The facial animations in SC2 were done with a tool called FaceFX, a tool specifically designed for Facial Animations and Lip sync.
It is a really expesive tool, but judging from the Games that use it, it seems to be industry standard like 3ds Max (which also is really expensive)
There is a free version for evaluation which can save files, but it has restricted functionality. (There is also a version of FaceFX professional included which doesn't allow you to save)
But you can still do facial animations in max, but they will be tied to your model and a specific animation of it
But there may be hope that the Art Tools could include some plugins. UDK comes with some FaceFX plugins for Max and Maya to create facial animations for UE3. So maybe The Art Tools will have a similar set of plugins designed for SC2
That's exactly what it is currently. Blizzard simply used a sets of lip-synch generated by that program for each character models. We can only either use 1 of them or not animating lip at all. Generating our own data for use of model is near impossible. Hard-animating them into the model is 1 solution
This was what annoyed me then I made my first real map. You either find a proper animator who can fix the whole thing 100% correctly or you have NO moving lips at all. There isn't even the "generic moving lips" option like in SC1. I dislike that decision by Blizz. Best we can do is play lip animations linked to random campaign sounds over our own sentences.
Has anyone looked into the file format for face animations? If it's XML as almost everything else, we should be able to build generic "talk" animations easily (and probably a little emotion, happy, angry, etc.). That could prove handy for a lot of people.
Or even if it's binary, it's very likely the file format is documented and much more...
The gives me hope that there will be some way to create custom lip animations. The ones in the cutscene certainly don't look like they've been taken from existing animations.
It looks like the gave they whole system an overhaul or upgrade, because the facial animations in the trailer look a lot better than the ones in WoL (Kerrigan grits her teeth, Horner opens his mouth widely when shouting).
Yeah, that cutscene also gave me some hope. But for blizzard it's easy to just generate a *.fxa when they have the sound file. That's the selling point of FaceFX.
I don't expect much from the cutscene editor in terms of animating objects, from what I've seen.
But when I see the animations in the trailer I can hardly think that they are generated by the game, but with FaceFX and put a more effort into tweaking them. (HOTS generally seems to have better art than WOL)
The Raynor trolololo cutscene gives me hope that there will be some way to create custom lip animations. The ones in the cutscene certainly don't look like they've been taken from existing animations.
It looks like the gave they whole system an overhaul or upgrade, because the facial animations in the trailer look a lot better than the ones in WoL (Kerrigan grits her teeth, Horner opens his mouth widely when shouting).
Not to mention the scene with valerian suffocating, when jim says SARAH? and when kerigan is loading her rifle. I was amazed.
Anyone know if it will be possible to do proper lip syncing with the new cutscene editor or art tools?
Wondering about this for both for cutscenes and portraits... Wish someone would've asked this during a Q/A :)
Sure hope there is. Incoming cutscenes of Raynor lip-synched to .
@Mozared: Go hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahyaya x98
The facial animations in SC2 were done with a tool called FaceFX, a tool specifically designed for Facial Animations and Lip sync. It is a really expesive tool, but judging from the Games that use it, it seems to be industry standard like 3ds Max (which also is really expensive)
There is a free version for evaluation which can save files, but it has restricted functionality. (There is also a version of FaceFX professional included which doesn't allow you to save)
But you can still do facial animations in max, but they will be tied to your model and a specific animation of it
But there may be hope that the Art Tools could include some plugins. UDK comes with some FaceFX plugins for Max and Maya to create facial animations for UE3. So maybe The Art Tools will have a similar set of plugins designed for SC2
@Tomura: Go
That's exactly what it is currently. Blizzard simply used a sets of lip-synch generated by that program for each character models. We can only either use 1 of them or not animating lip at all. Generating our own data for use of model is near impossible. Hard-animating them into the model is 1 solution
@progammer: Go
This was what annoyed me then I made my first real map. You either find a proper animator who can fix the whole thing 100% correctly or you have NO moving lips at all. There isn't even the "generic moving lips" option like in SC1. I dislike that decision by Blizz. Best we can do is play lip animations linked to random campaign sounds over our own sentences.
Has anyone looked into the file format for face animations? If it's XML as almost everything else, we should be able to build generic "talk" animations easily (and probably a little emotion, happy, angry, etc.). That could prove handy for a lot of people.
Or even if it's binary, it's very likely the file format is documented and much more...
The gives me hope that there will be some way to create custom lip animations. The ones in the cutscene certainly don't look like they've been taken from existing animations.
It looks like the gave they whole system an overhaul or upgrade, because the facial animations in the trailer look a lot better than the ones in WoL (Kerrigan grits her teeth, Horner opens his mouth widely when shouting).
@Tolkfan: Go
Yeah, that cutscene also gave me some hope. But for blizzard it's easy to just generate a *.fxa when they have the sound file. That's the selling point of FaceFX. I don't expect much from the cutscene editor in terms of animating objects, from what I've seen.
But when I see the animations in the trailer I can hardly think that they are generated by the game, but with FaceFX and put a more effort into tweaking them. (HOTS generally seems to have better art than WOL)
Not to mention the scene with valerian suffocating, when jim says SARAH? and when kerigan is loading her rifle. I was amazed.
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