Now, I don’t know whether iClone itself is what you’d consider AAA software in that area, mind you. I suppose it depends on what part of the flow you’re looking at?įor instance, Reallusion iClone has support for Unreal Live Link, and then can take pre-made animations, hand-animations, animations created via their ‘facial puppet’ functionality, from iOS ARKit captures using their own facial motion capture, via Faceware (which you mentioned), from lip movement generated from audio input and some contextual viseme data you provide, etc.įor purposes of sending it into Unreal via Live Link, how that animation got into iClone is irrelevant.

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This article was originally published in issue 240 of 3D World (opens in new tab), the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists.

Read more: What is motion capture? (opens in new tab).

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Get all the software to use Live Face for iPhone on the iPhone X for $249 here (opens in new tab).

Get Live Face app for free here (opens in new tab).

While it's not perfect (Apple, please fix the separate eyebrow tracking!), it can produce decent results quickly and with minimal post cleanup. IPhone X/Live Face is a stable, efficient and easy-to-use facial mocap approach, and is a practical addition to the animator's toolbox. In fact, the combined cost of the phone and software is about the same as for iClone's existing Faceware system.

Even with the cost of the iPhone itself, this is good value for a robust facial mocap solution. There's no denying that the iPhone X (opens in new tab) is expensive, and assuming you already have iClone 7 and the Motion LIVE integrated mocap plugin, it will cost about £230 for the software to use the phone for facial mocap in iClone.

Facial mocap for faceware