iClone 8 | Tips & Tricks - Facial animation made simple using AccuFACE

welcome back to iclone 3d.com the number one place for all your animation needs hi guys and welcome back to iclone 3D the number one place for all your animation needs now in today's tutorial we're going to be looking at how to use the wonderful new plug-in called actiface where we're going to be using that to generate facial expressions as you're seeing here on screen and we can also use it to generate our vzims ha so without further Ado let's crack on with today's tutorial where we're going to be looking at that tool in detail and the different ways we can create facial expressions from that plug-in ACU face in iclone 8 revolutionizes facial animation by offering users the ability to capture facial expressions with unparalleled accuracy and realism one of the standout features of actiface is its integration with webcams allowing animators to record their own facial expressions directly onto their digital characters known as Avatar in iclone using a webcam animators can capture their facial movements in real time which are then mapped onto the puppet's face within iclone this process enables creators to infuse their characters with authentic emotions and expressions as the subtle nuances of their own facial movements are accurately replicated on the Digital model furthermore actiface expands its functionality Beyond webcam capture by enabling the use of video footage animators can import pre-recorded video clips containing facial performances and apply the motion data directly onto their puppets this feature is incredibly versatile is it allows for the incorporation of professional actors performances reference footage or even self-recorded Clips to animate characters by leveraging ACU's capabilities animators can achieve life flag facial animations with remarkable ease and precision whether capturing realtime Expressions through a webcam or importing motion from video footage iclone 8 empowers creators to bring their characters to life this level of Fidelity in facial animation opens up new possibilities for storytelling character interaction and emotional depth within iclone projects so now we've had a brief overview of what activeace is and all of the different capabilities let's Dive Right In in real time and actually look at how to use that plug-in and get that motion recorded over into iclone 8 now one thing to note is that it is an independent plugin so you can't access it directly through iclone 8 You' got to access it through wherever you saved it on your computer so if I go into my trade down here you will see I've already got my acur face open and you can see here on the left that I'm on camera using my webcam now it's a very simple layout in the top right you can see you've got Camera and Video and that just allows you to either use your webcam or select the video mode where you can upload an MP4 video so in the camera mode you can see we've got our source section here and this is just going to allow you to select the webcam that you're using below that you've got tracking mode which we're going to keep it in static cam in case you were using a headgear where your camera is attached to a headgear you'd want to change that to headcam below this we've got the resolution now I tend to leave it in a resolu ution of 1280 by 720 below that your tracking frames per second you will leave as 30 frames per second and below this we've got a reduced tracking interference so you can leave these check marked and they'll give you a little bit smoother results now final section here we're going to calibrate our facial capture now this is very simple to do you just want to click on it and in your Expressions tab you've got a number of different facial presets so you want to click on the top one and on your right hand side here you can see the image of a neutral face and all you have to do is hold that neutral expression whilst looking directly at your webcam and then you want to click set expression so I'm going to do that for each of them we'll do the same for brow rays and for frown and finally for inner brow Rays okay so once you've done that and SLE your Expressions you can close this tab and you're literally ready to switch back over into iclone so what we want to do in here is we want to go up to our modifier Tab and in the animation section we're going to scroll down to our motion live plugin we'll click on this and that will now allow you to access the ACU face as you can see here you just want to click on that and that will connect it and below here in your character list you just want to make sure that Kevin the face section is check marked and you can do that by clicking on this green icon and select in ACU face very very simple to do and now we're pretty much ready to preview that so we can click on our preview tab hit the space bar and now you can see guys Kevin has come to life and you can see it works really really well now the facial expressions may be a little bit too strong as you can see here so what we want to do of course is we really want to actually use the sliders we have to adjust these and get them a little bit more corrected and a little bit more natural and realistic so we can do this in real time while keeping it in preview mode so we can see exactly what's happening but here in our strength tab we've got a global slider where if we reduce that you can see straight away guys that we've got much much better results a lot more smooth and a lot more realistic so really really that simple to do now with the eyelid you can see they are closing a little bit too much so we can increase that a bit here and then we're going to get less of that and we're going to get really natural eyes