Facial Motion Capture Test

Do you know what I miss?

The excitement of watching a movie at my local movie theatre.

The last movie I saw in a theater was Frozen 2, and it was great! (it had the impossible task of living up to the original Frozen). I have a particular soft spot for animated movies. I grew up watching Toy Story and Spirited Away and when I was a kid I enjoyed the interesting characters and music. However, I enjoy these movies for a completely different reason nowadays.

THE TECHNICAL PROWESS is on my mind when I watch movies now.

Frozen 2 has amazing water and particle effects and I so desperately wish I could see how these intricate effects came to be. Luckily, the visual effects studios that do some of these effects share the deconstruction of them. But, sometimes these teardown videos don’t answer every question and as a self-proclaimed know-it-all, I kind of want to know it all.

 

This kind of leads me to what we’ve been working on in the studio. We have this entire motion capture and we’ve taught workshops involving motion capture, but why not try to create something that would make the likes of Disney turn their head? But, what could compliment motion capture?

 

Facial Motion Capture!

Yep! Facial Motion Capture, it’s something we’ve toyed with in the past, but thanks to some recent developments we can finally give it the good ol’ college try. This technology would allow us to create avatars with expressive faces and it wouldn’t require weeks of work to sync an avatar’s mouth to an actor’s spoken word.

 

I’ve spent a couple of days with the technology and I’ve finally broken ground and got my face to be in sync with the Holler Boy’s experimental face!

 

The video shows off what I’ve been able to do so far. Now that I’ve gotten a rough face working I’m going to spend a little time getting the rest of the Holler Boy’s body working. Watch out Disney, The Holler is coming for ya!

Enjoy the video!

 

 

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