Softimage announced an update to its Face Robot software, but is the price tag still a stumbling block? © Softimage.

Redefining Character Animation for Softimage
Not to be outdone, Softimage is focused on redefining character animation and rebranding the company in honor of its 20th anniversary. Earlier in July, parent company Avid acquired Character Animation Technologies (CAT), which provides plug-ins for Max (and will launch CAT 2.5). This broadens the range of XSI and Face Robot with greater access to multiple 3D platforms.

At SIGGRAPH, Softimage announced Face Robot 1.5, an update to the industry’s first software application dedicated to the creation of lifelike facial animation. This release offers a game export solution which allows artists to deliver high quality, in-game acting with detailed facial nuances, with support for all major game platforms.

Key features of the game export solution include:

• Automatic enveloping: Careful preservation of facial nuances around the mouth, with added focus on the volumetric quality of the lips — even with a minimal number of bones.

• Paint-based exporting: Artists can dictate the level optimization of anything from the number of masks, through to bone locations and influence.

• Tuning of realtime data: Easy adjustment of wrinkle intensity and shading parameters after export.

• Support for custom deformation: It’s now possible to add layers of customized rigging, shape and simulation and then export them.

The Face Robot 1.5 software application has been optimized to dramatically speed up animation playback while maintaining the highest quality deformations. Since the majority of animation tuning occurs around the mouth, particular attention has been taken to optimize the proxy mouth playback mode.

Face Robot 1.5 software is expected to be available in September for purchase in the following configurations:

• Face Robot Designer will be available for $94,995

• Face Robot Animator will be available for $14,995

Mova’s Contour motion capture system was the talk of the show. © Mova. 

Contour Reality Capture
In addition, Face Robot is the first third party app to read data from the new Contour Reality Capture system from San Francisco-based Mova. Contour was one of the surprise highlights of SIGGRAPH 2006, attracting lots of attention to its booth.

Contour employs two separate-yet-synchronized camera systems to simultaneously record visual and geometric information of actors wearing special phosphorescent green makeup. These two sets of data are combined to result in a high-resolution 3D digital image. With this innovative, markerless, optics-based process, every subtle detail of a human performance — from an arching eyebrow to widening eyes to a sly smile — is recorded in realtime.

Contour’s high-definition, 3D, volumetric representation of the action can be imported, modified, manipulated or retargeted to other characters using off-the-shelf CG animation software. Contour can import “true human behavior in all its distinct complexity into the virtual realm and works well with both marker-based motion capture and keyframe animation systems.”

Contour captures the motion of any 3D surface, deformable or not, with sub-millimeter precision at up to 120 frames per second, at a resolution of more than 100,000 polygons per frame. It captures the intricacies of soft tissue motion, “like pursing lips or billowing fabric.”

“The ‘Uncanny Valley’ is a perceptual zone where a computer-generated faces approach photorealism just enough to be eerie,” stated Mova founder/president Steve Perlman. “Contour is the first technology to successfully cross the ‘Uncanny Valley’ and open the door to a whole new realm of creative opportunities.”

“Contour is the first system we’ve seen that provides such high-resolution motion data in a practical production environment, and SOFTIMAGE|XSI and Face Robot are the ideal production tools for working with Contour,” said Marc Stevens, vp/gm of Softimage Co. “The high-quality motion data provided by Contour will allow Face Robot to produce facial animation with unprecedented realism. Together, our systems will enable a powerful new end-to-end facial animation pipeline for both film and game production.”

Contour’s performance is enabled in part through collaboration with NVIDIA. “Generally, NVIDIA GPUs are used to accelerate the rendering and display of 3D scenes. However, in the Contour system, NVIDIA GPUs are being used for the first time to accelerate the capture of 3D scenes, bringing details of the real world into the digital realm with unprecedented fidelity,” said Jeff Brown, gm of professional products at NVIDIA.

Through collaboration between Mova and Vicon, Contour’s markerless capture system can be used simultaneously with the Vicon MX-series marker-based capture system. This makes it possible for Contour’s cameras to capture high-resolution surface motion, such as facial, skin and cloth motion, while Vicon’s MX40 cameras capture high-precision marker motion, such as skeletal and prop motion.

Contour will be offered in the fourth quarter and director David Fincher has already announced that he will be using it on his next movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the reverse aging fantasy starring Brad Pitt. Perlman suggested that this represents the perfect use of Contour.