RL) (9/19/2017)

VirtualMedia (9/19/2017)

Downloaded trial and installed, it won't allow me to connect to server? Any ideas why this would happen? I even disabled security software no luck...

Are you still having this problem? If so can you post a screenshot of the error message.

Had to run IClone as admin, always assumed I was if I was logged in as admin.

By but0fc0ursee - 8 Years Ago

VirtualMedia (9/19/2017)

Had to run IClone as admin, always assumed I was if I was logged in as admin.

Right Click - Properties.... Run as administrator.
Now it always opens a an admin.
...I do this to all my programs.

By dr.zap - 8 Years Ago

700 bones is an outstanding price for Faceware and I am so excited to see what it can do in iClone. This may even have an impact on the prices for the rest of the market. I'm going to check their website for changes.

By argus1000 - 8 Years Ago

I haven't seen Faceware RT for $699. The lowest I've seen is $990 and it includes iClone 7 and 3DXchange pipeline. I already bought iClone 7 and 3DXchange pipeline. I don't need to pay for them twice. Where can I buy Faceware RT as a stand alone, by itself?

By mtakerkart - 8 Years Ago

@dr.zap

There're 7 tutorials about the plugin on their youtube channel.

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

Peter (RL) (9/19/2017)

Kelleytoons (9/19/2017)

Got it (and got it). Reasonable -- while the optimist in me would have said it would have been closer to $600 than $700 that's still a fair price. Oh, and for all those (and you know who you are) who told me I was crazy when I first speculated about the price of FW for us two months ago, here's what I wrote:

"So I'm guessing we are looking at a starting price around $700 to just under $1K. "

Yep, I sure don't know what I'm talking about. LOL.

https://forum.reallusion.com/335452/NEWS-SIGGRAPH-2017-FACEWARE-UPDATE?Keywords=Faceware#bm335460

By Peter (RL) - 8 Years Ago

argus1000 (9/19/2017)

By Jfrog - 8 Years Ago

I think $699 is really reasonable. Well done Reallusion!
This is kind of what I was expecting too. Add the Logitech brio on top of that and you have a very decent face motion capture package for an affordable price.

By Jfrog - 8 Years Ago

Oh, and for all those (and you know who you are) who told me I was crazy when I first speculated about the price of FW for us two months ago, here's what I wrote:
"So I'm guessing we are looking at a starting price around $700 to just under $1K. "

Kellytoons, you should have guest a starting price around $600, we wouldn't have to spend this extra $100 today. ;)

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

Hmmm, didn't think of it that way <g>.

I just went by the way they price ALL their stuff, but if you look at that thread you'll see all the folks giving me grief for saying they would NEVER price it that low.

RL did just fine -- under $700 would have been fantastic, more than that would have not been in keeping with their "normal" way of doing business. I'm going to guess the sweet spot would have been $500 for many folks, but for me it was $800 (more than that would have given me pause).

By argus1000 - 8 Years Ago

Peter (RL) (9/19/2017)

To find the standalone price just visit the page below and click the "Add-On's" tab. If you ensure you are logged into your account and you will see the special member price.
https://www.reallusion.com/store/product.html?l=1&p=ic

Thanks, Peter. I wasn't actually CLICKING on the ADD-ON tab. I was just scrolling down the page. My bad. But I like the price. $700 is real cool.

By Jfrog - 8 Years Ago

Your speculation for the discount price was right on. Wish for the best ($500) expect the worst ($1200). I think the introductory member price is within a decent sweetspot. I will definitely buy it, just need to buy a webcam first.

By TonyDPrime - 8 Years Ago

dr.zap (9/19/2017)

Man....Hot Market Time! This is a game changer for sure!....Wow.
Dr. Z...Are you tempted or what. I'm telling you, you will not be disappointed. It will be a lot to take in. But once you are in, the Reallusion paradigm is awesome.

By TonyDPrime - 8 Years Ago

Kelleytoons (9/19/2017)

Good call!
I am really blown away!
No fence!
WALL DOWN!!!!
I was already getting there, but this fuels me to want to know the ins and outs of this program so intensely now. ie - just was messing with the new morph editor, love it. The full capabilities of the timeline is the most important thing to learn, I am finding. It is definitely the strongest attribute of iClone.

By kungphu - 8 Years Ago

Jfrog (9/19/2017)

Maybe you should enter "The Price is Right" and clean house!

By freerange - 8 Years Ago

Congrats! and I am glad RL are able to give a discounted price, make their version the best implementation of Faceware Live AND the cheapest. I really hope everyone who buys it likes it.

