Version 2.0.0
Release Date: 4-15-2021
A new chapter begins as the new major version release.
With the release of Animcraft 2.0, we're excited to announce that the entire facial system is ready for duty! You will have completed experience of character animation with both body and facial libraries and tools available. We've rewritten the entire animation editor and brought a new non-linear and non-destructive editor. You can now easier to edit your facial and body motion data and use them to create animation.
The 1st release of Animcraft 2.0 in the year 2021, briefly has the following new features:
- A facial animation system and a full toolchain in each stage have been introduced. Modules from facial expressions library, real-time display, facial re-targeting. motion capture, to the bridge tools in Maya, 3ds Max UE, and Unity3d, are already.
- Animation editor now has non-linear and non-destructive editing feature that allows you not even edit the exist animation clips but also use them to create a new animation, support both facial and body track, and is able to work with character re-targeting
- iPhone and iPad app for body and facial motion capturing with auto optimizers. You can capture your motion data anytime and use it anywhere, such as retarget it to any characters or re-build a rig for it.
- A pipeline toolkit for converting Maya rig to 3ds Max Character Studio rig, and converting back to Maya rig with animation data. 3ds Max Animator can work with Maya rig without losing quality.
- Bunch of bug fixing and UX improvements.
The Completed Facial Animation Toolchain
In Animcraft 2.0, we're providing a full bunch of facial tools including from facial mocap app, 3d preview, library, retarget, animation, to the rig and import/export plug-ins of 3ds Max, Maya, UE, and Unity. And more special, if you rig your face with Animcraft plug-ins in 3ds Max or Maya, your animation can be automatically retargeted between any 2 face rigs even in different software. It supports both blendshape and bones workflow.
Let's explore all the facial system features below:
Real-Time Face Motion Capture
You can now download an app from Apple AppStore and apply facial motion capture with Animcraft main window. Expression data will be converted to general data and stored in Facial Animation Library for further use.
(The more detailed description will be in the below section iPhone and iPad Motion Capture)
3D General Facial Motion Preview
A GPU-based 3D preview in Animcraft main window can display any facial motion data smoothly on a general digital actor. You can high efficiently preview, organize and store them without any issue.
Retargeting to Others FBX Character
Like the body motion, facial animation can be stored as the general assets (.ace files), then can be transferred and re-targeted to other FBX characters in the Animcraft character library. Preview the merged result in 3d Windows.
Retargeting to Maya Facial Rig
With the Animcraft for Maya plugin, you can map the Maya facial control rig and then retarget the facial motion data in the library directly to the rig controllers, achieving facial motion transfer for example from a human to an Orc.
A Fully-featured Facial Control Rig System for Maya and 3ds Max
Similar to the Advanced Skeleton Facial Rigging System in Maya and Bony Face System in 3ds Max, Animcraft provided a completed set of tools that allow you to rig a facial model from scratch both in 3ds Max and Maya. The tools include features like template points positioning, control rig building, secondary controllers, control panel, etc.
The more special thing is that if you build the facial rig with the Animcraft plugin (either in Maya or 3ds Max), you will have one-click and full precise ability to retarget facial motions among all other characters (which rigged using Animcraft plugin) in various software like Maya, 3ds Max, Animcraft Main Window, and game engines like Unreal, and Unity.
Editable Facial Clips
You can now use the facial animation data as clips and insert them into the latest non-linear motion editor (To be introduced in the below section). The facial animation sequence can be created by concatenating different facial clips in different tracks and blending different facial parts in different clips.
Game Engine Support
The retargeted facial animation data can be exported to the same character in Unreal Engine and Unity 3D. If you choose the Animcraft plugin to build a facial rig and make animations, the rest of the works can be finished with several clicks.
Check Older Versions