Xsi Face Robot

[Will]

The beginning of this video is a very cool interview with Emile Ghorayeb who shares his experience working at Dreamworks PDI, and Ubisoft Montreal (splintercell)


THe second half of course is, new technology called face Robot, finally get a nice video interview with thedeveolper of the software, Instant rig set up for any head.

according to the XSI its $95K.

http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=5003

[Jeremy]

Pretty cool.... I think the 'satellite version' or whatever you want to call it (face robot - animator) is around 15K... and several of them are used in conjunction with FACE ROBOT Designer... that's a pretty penny.

Putting things in perspective though I can kinda see how the pricing could make sense... Imagine how much they spent rigging faces like King Kong... then compare it to the speed of something like Face Robot.. it becomes much cheaper I bet. And with that pricetag, softimage needs to sell but a few and they are making some big bucks... Interesting though because it's very opposite their price strategy with XSI|Foundations being so cheap.

Awesome tool though.. some of the guys here were talking about getting it, but that was before the pricing was announced. :p

[Otaku_Zero]

I really liked the interview with the first guy, it really motives me to do my best. The Face Robot is a pretty sweet tool, but it might be heading toward that realm of "if we can make animation that you can't tell from real life, then why not just use real people?"

[Will]

well I can see this to be darn cost effective given to the right team of people. First of if you're an animator, you are an actor. And if you're a good animator, you dont mo-cap. And with good photo references, you can prolly create a person that doesnt exist. ( like the characters of Spirits within, Final Flight of the Osiris, Advent Children, Polar Express) Dawn of digital actors, we wont have to depend on high maintenanced actors. And you could probably outsource voice tallents to your own teammates rather then actual actors. I mean heck I think someone like Tiny would have great voice talent for a digital actor.

[Jeremy]

That's a really good point Kevin.

In its defense, you can do very stylized facial animation with it to though.

[Thomas Monberg Thompson]

Id say cg really needs to push the realistic impossible more, because that really is the strongest point of the medium at the moment at least, and personally it could go into even greater realms.