Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 2, 2005. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Avid is presenting what it says is a fundamentally new technology for facial animation at Siggraph: Softimage Face Robot is intended to enable 3D artists to create realistic, lifelike facial animation for feature films or game projects.
Face Robot is based on a computer model of soft facial tissue that simulates the full mimetic range of the human face. The technology is intended to enable artists to handle CG characters intuitively, but at the same time allow precise control over facial details such as wrinkles, nostrils and the neck muscles. The tool has already been used, among other places, at the animation studio Blur Studio (“Gopher Broke”), which won first prize at the animago AWARD 2005.
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The Face Robot software supports both Keyframe Animaton and Motion Capture. According to Avid, the underlying facial tissue model relieves artists of manually creating hundreds of 3D shapes for different facial expressions and allows animators to work with an optimal number of control points: Those who work with keyframes are intended to gain very direct access to facial expressions; those who use Mocap are intended to manage with fewer Markers than before and thus save time.
Face Robot is being shown publicly for the first time at Siggraph. Further information can be retrieved from the Softimage website (see link below).
Further Links:
- Softimage Face Robot (official website)
