Faceware software and Vicon hardware will be cross-compatible.
Two leaders in the emerging motion capture market have decided to form a partnership to advance their joint cause. Faceware Technologies, a maker of markerless 3D facial motion capture (mocap) solutions, and mocap equipment specialist Vicon will align their products to support the other.
The two vendors say the partnership will focus on providing mocap studios and service providers with more hardware and software options for capturing, analyzing and retargeting facial and full-body mocap data.
In the first phase of the partnership, Faceware has made its software products, Analyzer and Retargeter, compatible with Vicon’s Cara head rig when used in a single-camera configuration. Studios capturing facial performance data using Cara will now be able to process and retarget that data onto 3D characters using Faceware’s products. The Cara integration is complementary to Faceware’s own Headcam options. Faceware and Vicon have also started discussing additional integrations between their hardware and software solutions.
“Vicon is one of the leading providers of motion tracking hardware and software for entertainment,” “Their systems complement ours, and in many cases, are used alongside our software and hardware products.
“The main goal of this global partnership is to simplify the mocap process by making sure that studios—and really anyone using both Vicon systems and our software products—are not hindered in any way,” says Peter Busch, vice president of business development for Faceware Technologies.
Faceware’s software product line includes Faceware Analyzer, a facial tracking software application that converts video of an actor’s performance into facial motion files, and Faceware Retargeter, a plug-in for Autodesk animation tools that utilizes the data created in Analyzer to help animators create facial animation using a pose-based workflow. Both products are now fully capable of processing the information captured by the Vicon Cara headset just as if the information were captured by Faceware’s own head-mounted cameras. Cara is Vicon’s more affordable facial motion capture system that enables film and games studios of any size to apply advanced facial tracking and capture to production.
