If you were at SIGGRAPH 2017, you might have seen some pretty cool stuff coming from Faceware. This company has been supplying very good real-time capturing solution for some of the biggest companies on the market. Their tech is really impressive, but it was also very expensive. But now they have something more manageable for smaller studios, who want to get some really cool animation going. You can now grab a professional solution for about $1k.

Here are some tutorials you can check out. And you can actually grab this software for a short 30-day trial and check all the features.

Product Features

Capture Sources and Camera Settings

• PC Camera Tracking: Use PC cam, GoPro or ProHD cameras to live capture facial animation.
• Image Sequence: Convert any video for use as a facial tracking source, making production iterations convenient.
• Access to all available camera supported frame rate and resolution.
• Recommended High Quality PC Camera:

○      Logitech Brio Ultra HD, 60 fps

○      Logitech HD Pro C920, 30 fps

• Face Tracking Model:

○      statiCam for desktop capture

○      HeadCam for head mounted capture

Fast and Simple Calibration – One click. It’s that easy.

Calibrating the technology to your face is an important part of how Realtime for iClone works. Calibration establishes a baseline by ‘teaching’ the technology what your face looks like in a neutral pose. Unlike other tracking software, calibration in Realtime for iClone is fast and simple, allowing you to train the technology in a single button press and adjust on-the-fly for optimal results.

Synchronous Audio Recording during Facial Capture

• Optionally record live audio with the face capture session.
• Recorded audio generates lip synch data.
• Blend lip-synch and motion capture to create the best result.

Tracking Data Inspector

• Instant, dynamic feedback. These meters let you view your animation data in real time.
• Observe the relationship between your facial performance and the real-time data stream and adjust the result.

Custom Capture Profiles

• Default 60-morph capture profiles are optimized for StaticCam and HeadCam.
• Define expression style with morph sliders and save it as a Custom Capture Profile.

Feature-based Facial Strength Filters

• Globally or separately control the signal input strength for brows, eyelids, eyeballs, mouth, jaw, cheek, and head rotation.
• Easily capture stylized characters with proper strength settings for toning down or exaggerating features.

Optional Mocap Mouth Blend with Audio Lipsync Viseme

• Audio to Lipsync Analysis gives another level of lips and tongue accuracy, and allows detailed Viseme editing.
• With the options to choose the blend ratio between facial mocap and audio lipsync, and achieve the optimal result.

Refinement and Face Key Timeline Editing

• Edit face capture performances in post with the iClone facial timeline.
• Access the motion clip track to edit & offset with face keys.
• Expression Intensity control through slider bars.

FBX Character & Animation Export

• Import and take your characters with facial captured animation to any game-engine or 3D application via 3DXchange Pipeline.
• The exported FBX characters keep full facial blend shapes, and their animation data in time sequence. You can re-edit them in other 3D tools for further possibilities.
• Supports industry standard 3D character systems with the largest available face-rig ready character library and creation engine.

Pricing is pretty flexible. iClone Faceware Facial Mocap Plug-in Suite, which works with iClone 7.02 above, and includes iClone Facial Mocap Plug-in for Faceware ($599) + Faceware Realtime for iClone ($599) could be had for just $999. It’s a nice deal if you’re in the market for this software.