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By nerdballergames - 4 Years Ago
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Is there a way to get facial animation (expressions) on a Character Creator character and import it into Unreal to use as an additive animation?
I've tried everything I can think of. Exporting to iclone, 3dxchange, as various file formats, reimporting, and I can't find any tutorials.
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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Sorry I don't have an answer. I am looking for the exact same thing in Unity.
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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Hi...
CC characters exported from Character Creator include all the facial blendshapes required to animate the face. However you can't export facial expression morphs separately. This is something that will be considered for the future but right now it isn't possible unfortunately.
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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What is the product that will allow us to export the FBX with ~100 precanned animations on it, each animation is a new sentence, w/ mo-capped mouth synced to speech? Can Crazy Talk do that? Clone 7?p
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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Character Creator 3 Pipeline can export an FBX with saved motion files. The process would involve doing the animation work in iClone 7, then saving each clip in the .iMotionPlus format. These can then be added to the Custom Motion list in CC3 and exported with the FBX. Please see the page below for more.
https://manual.reallusion.com/Character_Creator_3/ENU/3/Content/Character_Creator_3/3/17_Export/Exporting_FBX_Characters_with_MotionPlus.htm
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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Okay, so on a dare, I bought the whole kit & kaboodle. I have CC3, Clone 7, FBX Exchange, etc. I'm in Clone 7 now, and I want to create a series of different animations, perhaps 100 of them, each identifiable by an animation name. Each animation will be lip-synced animated mouth movements paired up with recorded speech....
You're saying I can't do all of the recording in iClone 7, that for EACH ONE, I need to save off the clip in iMotionPlus format? This seems really, REALLY clunky. Then I go into CC3 and import all 100 .iMotionPlus files + audio?
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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I'm in iClone7. I just created a "script". How do I export this to an iMotionPlus file so I can import it in CC3? There doesn't seem to be any way to export an animation from iClone7. Plus exporting FBX from iClone7 doesn't have anything in there for dealing with iMotionPlus embeddedness. I can't do the lip-sync stuff in CC3. I can't export the iavatar from CC3 into CrazyTalk 8. I seem to be dead in the water, here...
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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BroncoBilli (2/5/2020)
I'm in iClone7. I just created a "script". How do I export this to an iMotionPlus file so I can import it in CC3? There doesn't seem to be any way to export an animation from iClone7. Plus exporting FBX from iClone7 doesn't have anything in there for dealing with iMotionPlus embeddedness. I can't do the lip-sync stuff in CC3. I can't export the iavatar from CC3 into CrazyTalk 8. I seem to be dead in the water, here...
Please see the iClone 7 manual page below. This shows how to use 'Collect Clip' to select the animation data you wish to save. The option you need is "Add MotionPlus to Library". The saved MotionPlus file can then be loaded into Character Creator 3 Pipeline to be exported with the FBX.
https://manual.reallusion.com/iClone_7/ENU/Pro/Default.htm#iClone_7/Pro_7.4/09_Animation_Timeline_Editing/Collect_Clip_Track.htm
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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will this work for the mouth visemes? I want to save off just the mouth and eye and eyebrow motions. How do I set a mask to just collect THOSE things? (read the manual?)
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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Here's what I want to do: Open up IClone7 and record a speaker/presenter/celebrity saying 1000 sentences, individually, into facial capture software. For each sentence, take their mouth and facial features and save them to disk. Then, collect all 100 animations and import them into Unity and be able to set one or other on the avatar. Please help describe that workflow and if it is possible. Not interested in body animation stuff at this point, just mouth, eyes and possibly head.
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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Yep. I went and recorded some face features with Motion Live. It put the tracks down in the timeline, Viseme, Voice, Lips, Lip Options, Expression. It plays fine, the lips move, etc. I go to the collection track and select a region, and save as iMotionPlus… I chose "Facial Animation", "Sound", and "Morph" and accessory data. Motion, Visible, and Spring State are clicked off. I save this to iMotionPlus file on disk. Then I open up CC3 and select File - Export - FBX, then select Unity 3D, FBX options "motion only", then include motion = custom = my saved off motionplus file. Then I export to FBX. Then I go to unity and import the FBX. The resulting imported animations (Unity 2019.2) have only 1 frame apiece. Nothing in them. Useless! I must be missing an important step.
