Genemation Ltd., a leading developer of 3D "face synthesis" and character modeling tools, has launched GenCrowd 3D v2.0 for digital artists who need to easily and quickly generate large numbers of synthetic, realistic looking 3D heads. Output can be seemlessly exported into industry-standard art/animation tools and pipelines. GenCrowd's heads are highly configurable to suit a wide range of applications, including videogames, mobile, post-production, web authoring and other digital content applications. A trial version can be downloaded from the website.
GenCrowd 3D v2.0 heads are:* Copyright free* Generated by age, gender and ethnicity* Animatable, using GenCrowd's morph targets or bone rig* Exportable in a variety of file formats, mesh resolutions and texture sizes
GenCrowd 3D info: * GenCrowd 3D allows any number of unique 3D heads to be generated easily and quickly * You can set the number of heads you wish to generate in a given window * Individually generated heads can viewed 360° at different mesh resolutions in a dedicated window* You can mix selected heads to produce sub sets of "related" heads, then change the characteristics of the new group * If you're looking to create a particular head, GenCrowd 3D enables you to change the ethnicity, age or gender * If you want to generate a crowd of heads with certain characteristics, GenCrowd 3D enables you to define the types of heads you wish to generate by specifiying the age, gender or ethnicity * Whether you want your heads to smile or frown, GenCrowd 3D allows a variety of morph targets (expressions and phonemes) to be added to each head. You can mix expressions, phonemes and other traits to produce truly unique characters* Morph targets can be applied to large numbers of selected heads with a couple of keys strokes* Animation: to speed this up in your animation package the heads are exported with a bone rig and animation sequence, which cycles through sample expressions and visemes* Bump and specular maps can be created and exported* Once you have created your desired head or group, you can then save and export them into many of the popular 3D art animation packages in the following file formats: obj, maya binary (.mb), VRML, fbx and DotXSI * The supplied mesh is a high quality quad mesh (which enables easy subdivision, in ZBrush, for example). There are four export mesh resolutions: 1, 2, 5 and 9K. All of these mesh resolutions come complete with a bone rig for animation.* The meshes can be imported into Maya (.mb file compatible with 6.0, 6.5, 7.0), 3ds Max, SOFTIMAGE|XSI and other packages where finishing touches, e.g. hair, can be added.
Genemation (www.genemation.com) has developed sector leading face synthesis and character modeling technology, based on Manchester University research in facial recognition, parametric and statistical modeling, and has taken a leading position within the videogames development sector with its GenHead and GenCrowd standalone software tools. Genemation Ltd. is a privately owned company founded in 2002.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
