animated self portrait

[Bendytoons]

I have been pretty quiet recently because I've been working hard on virtual me. I wanted to experiment with puppeting a realistic character, and I figured I was the best reference available. The model is not quite as elegantly splined as some of the other self portraits that have been posted recently, but my focus was on movement.

 

So here's a first test at virtual me. There are still some tweaks to be made in both the motion and the model, but this is a promising start. Sorry it's so short, but I had to fit in the 2mb limit

 

take20.mov

[elliotclem1]

Nice.

 

The eyes seem to look away at the end.

 

Is this suppose to happen?

[Rodney]

Bravo! I'd say that is a very successful test.

Really amazing what you've got going there.

 

Two questions/suggestions:

 

Might I suggest a little more of a 3/4 view or is there a reason you prefer this angle?

 

Do you have anything planned to account for blinks or will they be added after the fact.

I'm guessing blinks might have to be handled differently (maybe a push button control) but don't know how you plan to tackle that.

 

Apologies if you've answered already in your other thread.

[robcat2075]

That looks pretty good, although I can't know how close it comes to the "original" live action.

 

But it's certainly within the range of other such demos I've seen.

 

There are a few moments where the head seems to freeze in position.

[Bendytoons]

Nice.

 

The eyes seem to look away at the end.

 

Is this suppose to happen?

Yeah, the eyes are looking around. I'm afraid my performance was a little distracted.

 

Bravo! I'd say that is a very successful test.

Really amazing what you've got going there.

 

Two questions/suggestions:

 

Might I suggest a little more of a 3/4 view or is there a reason you prefer this angle?

 

Do you have anything planned to account for blinks or will they be added after the fact.

I'm guessing blinks might have to be handled differently (maybe a push button control) but don't know how you plan to tackle that.

 

Apologies if you've answered already in your other thread.

I will post another angle soon. As far as blinks go, they are actually tracked and in the performance, just not the snippet I posted.

 

That looks pretty good, although I can't know how close it comes to the "original" live action.

 

But it's certainly within the range of other such demos I've seen.

 

There are a few moments where the head seems to freeze in position.

It's certainly not totally mimicking the live performance yet, but does get some nuance. The head "freezing" is mostly my performance I suspect, though there are still some glaring issues with the head and neck capture.

 

I'll post more tests as I have them.

[Paul Forwood]

That looks very good!

Can you just remind me whether you are driving the pose sliders from video clips or from a live feed? Either way its pretty awesome stuff. I'm just wondering how long the process is from videoing your face to having all the captured key frames in the choreography, before cleaning up and doing the blinks. Is that instant or is the Syntheyes part of the production a time consuming process?

[Darkwing]

Excellent work, it looks very close to being real, and with some tweaks will look awesome!

[Bendytoons]

That looks very good!

Can you just remind me whether you are driving the pose sliders from video clips or from a live feed?

Paul,

 

The capture is all post processed. I'd love to play with live capture again, someday, but don't have 20k lying around for a system. this stuff was all done with Syntheyes.

[Vance]

Good work!

 

The one suggestion I have has to do with the eyes. If you look at real humans, you almost never see the top of the iris. It is almost always covered by the top eyelid, though you can occasionally see the bottom of the iris. The fact that we can see the top of your digital analogue's iris gives him a slightly psycho look. This is fine if that's what you are going for, but if you want to present yourself in a better light you might look at changing this.

 

-Vance

[Bendytoons]

Here is a 45 degree(ish) clip of the same bit. The inside of the mouth looks a little funny because I have a non shadow casting light, and it's not completely textured.

 

shot2.mov

[Bendytoons]

Good work!

 

The one suggestion I have has to do with the eyes. If you look at real humans, you almost never see the top of the iris. It is almost always covered by the top eyelid, though you can occasionally see the bottom of the iris. The fact that we can see the top of your digital analogue's iris gives him a slightly psycho look. This is fine if that's what you are going for, but if you want to present yourself in a better light you might look at changing this.

 

-Vance

Vance,

 

Good catch. Though I have to say I prefer the term "high strung", psychotic has such negative connotations

[williamgaylord]

Nice work! You are way ahead of me! I guess vanity is bogging me down in the modeling stage...