as you can see here guys so really really simple to do a wonderful wonderful plugin that you really want to learn how to kind of Master and use in your workflow again we can also adjust other increments down here so you can make the mouth a little bit more if you want a bit more mouth and now you can see that the mouth is opening a little bit more wide ey there's a bit more expression there again you want to be kind of a little bit careful here you don't want to overdo it because you can see they're quite impactful the sliders but again you've got so many different options guys and so many things you can play around with until you get the perfect perfect preset so again it's just something you're going to want to spend a little bit of time I'm doing just to get those perfect perfect results now as well as the strength slider we've also got a denoise and a smooth so again these are just going to give you a little bit more smoother results as you can see here but again you don't want to add too much because if you make it too smooth it starts to look a little unnatural so we want to try and keep it as natural as possible so we'll decrease the global to about 15 and we'll activate the smoothness we'll move the head rotate down to about three the muscles to one which is a affecting the overall movement of the kind of facial animation and we'll also bring the eyeballs down to one now again you don't want to do too much of this CU as you can see here it is really kind of smooth and if it's too smooth it looks a little bit unnatural so maybe I'll remove the muscle smoothness and leave it on zero and now you can see we've got some really really nice results guys so really that simple to do I'll turn off the D noise and we'll see how that impacts it differently sometimes in some cases you might not want to use any smooth smoothness or denoise so it really is up to you and what you're going for okay so back in the strength slider what I'm going to do is I'm just going to increase the kind of the mouth smile here so we can get a little bit more smile when we smile and you can see now that our character Smiles just a little bit more so again you don't want to do too much of this but you just want to play around with it to get the right options that kind of concludes this section looking at motion at the acup face with the webcam settings just a couple of quick things to note is you've got your auto blink section here which you can actually turn the auto blinks on so you don't have to worry about the blinking too much and if I pause this you can see we've got our audio Vine track so if we check mark this and go into our source you can actually turn your microphone on and when you actually record the data it will record both your facial expressions and your voice and generate those vzims for you so really really simple way to create facial expressions and your vzims in one kind of setting okay so now let's flip over and look at the video mode so once you're back in AC yourface to select a video we're going to go up to video and select on it and that will allow you to browse for a video wherever you've got them stored and in this case I'm going to go down here to my video that I've got earlier that we used of our wonderful actress here who is looking really annoyed if we play this back you can see she's um quite a wild and angry lady so I don't know who upset her but hey we better kind of get her a cup of coffee and hope she calms down soon so once you got your video selected something very important to remember is you want to have that as an mp4 unfortunately it doesn't accept MOV files so if you have anov file you can convert that to an mp4 using a software like Adobe Premiere Pro and then we can bring that back in to AC yourface and load it in but once your video is loaded we're going to literally simply go back into iclone and what we can do is we can now hit preview and play that and you'll see it will now start to preview from that video that we've inputed in the ACU face so really really is that simple guys you can literally play around create your own video clips and you know load them up and you get these wonderful wonderful results and again you can mess around with the strength and play around with the different sliders to get different results each time until you're really kind of happy with the results but it really is that simple guys to load your video Clips in and start to create your facial expression so as you can see here you know we've got some really really wild expressions and if we just very quickly open up the ACU face and we'll play that whilst we are actually watching back the ACU face video we can see you know looks really really good now we'll just hit play again here and that will start over the process again but again you know really cool way to get motion from a video onto your character you can play around with the sliders and adjust them until you get the perfect perfect kind of results so that really does conclude this tutorial guys where we've looked at how we can use AC your face to not only use the webcam to create facial expressions but also use video footage as an mp4 file to load into acuas and record that motion too so wonderful wonderful plug-in that you're really going to want to use in your workflow and actually figure out the best ways to incorporate that as you can see here I'm recording this outro using acur face and you know giving it all I've got to give you the guys the best results so really hope that helps and really hope to see you guys again soon for another tutorial [Music]

Channel: Iclone 3D

Views: 498

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Id: 80AAT0vinlA

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024