Tutorial – Face Rigging 101 for Brekel Kinect Pro Face

I’ve posted a tutorial on how to connect a blendshape / morph target rig to FBX data from Brekel Kinect Pro Face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZEamKAcEjQ

 

I use Maya but the concepts should be applicable to any 3D package that can read FBX files and use blendshapes / morph targets, which should be pretty much any 3D package nowadays 🙂

 

If you want to follow along, the latest installers will place the  example rig in your installation folder, example data files can be found on the downloads page.

 

Big thanks to Jochem Aarts from www.realizm.nl for providing the model!

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012 Kinect, Ranting

16 Comments to Tutorial – Face Rigging 101 for Brekel Kinect Pro Face

  • candy says:

    Very good website you have here but I was wanting to know if you knew of any message boards that cover the same topics talked about here?
    I’d really love to be a part of group where I can get comments from other knowledgeable individuals that share the same interest.

    If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Bless you!

  • Silvio Toledo says:

    Is there some specific ways to model morphs and some specific names/shapes for morphs ( belndshapes ) so it will work correctly?

    How many morphs will be recognized?

    Silvio Toledo

    • brekel says:

      Currently 11 shapes are tracked, namely:
      “Brows Inner Up”
      “Brows Inner Down”
      “Brows Outer Up”
      “Brows Outer Down”
      “Lip Stretch”
      “Lip Kiss”
      “Lip Corners Up”
      “Lip Corners Down”
      “Upper Lip Up”
      “Upper Lip Down”
      “Jaw Open”

  • Silvio Toledo says:

    Too curious. How does brekel translates a point cloud animation data to a morph target? they’re things totally different. How can I learn more about this?

    Is there an specific way to model the morph targets so it will work correctly?

    Silvio Toledo

  • Terry Morgan says:

    I tried both your fbx example 1 and theirs, but I’m only getting dummies, no bones,
    even though I selected ‘leave as bones’ in the import dialog. Using Max 2011, have Maya/Mobu but never used them.

    • brekel says:

      The FBX exporter in Brekel Kinect Pro Face has 2 options.
      Marker/Joints and FacePoints/AllPoints.

      There are two examples on the downloads page, the one with joints is the second one.

      Note that these options were added after Kaio did their tutorial. The concepts should still be valid, but you may want to ask them for a more recent tutorial file if needed.

  • Terry Morgan says:

    I got it going there for a while, when I moved it to
    eye level it stopped tracking. The yellow dots are hard
    to keep constant, and the filtering must be low in order to
    see any mouth movement, pretty cool though. Is the audio also
    recorded? This would be a buy if the audio could easily be
    added to the fbx.

    • brekel says:

      The sweet spot is around 1.5 arm lengths away from the Kinect and your face within 15 degrees from straight into the sensor, then it’s 100% robust.

      Too close to the sensor and it won’t be able to get a correct depth reading (Kinect for Windows sensor with near mode is better in that respect)

      It can record audio and video along with the 3D data in FBX/BVH/TXT files, you can check the examples file downloads for reference.

  • Terry Morgan says:

    Nothing happens in the flash movie, youtube link?

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