Wednesday, November 11, 2009

FaceFX problem solved.

I really was happy when Jonathan Perry from Bioware replied to my last post that that FaceFX and RoboBrad (emotion generation) are absolutely 100% integrated/supported in the toolset. This is really a toolset made by machinimators for machinimators. And now we'll have in hand the tools they used to create the game and that amazing cutscenes. Even better just a few minutes later with the help of Michelle Pettit-Mee and Bryan Derksen from Bioware who pointed me to the solution for the missing FaceFX integration. It was just a missing registry entry for the FaceFX path.

Original forum post on that topic

After that repaired, now everything works as expected. Fully integrated FaceFX support. Now you can add convincing lipsync and emotions to your characters face with just a few mouseclicks. And have the full power of FaceFX to tweak it later if needed. Fantastic. Now it's on us to use the toolset to create great machinima films with it. A huge thank you again to Bioware an especially the cinematics team giving such a powerful tool in our hand to work with.

Even I thought I was careful with using the toolset, I noticed some problem with the gameplay that could be traced back to it. There is a solution to this, so in case you're game behaves strange have a look at this forum thread.

Forum post on how to fix problems with the game after running the toolset

I've still found some starneg behavoiu in the game, but right now don't know if these are side effects from the toolset or just bugs in the game. My advice from that is this: Play the game as long as you have fun and after that install the toolset and play around with it. Not onlyl because of the possible side effects. By playing the game you learn a lot about the build in maps, environment, assets, animations etc. and can watch great cinematics for inspiration as well.

1 comment:

  1. That's great news! I had a feeling Bioware would make sure the toolset worked properly. I think it's just releasing it at the same time as the game makes logistics a problem since the focus is primarily on the game release. Most companies release tools after the game release so they can have enough manpower to make sure the toolset is functioning correctly on a lot of different machines.

    They'll probably be a few hiccups along the way for the DA toolset, but with this kind of help I don't think it will be a problem

    Bravo to Bioware, Jonathan and Michelle for getting this to work correctly. I plan on testing the toolset myself once I finish playing through the game, which I'm enjoying immensely.

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