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GrimGearheart has FaceRig

26 Nov, 2016 @ 10:06am

Why isn't there more community made content?

3D animation has always had an active community online. Especially Machinima style animators who use game assets to create their animations.

I'm an amateur. A layman. But I know that there are a multitude of websites out there that offer free, already made 3D models. Some of them are even rigged and animated!

So where's the disconnect?

I look in the workshop, and I see the most popular upload is the "spider woman". But in the description itself, it says that the avatar was made by Holotech Studios! I'm not entirely convinced that One_Hiker, the supposed uploader of the model, is anything more than an alternate account for the developers, so they could release an unofficial League of Legends character avatar. Anyways, that's off topic.

So the most popular "community" content in the workshop is just...something the developers made.

But...why?

If I go to a 3D model repository, and download or buy a rigged and animated 3D model, or if I rip a character model from a game that's already rigged and animated in the face, what's keeping it from being imported into FaceRig?

Is it all about the naming conventions? Making sure all the bones in the face follow a specific format for naming?

If that was the case, then I'm pretty sure we'd be seeing a lot more content in the workshop.

For those of you who are versed in 3D modeling or animating, what's keeping you from creating a FaceRig avatar?

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Showing 1-15 of 17 comments

Adina_Animaze [developer] 28 Nov, 2016 @ 2:18am

Hi Reaper26, thanks for this post.
I've also written some thoughts below.

Originally posted by Reaper26:
3D animation has always had an active community online. Especially Machinima style animators who use game assets to create their animations.

I'm an amateur. A layman. But I know that there are a multitude of websites out there that offer free, already made 3D models. Some of them are even rigged and animated!

So where's the disconnect?

These are really good questions and are subjects that have been torturing all of us here at Holotech Studios. The whole mission of FaceRig was to be an open creation and expression platform by enabling user-made content. Part of that mission was accomplished by the Live2D artists. But it is a complete shame that not more 3D artists added their models on the workshop.

Originally posted by Reaper26:
I look in the workshop, and I see the most popular upload is the "spider woman". But in the description itself, it says that the avatar was made by Holotech Studios! I'm not entirely convinced that One_Hiker, the supposed uploader of the model, is anything more than an alternate account for the developers, so they could release an unofficial League of Legends character avatar. Anyways, that's off topic.

So the most popular "community" content in the workshop is just...something the developers made.

There are actually a few great artists (Zefnoly, mmdanggg2, conjoh, Lockmar, kuuwanko) who shared their 3D characters on the workshop and we are thankful for them. One of the artists is One Hiker, and as we did for most of our content creators, we helped him with anything we could so he could make his characters. Since you mentioned the description from Spider Lady, he was referring to the fact that we gave him an early model for Yvonne, which wasn't released yet. In the meantime we did release Yvonne, and you can see that the models look a bit like each other.

Originally posted by Reaper26:
But...why?

If I go to a 3D model repository, and download or buy a rigged and animated 3D model, or if I rip a character model from a game that's already rigged and animated in the face, what's keeping it from being imported into FaceRig?

Is it all about the naming conventions? Making sure all the bones in the face follow a specific format for naming?

If that was the case, then I'm pretty sure we'd be seeing a lot more content in the workshop.

For those of you who are versed in 3D modeling or animating, what's keeping you from creating a FaceRig avatar?

I'd like to support these questions, and hopefully get some needed feedback from users.
To all of you who have tried making a FaceRig avatar, please share what were the reasons for which you stopped.
This would help us figure out what else is needed and what could be done to fix the obstacles you face.

Last edited by Adina_Animaze; 28 Nov, 2016 @ 2:30am

GrimGearheart has FaceRig

28 Nov, 2016 @ 8:47am

Thank you for the reply!

As someone who's developed FaceRig, do you have any insight or opinions into what the issues are?

I haven't made an attempt at importing a model yet, but based off of what I've read, my first guess would be that the hang up is that there's no standardized face rigging system, and because of that, models have to be rigged or re-rigged from scratch with FaceRig in mind.

Perhaps a way to solve this would be to create a kind of importing wizard that allows you to tell FaceRig which "bones" in a pre-existing model do what.

Something like this: http://i.imgur.com/002RLMV.jpg

Then the wizard would tell you to click which bones control the upper lip, lower lip, left upper eyelid, left lower eyelid, etc.

Then FaceRig can take that information, rename the rigging elements as it needs, and create a new FaceRig specific model with properly named elements.