Kelleytoons (9/19/2017)

Peter (RL) (9/19/2017)

Kelleytoons (9/19/2017)

By LarryPlane - 8 Years Ago

To steep a price for me!

iClone is now (again) for those that have enough money to buy plugins that cost more than the application!

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

I understand -- in some ways I felt this when the Perception was released, although being hardware it was a bit easier to swallow.

And I did warn about this divide happening (although many here derided me about it). RL made a choice, and it's a $$$ one, and while it's not TOO expensive it certainly is a lot to ask for any hobbyist (or even a retired old guy like me). The counter to this is they wanted to get the absolute best, to do it right, and those who make a living at this say "well, you're getting it cheap for what WE would normally pay."

My answer to that is that you don't *have* to have this -- you can do quite well without either body or facial mocap. There are even one or two here who argue it isn't as good (or not as much of an improvement). But for those who were misled (and I definitely think RL misled folks about this) into thinking it would be part and parcel of 7.1 -- this is a blow.

I also think it should work right out of the box, and it doesn't (something that particularly surprises me given the "professionals", as they describe themselves, who beta tested this. To them I'd say -- you may be pros, but you're pretty poor betas). I'm hoping they get those issues fixed and they probably will, but in the meantime paying a huge price and not having it work right is a bit frustrating.

But if this is something you really, really want -- save up for it. Do you have a smart phone? Then you have the money (if you don't have a smart phone -- not everyone does -- then I apologize. But, truly, such a phone is an unneeded luxury, and if you can afford it you can afford the facial mocap).

By freerange - 8 Years Ago

I will say the same thing I said in the original thread.

Faceware is not required to do good animation in iClone. It is a time saving tool. It is also a purely optional purchase so it isn't like RL are forcing it on people. RL now has the cheapest high quality face capture solution. There is literally nothing on the market that gives good results for cheaper. RL does not price Faceware so people should be super happy they are not paying standard retail price which was still a good deal for this kind of capture.

RL also put a lot of effort into making hand animation of faces better with 7 so that is a very viable option and doesn't cost you any extra. I think for most people though the time savings and quality of capture are more than enough to justify less trips to Starbucks to buy the plugin.

Save goes for all their other plugins and content packs and such. You do not NEED then to do animation in iClone. They are just time savers. iClone itself is a time saver over doing all this work in something like Blender. Ditching iClone for Adobe doesn't really make sense since Adobe isn't playing in this space really. You can make a solid argument for moving from Crazytalk Animator or giving up on 3D character animation, but I think for most people they have both if they are doing any sort of editorial work.

If you think RL are pricing their stuff anywhere near the professional market you have never done purchasing for the professional market. You can buy their entire software portfolio and not come close to many pro software setups. Try pricing Maya (leaving out MotionBuilder as you can do it pretty well in Maya now though most studio setups would have MotionBuilder), Faceware Live Studio, Xsens, Nuke (not even NukeX), V-Ray as a very bare bones professional setup for performance capture and see where you end up.

By Jfrog - 8 Years Ago

I think it is great to have an entry level price that allows anybody to start using and learning Iclone. As your needs and business grow you can than make the choice to expand your services and buy more tools (plugins) to fill your new clients needs.

I am an audio pro and use many workstations call "Pro-tools". I paid some audio plugin bundles for $7000, others at $10,000 and probably spent a total of $50,000 in plugins alone. Since I do sound design and sfx ,I also bought easily over $30,000 to $50,000 in SFX libraries. I am not trying to show off here but if you really need a tool and this tool will eventually pay by itself, you will probably decide to go for it even if the price didn't make sense before.

Just a thought!

By paulg625 - 8 Years Ago

Well Forked out the700 bones for Faceware, now I need a camera! Won't get much play time in this weekend but looking forward to using it.

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

Remember that almost any digital camera will work, at least to record sequences. And *most* of them will do 60fps at some resolution.

So that's always a good way to play around without making a webcam commitment (although I still think dollar for dollar the Logitech 922x is the best bang for the buck). I actually think I'll get far more use out of my digital cameras than I will the webcam, which is far less flexible (but I wanted the webcam for down and dirty stuff to do quickly without having to then turn around and download the video file and render it out to PNG, two steps unneeded with a webcam. I will say -- and it might just be me -- that it's a lot easier to "perform" in front of a regular camera you are capturing data, then to set up the live capture and do it inside of iClone -- much less distractions.

