FaceFX Support

FaceFX Documentation and support

FaceFX Commands - bonepose

The bonepose command is used to create multi-stage bone poses, transfer bone poses between characters, export the rest pose from the Ogre bind pose, and perform simple add/subtract operations on existing bone poses.

Command Syntax

Flag	LongFlag	Arg	Description
-cm	-constructmega	Yes	The name of a the mega bone pose to construct.
-mci	‑megaconstructioninfo	Yes	A pipe character (“\|”) separated string with the following format: value1\|name1\|value2\|name2\|value3\|name3… where value3 > value2 > value1. Used in conjunction with the -cm flag.
-dm	-deconstructmega	Yes	The name of the mega bone pose to deconstruct.
-tr	-transfer	No	Specifies that the command should run in transfer mode. Must specify -src and -dst flags.
-src	-source	Yes	Path to source actor. All bone poses will be copied from this actor.
-dst	-destination	Yes	Path to destination actor. All bone poses from the source actor will be created in destination actor, overwriting existing bone poses if necessary.
-rp	-restpose	No	Use instead of the -name flag to specify that the operation should be performed on the rest pose.
-rcf	-replacewithcurrentframe	No	Replaces the specified bone pose or rest pose with the contents of the current frame. If the -restpose flag is used, all Ogre skeleton bones will be added to the reference pose. Then you can prune unwanted bones with -remove flag. Requires a rendersystem is initialized.
-add	-add	Yes	Puts the command in add mode. Use the -lhs and -rhs flags. Takes the new bone pose name as input.
-sub	-subtract	Yes	Puts the command in subtract mode. Use the -lhs and -rhs flags. Takes the new bone pose name as input.
-lhs	-lhs	Yes	Specifies the bone pose to use on the left hand side of the add or subtract operation.
-rhs	-rhs	Yes	Specifies the bone pose to use on the right hand side of the add or subtract operation.
-ab	-addbone	Yes	Adds a bone to a bone pose. Use with the -name flag. Takes an array with 11 pipe-character ( \| ) separated Arguments as input: bonename\|pos.x\|pos.y\|pos.z\|rot.w\|rot.x\|rot.y\|rot.z\|scale.x\|scale.y\|scale.z
-rb	-removebones	Yes	Removes bone(s) from a bone pose. Used with the -name flag . Takes a pipe-character ( \| ) separated string array of bone names. Pass in “all” to remove all bones.
-n	-name	Yes	Specifies the bone pose node to operate on for the addbone and removebone flags.

Examples

%bonepose -cm "TH" -mci ".85|step1|1.0|step2";

%bonepose -dm "TH";

%bonepose -transfer -src "C:\male.facefx" -dst "C:\female.facefx";

%bonepose -restpose -replacewithcurrentframe;

%bonepose -restpose -removebones "bone1|bone2|bone3|bone4";

%bonepose -add "sum_of_A_and_B" -lhs "A_bonepose" -rhs "B_bonepose";

%bonepose -subtract "A_with_B_removed" -lhs "A_bonepose" -rhs "B_bonepose";

%bonepose -removebones "BN_Head" -name "Blink";

%bonepose -addbone "BN_Head|0|0|0|1|0|0|0|1|1|1" -name "Blink";

Using an Ogre Animation to Define a Character (Blender Support)

Using the bonepose command and the getSkeletonFrame python function, it is possible to completely define a a character’s rest pose and bone poses with nothing but an Ogre asset with a skeleton animation that defines the bone poses. This allows FaceFX to work with animation packages like Blender that have Ogre exporters, but not native FaceFX Exporters.

Export Ogre content with a skeletal animation that contains all bone poses.
Load the Ogre content in FaceFX Studio by creating a new .facefx file and setting the Render Asset.
Use the bonepose -restpose -replcewithcurrentframe command to export a rest pose using all bones in the ogre skeleton.
Select the Ogre animation that contains all of the bone poses as the Ogre preview animation.
Go to a frame that contains a bone pose, use getSkeletonFrame to get the bone transforms. Feed the transforms into the bonepose -addbone interface one at a time (best to do this from python).

Transferring bone poses

Let’s say you have a male and a female character that share the same facial bone rig. The male has a larger face, and the bones in the rest pose are further apart than the female character’s bones. The male character has a rest pose and all bone poses, but the female character has only the rest pose. The bonepose command lets you transfer bone poses from the male to the female character (or visa versa). The rest pose is subtracted from the bone poses first, so only the changes from the rest pose are taken into account for the transfer. You may still need to tweak the created bone poses, but at least there is a good starting point to work from.

%bonepose -transfer -src "C:\male.facefx" -dst "C:\female.facefx" ;

Multi-stage bone poses

Let’s say for example that you are trying to fix a problem like below:

When your character says the TH sound, the tongue needs to curl around the teeth, but when the TH target is driven to 85%, the tongue is going through the teeth. The bonepose command lets you create a node that traverses through two stages: one that gets the tongue sticking out below and beyond the teeth (we’ll call it step1), and a second bone pose that curls the tongue around the teeth (we’ll call it step2). When TH is at 85% you want the character to look like step1, then when TH goes to 100% it should looks like step2. Doing this with the bonepose comand would look like this:

%bonepose -constructmega "TH" -megaconstructioninfo ".85|step1|1.0|step2";

Doing so will create 2 new bone poses called TH_step1 and TH_step2, and a new combiner node called TH. The TH combiner node will have the expected behavior. Some things to note:

The bone poses named in the megaconstructioninfo flag string must exist in the face graph.
The new combiner node and new bone poses must not exist in the face graph.
The -megaconstructioninfo is pipe-character-separated-string (“|”) with the following format: value1|name1|value2|name2|value3|name3… where value3 > value2 > value1…
Notice that new bone poses are being created. Your existing bone poses (step1 and step2 in this example)remain unchanged. The new bone poses (TH_step1 and TH_step2) cannot be used individually as they are not relative to the rest pose but rather relative to the previous pose in the chain of poses that make up the mega bone pose.

Exporting the Rest Pose

Exporting the rest pose from the Ogre bind pose was exposed so that Ogre content and audio files are the only required input for creating talking character movies from FaceFX Studio. The ogre content is loaded, the rest pose is exported, bone poses are transferred, the audio is analyzed, and the movie is rendered!