This is just an idea though, so I don't know if it would be possible to pull in any random 3d model and view it's rigging system like that. :/

Adina_Animaze [developer] 29 Nov, 2016 @ 6:21am

Originally posted by Reaper26:
Thank you for the reply!

As someone who's developed FaceRig, do you have any insight or opinions into what the issues are?

We did receive some feedback from artists on mail who couldn't complete the model and our artists helped them. The issue is that each model is different, and we can't give users only one way of creating them (some avatars have 4 eyes, some are sitting down and some are standing). However, what we could standardize we already posted in the documentation and examples we gave.

You can file all the necessary documentation using this direct link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ciRKrWV2vsa0hXeHBDMzl3STA/view?usp=sharing

And here you have an example: https://drive.google.com/a/holotech.eu/file/d/0B8KlsC2kpc7nTW5YNzFWNDBqb0k/view?usp=sharing

Originally posted by Reaper26:
I haven't made an attempt at importing a model yet, but based off of what I've read, my first guess would be that the hang up is that there's no standardized face rigging system, and because of that, models have to be rigged or re-rigged from scratch with FaceRig in mind.

If you do eventually import a model, please share your experience and contact us if you run into any issues.

Originally posted by Reaper26:
Perhaps a way to solve this would be to create a kind of importing wizard that allows you to tell FaceRig which "bones" in a pre-existing model do what.

Something like this: http://i.imgur.com/002RLMV.jpg

Then the wizard would tell you to click which bones control the upper lip, lower lip, left upper eyelid, left lower eyelid, etc.

Then FaceRig can take that information, rename the rigging elements as it needs, and create a new FaceRig specific model with properly named elements.

This is just an idea though, so I don't know if it would be possible to pull in any random 3d model and view it's rigging system like that. :/

We will consider this suggestion for the future.
However, this may take a bit, since now we are concentrating on the mobile version and on releasing the Studio version. And as you know, in a small company you have to prioritize (:

inejwstine has FaceRig

30 Nov, 2016 @ 7:38am

As someone who's currently trying to create his very first FaceRig avatar and running into some issues along the way (like this one), I think the number one thing that would help avatar creators is a very clear step-by-step tutorial. As Aty pointed out, there is documentation available, and that's way better than having nothing at all. But I think it would be much easier to have something to follow along. I haven't even been able to find any fan-created tutorials for creating a custom 3D Avatar; that should tell you something about how tricky the process is. If the developers themselves (the ones who know exactly how the tools work) were to create an easy to follow tutorial, I think that might be the spark needed to see community-made avatars explode!

A document would be good, but a video tutorial would be even better. In my mind, an ideal tutorial would be as follows:

Start with a very simple avatar. Don't worry about fur, physics, and complicated shaders (reflections, ambient occlusion, and all that stuff). At this point we just want to figure out how to get something moving on the screen!
Begin the tutorial with the models and textures already created, rigged, and set up. We don't need to see how they were actually created; there are plenty of great tutorials already out there for those steps.
Go over the needed file formats for each piece (geometry, animations, textures, etc.). Also mention the recommended folder structure and naming conventions, which can make the importing process much quicker.
Go through all the pieces that must be set up a certain way in order for it to work. For example, if there are certain bones/nodes that must have a certain name, must be a certain size, must be oriented a certain way, etc.
Do a few of the simplest animations (idle and head movement for example) so we can see how to set up the keyframes, etc.
Demonstrate the use of the Import Wizard, including how to select the geometry file, materials, and animations (in case they aren't automatically selected when the data folder is chosen).
After clicking the magic "Import" button, show how to find the newly created avatar, how to make sure it's working in FaceRig, and go over some troubleshooting tips (like what to check if your avatar doesn't show up, is too small, is facing the wrong way, doesn't move, etc).
Finally, show how to share this newly created avatar online for others to download and enjoy!

At the end of this tutorial, the user should know how to create a very simple FaceRig avatar that just follows the most basic head movements (no expressions or mouth movement yet). That should be plenty to allow most users to figure out the rest on their own, but you may even consider creating other more advanced tutorials that cover the other things.

Last edited by inejwstine; 30 Nov, 2016 @ 7:38am

Zefnoly

2 Dec, 2016 @ 11:24am

Im going to make more 3D characters in the future. I allready got one for you to check out!
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=667724881
This character also got all the arms working...

In the future im going to add atleast 2 characters im working on now but got very little time to finish them at the moment because of school and other projects.
One of them which is an argonian character...

Astolpho

10 Dec, 2016 @ 9:05pm

I stopped because I got hung up on the file compatibility issue. I have several avatars in the pipeline that I began building in Maya, but Maya's collada export is not compatible with the facerig importer, or at least wasn't at the time of my last attempt. I intend to try to import my maya files into 3ds max, as I understand only max's collada exporter works with the facerig importer.

Zefnoly

11 Dec, 2016 @ 1:26am

Originally posted by Root:
I stopped because I got hung up on the file compatibility issue. I have several avatars in the pipeline that I began building in Maya, but Maya's collada export is not compatible with the facerig importer, or at least wasn't at the time of my last attempt. I intend to try to import my maya files into 3ds max, as I understand only max's collada exporter works with the facerig importer.

Blenders exporter works. But can be troublesome because of some things about the keying system...

Last edited by Zefnoly; 11 Dec, 2016 @ 1:27am

Adina_Animaze [developer] 12 Dec, 2016 @ 9:01am

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the insightful feedback, we are trying to fit into our artists' schedule a step by step tutorial just as you guys mentioned.
It will take a while since we are a bit swamped now, but I'll come back with updates about this as soon as possible.

Zefnoly

12 Dec, 2016 @ 10:55am

Originally posted by Aty:
Hi guys,

Thanks for all the insightful feedback, we are trying to fit into our artists' schedule a step by step tutorial just as you guys mentioned.
It will take a while since we are a bit swamped now, but I'll come back with updates about this as soon as possible.

I might make a blender orientated tutorial in the future as well ;)

Last edited by Zefnoly; 12 Dec, 2016 @ 10:55am

Adina_Animaze [developer] 13 Dec, 2016 @ 2:04am

Originally posted by Zefnoly:
I might make a blender orientated tutorial in the future as well ;)

That would be amazing! ^.^

Last edited by Adina_Animaze; 13 Dec, 2016 @ 2:05am

#10

aytimothy

31 Dec, 2016 @ 8:27am

From what I know, it's a little more complicated than just creating your blend animations (-1 to 1 values for each facial feature that FaceRig tracks), models, rigs, textures/materials and then dumping it into the importer... as a series of COLLADA .DAE (model/animation/materials) and TARGARA .TGA (image; texture) files.

It either: Not like my model/individual animation files or seem to not even see some/all of the materials/animation blends.

Last edited by aytimothy; 31 Dec, 2016 @ 8:36am

#11

Zefnoly

31 Dec, 2016 @ 8:39am

Originally posted by aytimothy:
From what I know, it's a little more complicated than just creating your blend animations (-1 to 1 values for each facial feature that FaceRig tracks), models, rigs, textures/materials and then dumping it into the importer... as a series of COLLADA .DAE (model/animation/materials) and TARGARA .TGA (image; texture) files.

It either: Not like my model/individual animation files or seem to not even see some/all of the materials/animation blends.

lol.... it is not that hard. I modded in my spore character 1 year ago with minimal knowledge. Today im doing it with proper models im making. im just to lazy to give myself time to add more. I have like 1-2 characters in the works allready. That more or less only needs the animatons done. it is far easier than modding to G-mod in my opinion

#12

31 Dec, 2016 @ 10:44am

I just learned of the existence of FaceRig a few days ago. I was quite surprised at how well it worked considering everything it has to do. One of the first things I did after playing with the default avatars is wonder how I could go about making my own avatar.
After looking at the documentation, It's no wonder at all why there isn't more community content. The modeling is the easy part for me. It's the list of 80 or so specific animations (such as MouthClosedRight_U_visime, etc.) I need to create and name properly for a successful import. I'm very new to the animation aspect of 3D modeling, so after I looked at the list of animation requirements, I just gave up on the idea of a custom FaceRig avatar. It basically intimidated me to the point of not wanting to do it anymore.

Last edited by Bo; 31 Dec, 2016 @ 10:53am

#13

Zefnoly

31 Dec, 2016 @ 10:45am

Originally posted by Apryl:
I just learned of the existence of FaceRig a few days ago. I was quite surprised at how well it worked considering everything it has to do. One of the first things I did after playing with the default avatars is wonder how I could go about making my own avatar.
After looking at the documentation, I'm don't wonder at all why there isn't more community content. The modeling is the easy part for me. It's the list of 80 or so specific animations (such as MouthClosedRight_U_visime, etc.) I need to create and name properly for a successful import. I'm very new to the animation aspect of 3D modeling, so after I looked at the list of animation requirements, I just gave up on the idea of a custom FaceRig avatar. It basically intimidated me to the point of not wanting to do it anymore.

I did that easily before I was any good at 3D modelling. I just looked at the base avatars. Now if i dedicate my time properly I can have animations for a character done in a day or two

#14