By paulg625 - 8 Years Ago

Yes I will have to think about this part. I really want to build a simple rig to hold the camera while I move around. I believe I can capture facial and motion capture at same time using my suit. ( thinking simple bike helmet and a stick (lol) )

Kelleytoons (9/21/2017)

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

When I was surfing around the web looking at all this stuff I found a site that had instructions for creating your own helmet cam using a bike helmet -- it was like super cheap and easy. I'll see if I can find that site again and post it here (or you can search yourself).

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

This is what I came across:

https://neuronmocap.com/forum/those-doing-facial-motion-capture-and-needing-mocap-helmets

By animagic - 8 Years Ago

I still think the divide mentioned here is an unnecessary one, unless we get into a childish situation between "haves" and "have-nots" of envy on the one hand and feeling superior on the other hand. Don't waste your time and make some movies.

By paulg625 - 8 Years Ago

cool
let me know if you find it. I will search for it as well.

Kelleytoons (9/21/2017)

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

Paul,

I posted the link up above.

By Jfrog - 8 Years Ago

I don't know if it is gone to work but I ordered a kind of gooseneck than can easily hold a webcam, the gooseneck is 27" long enough to curve it to your taste. The weakest link is the clamp that will clamp to my bike helmet but in the worst case scenario I will drill a small hole and screw the bottom of the clamp to my helmet.
I will let you know if that works when I receive it next thursday.

By Jfrog - 8 Years Ago

Gooseneck phone holder

By hattori kun - 8 Years Ago

How's the licensing? Is it perpetual license? I'm so weary of subs everywhere.
And the quality is 1000000 x better than the kinect mocap plugin?

By hattori kun - 8 Years Ago

[b]Peter (RL) (9/19/2017)

To find the standalone price just visit the page below and click the "Add-On's" tab. If you ensure you are logged into your account and you will see the special member price.

https://www.reallusion.com/store/product.html?l=1&p=ic

No bundle for 3dxpipeline and faceware only without ic7, which I have? I assume we need 3dxpipeline 7 to make it work. I only have 3dx 6 atm.

By LarryPlane - 8 Years Ago

Kelleytoons (9/21/2017)

I
But if this is something you really, really want -- save up for it. Do you have a smart phone? Then you have the money (if you don't have a smart phone -- not everyone does -- then I apologize. But, truly, such a phone is an unneeded luxury, and if you can afford it you can afford the facial mocap).

I find this remark somewhat condescending and out of touch with reality. I own a smart phone. it's a three year old Nokia windows phone that cost me 79.99 £ for a reconditioned model. I need a smart phone to check my emails while I'm out and about taking photographs (my job). if I were to avoid buying it in order to save for this faceware software I would need to wait along time until I had 700bucks! (79.99/3 years = £26.66 a year - 25years to save 699$ at $25 a year).

I've actually just paid my network 15£ to release my handset from their system so I can use it on another network. that's not because I love the phone, it's because I don't want to spend good money replacing a product that's still working!

The actual point that I'm trying to make is the advertising for IClone 7 last year inferred that face tracking would be part of the release, probably later, probably as a plugin, and a lot of people, like myself, assumed it would be low cost, or even like the curve editor, free but dependent on owning 3dxhange.

This has turned out not to be the case and that's why I feel conned.

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

hattori kun (9/23/2017)

How's the licensing? Is it perpetual license? I'm so weary of subs everywhere.
And the quality is 1000000 x better than the kinect mocap plugin?

Supposedly a perpetual license. And, yes, it's a million times better than the Kinect mocap plugin -- there is no comparison (that plugin is unusable -- this one is very good indeed).

You don't need 3DXChange for this at all, so don't worry about that (the bundle is for folks, I guess, who are going to use mocap outside of iClone -- and my own gut tells me it was bundled that way due to price and not to any practical concerns. They practically give iClone away now as it is, so the price wouldn't be all that discounted with just iClone and the facial mocap, but they added XChange to sweeten the deal).

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

LarryPlane (9/23/2017)

Kelleytoons (9/21/2017)

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.

By hattori kun - 8 Years Ago

Kelleytoons (9/23/2017)

hattori kun (9/23/2017)

How's the licensing? Is it perpetual license? I'm so weary of subs everywhere.
And the quality is 1000000 x better than the kinect mocap plugin?

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.

By freerange - 8 Years Ago

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.

LarryPlane (9/23/2017)

Kelleytoons (9/21/2017)

By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago

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).