FaceRig, Educational Institution, Workflow

[Anonymous]

Dear Colleges,

My Team and I, who are all scientists with limited software knowledge, are trying to develop a workflow to move characters generated into FaceRig or an equivalent application.  FaceRig is fairly intuitive for novice users and should suit all our requirements but we are unable to create anything that can be easily uploaded as a new avatar.  Would anyone have any insight on how to accomplish this?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=523433759

We of course would be open to using another workflow if someone has a more simplistic alternative.  Please share your thoughts.

[Anonymous]

Before I begin here, please understand that these are just my own opinions and that I'm by no means an "Expert" at all of this stuff.  I've been working in 3D animation since 2011 when I first took it when I went back to college, but as I'm sure you are QUICKLY discovering, there's a rather insane learning curve to all this 3D stuff.

Alrighty, I had never heard of "Facerig" before reading your message...and after sitting here looking at their website, I'm still not sure what it's supposed to do.  It looks like it somehow takes video game characters and uses them for....err...something.  On that note alone I would ask, WHAT exactly are you trying to do with the characters you're creating?  What is your ultimate goal?

The reason I ask is that when it comes to this thing we collectively call "3D", what you do and how you do it depends greatly on what your goal is.  For example, I typically do "animation"...think stuff like Pixar movies like "Ice Age", but on a much, MUCH smaller scale.  Most of my animations are just shorts, around 6 minutes long. As such, I tend to work primarily in Autodesk's Maya.  For a situation where I use a human "character", I'll create that character in AD's Character Generator, save it as a Maya file (I'm sure you've seen that option) then just open it in Maya or import it into a "scene".  To give you an example of what I'm talking about, here's a still from one of the projects I'm currently working on...

In this particular situation, I have created a "set", much like people do when making movies.  I created the building and the other props (well...most of them anyways) in Maya and I then imported my characters into the scene.  The characters are then animated, mostly "keyframe animation" and the whole project will also be rendered in Maya.  Once Maya renders the images, I use a separate program like Adobe Premiere (some use After Effects) to assemble the project...add cuts, music/sound, etc..  In this particular case, I've also used Autodesk's Mudbox program to modify the characters a bit, as well as Photoshop to add "makeup" to my main characters face (my rendition of the Egyptian Goddess Isis) and the "decoration" you see on the walls and columns and such were mostly created in Adobe Illustrator.  I'm also in the process of teaching myself Autodesk's Motionbuilder software to use for lip sync, as one of the projects I plan to use this set for, will require my Isis character to speak to the audience.

Now again...I do "animation".  That's important.  If I were creating characters for say, a "game engine", the approach would be ENTIRELY different.  I really don't know much about game creation AT ALL...never had much of a fancy for that myself (I'd rather be "creating" than "playing"), but I might create the characters in Character Generator then take them out to a program such as Unity...again, the "goal" is what determines your work flow.

On that note, I did notice that the link you provided was referring to something regarding Blender...another 3D modeling/animation program similar to Maya or 3DS Max.  Ok...I may be a tad obstinate on occasion and I certainly suffer from a degree of absent mindedness on occasion, but I'm NOT stupid.  That said in the 6 years I've been doing 3D animation work, I've poked at Blender more than a few times...and I have yet to make ANYTHING beyond a simple "cube", LOL!!!  Maya is a SERIOUS pita to learn, but at least I'm able to work things out.  Blender on the other hand...to me at least, it's like trying to learn Chinese...with cotton stuffed in your ears, your eyes taped shut and a very large zucchini stuffed in your mouth!  LOL!!!!!!! I've seen work others have done in Blender and it really seems amazing...personally I have a bitch of a time just trying to open a file...depending on your goal again, you may wish to consider other options.  Blender is NOT the most user friend program I've seen out there.

Anyways, despite it's length, I'm sure that wasn't much help.  If you could give us a few more details on what you're trying to do, it should make it easier to point you in the right direction.