 

Maybe an animated seft portrait category should be added to the list of contests. The emphasis would be on the animation--especially doing things with your virtual self that would be hard to do in real life. Like a superhero alter-ego, or a squash-and-stretch persona, clones...let your imagination go wild!

[johnl3d]

Nicely done something I wouldn't even think of attempting.

[entity]

Nice work. WOW. The movement/acting is very alive. What are you planning to do with this in the future?

[nimblepix]

Bendy,

 

Neato!

 

Try getting the mouth shapes a little ahead of the sound instead of right on or after.

There should be a touch anticipation, even in lip sync.

[Bendytoons]

The final (for now) version of this piece is now posted on YouTube at:

 

 

I'll try to have it up on A:M Films soon as well.

 

Ben

[goodguy20k]

DUDE! THAT ROCKED!

 

You should really get this method out there. I'd buy it!

[Chrury Sanson]

Dude! oh wait someone said that. um

 

SIR! That was awesome! Did you write the poem? Sounds like one to memorize.

[Paul Forwood]

Nice work, Bendy!

Awww. Poetic justice for the mo-cap guy?

 

Have you tried stripping out all the keyframes for the eyes and brow and doing those by hand? That would still save you an enormous amount of time but help to bring more life to the face.

[Bendytoons]

Thanks for the kudos, everyone.

 

DUDE! THAT ROCKED!

 

You should really get this method out there. I'd buy it!

If I can figure out how to market it I will.

 

Dude! oh wait someone said that. um

 

SIR! That was awesome! Did you write the poem? Sounds like one to memorize.

I did write the poem.

 

Nice work, Bendy!

Awww. Poetic justice for the mo-cap guy?

 

Have you tried stripping out all the keyframes for the eyes and brow and doing those by hand? That would still save you an enormous amount of time but help to bring more life to the face.

Paul,

 

That's easy to do, but I think unneeded. The brows and eyes are doing a good job of mimicking my performance, but the performance was pretty lame.

My goal here is to create something that needs as little hand adjustment as possible. I've designed it so that all the tweekage happens on the puppet, so if you want more brow action you adjust the curve of the brow control or the brow poses. the idea is that you'll be able to just drop the capture onto any rigged puppet, and have a decent performance.

[Paul Forwood]

I've designed it so that all the tweekage happens on the puppet, so if you want more brow action you adjust the curve of the brow control or the brow poses.

Sounds great!

[phatso]

One suggestion - from one who couldn't do that to save his life to one who can, but for what it's worth - the thing that makes lipsynch fakey is that it lags the action. A baseball batter has to start swinging before the ball gets to the plate; same for mouth movements. I find that taking the whole soundtrack and advancing it 3 or 4 frames (or retarding the action 3 or 4 frames) puts a living soul into the actor in an almost magical way.

 

Fine print: I'm assuming the video/audio timing I see in the downloads is the same as what you uploaded, which of course isn't necessarily the case. If you already knew about this, please don't assume I'm trying to be insulting.

[Bendytoons]

One suggestion - from one who couldn't do that to save his life to one who can, but for what it's worth - the thing that makes lipsynch fakey is that it lags the action. A baseball batter has to start swinging before the ball gets to the plate; same for mouth movements. I find that taking the whole soundtrack and advancing it 3 or 4 frames (or retarding the action 3 or 4 frames) puts a living soul into the actor in an almost magical way.

 

Fine print: I'm assuming the video/audio timing I see in the downloads is the same as what you uploaded, which of course isn't necessarily the case. If you already knew about this, please don't assume I'm trying to be insulting.

I am not insulted, and it is possible you are having lag issues with Youtube, I do sometimes.

 

Having said that, this is mo-cap driven, so the movement is in proper relation to the sound. The kind of anticipation you are talking about is built in. As I mentioned in an earlier post the way to manipulate this is to adjust the puppet, which I will do on future sessions.

 

BTW, 3 or 4 frames seems like too much lag, I usually do 1 or 2, but if it works...

 

B