Why can't I export those animations from iClone7? Why the in-between step in CC3? Plus, what is unclear is - if I save off the motionplus files in iClone7, then open up CC3... Do I need the same model (avatar) loaded in CC3 as I am using in iClone7, in order to export the FBX with those animations on it? It would seem so, and I do have it that way, but it's not obvious from the workflow...
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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More info: I changed the output boxes for iMotionPlus file save to include "Motion", "Facial animation", "sound", "visible", "Morph" and "accessory data". Then I went to CC3 and exported the FBX, then imported into Unity. NOW - (gasp) I imported the FBX into CC_Assets and I see animation data for the mouth area. The problem is, it's attached to the Try3 object. There appears to be no way to copy/paste/move that animation data that is attached to the new FBX object onto the one that is already in the scene.
Reallusion, have you ever tried to do this process? Put two iClone7 mouth mocaps onto the same Unity model? You should try this and see how hard it is. Please describe the process in detail if you figure it out. I'm sure it's just more than me who needs to figure this out.
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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I think I have 90% of it figured out. I am missing something at the end though. Tell me if this is non-optimal:
* Save off the collect clip as an iMotionPlus file
* load CC3, make sure it has the same avatar, and export the FBX with the included iMotion files...
* in Unity, import the original CC3 model first. Let's say this one is "Avatar1".
* in Unity, import the FBX file and in the import dialog box, under "Model", deselect everything, under Rig, set animation type to "humanoid", set "source" avatar to Avatar1. In Animation, select the animations you want to import. You can get rid of body animations by selecting a mask, and deselecting the body parts. Under materials, deselect everything. Then press Apply.
* Unity: Create an animation controller. Drag whatever animation clips you want from the imported motion-only FBX file into the animation controller's state panel.
* For the avatar1 model in your scene, add an "animator". Make sure it's avatar is Avatar1. Select the animation controller you just made as animator's controller.
* If you double click on the Animation Controller, you can define the states you want to move from one animation to another.
What I don't understand at this point is that the animation clips if you double-click on them, are "read only". There doesn't seem to be any way to modify the animation clip, or copy the data somewhere else and modify it.
Is there a better way to do this? I'm impressed I got this far.
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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Yup. it can work. Here's how you finish up in Unity:
* import the motion-only FBX in Unity.
* deselect everything but the animation in the FBX importer. Set the target avatar to your original model in the scene. Press Apply.
* go to your project assets window, find the animation clips you want to use, select them, and press CTRL+D. This creates a duplicate of the animation clip.
* These animation clips now should be able to control your avatar. They require the avatar to have all the correctly named bones as they reference. You should be able to use them in Unity like you authored them in Unity: With the animation controller, as animation clips, whatever. They're now free of the FBX importer.
* you may now delete the motion-only FBX file in your project. Not needed any more.
Whew.
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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Great to hear you have been able to resolve the problems you were having. Thanks also for sharing your workflow. This will help others wishing to do the same thing.
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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My last problem is that I need to figure out how to get the audio that was recorded all the way to unity. I expected That the audio export would happen with the LivrMotion export, but that is not happening. It looks like I need to have a separate step to export the timeline audio as a WAV file. It would be nice two bundleThe audio inside of the exported Fbx file Or in a fashion similar to the included texture files in the FBM directory
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By unit23 - 4 Years Ago
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BroncoBilli (2/6/2020)
My last problem is that I need to figure out how to get the audio that was recorded all the way to unity. I expected That the audio export would happen with the LivrMotion export, but that is not happening. It looks like I need to have a separate step to export the timeline audio as a WAV file. It would be nice two bundleThe audio inside of the exported Fbx file Or in a fashion similar to the included texture files in the FBM directory
Hi BroncoBilli, I've forwarded your suggestion to the developers.
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By robertmalzan - 4 Years Ago
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It seems that the recorded audio is really for internal use only. I exported it to WAV and used it in Unity but the sound quality is horrible. So now I record the audio on a separate recorder (external device) as it seems to be the only way to get any kind of sound quality.
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By BroncoBilli - 4 Years Ago
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exactly. the audio is almost useless. it would be better if
iclone knew how to get face data from the phone, audio data from a boom mic, resample the audio to be the exact right length (they will be out of sync guaranteed) and then be able to export the exact selected time, both audio and video, to a format unity understands. without having to go through CC3. or it should export the good audio to the MotionPlus
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