Saturday, May 24, 2008

Emotions for Antics!

HOT OF THE PRESS May 23, 2008 •
"..............we now have Ian Wilson working alongside our development team in Cambridge. Ian is the founder and CEO of Emotion AI (http://www.emotionai.com) and over ten years of experience in Europe and Japan of applying technology to simulate how humans react . .....................It will take some time to integrate an emotions into Antics and make them as easy to use as we, and you, would like and fit them in with other developments, so you will have to be patient for a while. In the meantime, don’t forget that there are ways to get emotional impact in Antics videos using music ,camera cuts etc. – Tony Bannan’s videos “Looking Back"...........".full story

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This looks really interesting, and looks like it mightreplace the Antics/Crazy Talk path. Comments are closed on the Antics blog but they're saying it might take some time to implement.

previz said...

It's not something that really should take too long, the framework is already in place in the sane way lip sync is addressed. These are blend shapes and they can be setup to control the way a character's face is
distorted to mimmick facial expression. This solution is better then crazy talk is as much as it is 3d. The way they implement it is what will be interesting. Ultimately, I'd like to see it go down the "gestural input" route.
This path allows you to push and pull a face until you get the expression that suits.

Unknown said...

By gestural input do you mean for example "sliders" to have precise control of emotional features rather than simple "preset" emotional gestures?

previz said...

Hi Ian, nice to talk directly to the man who is going to revolutionize antics character performance!
My comments in regards to the "gestural" path is explained with these youtube examples. The concept is that if you want a smile, you drag the corners of the mouth up, in a mouse gesture.

This use of gestural manipulation is becoming quite common is modelling applications like MODO and Zbrush, Mudbox and deeppaint.

I see this method as being in line with the point and click experience Antics has adopted to date. I anticipate this would be the level of customization offered eventually.

I'vd love to post some of your thoughts and the difficulties faced in an article on this blog.
ammo@previz.com.au



Here is an example of the QUIDAM use of gestural workflows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnaopLOLCM4