Faceshift Studio – Basic Tutorial with XBOX360 Kinect

Faceshift Studio – Basic Tutorial with XBOX360 Kinect

Faceshift Studio (http://www.faceshift.com/) is a face-mocap software.
It analyzes the face motions of an actor, and describes them as a mixture of basic expressions, plus head orientation and gaze. This description is then used to animate virtual characters for use in movie or game production.

Faceshift Studio is really fantastic and it is used by some of most creative companies in the world as Industrial Light and Magic, Dreamworks, Disney, Sega. It works well with Autodesk 3DS Max and Unity3D.

To use Faceshift Studio you need a RGBD cameras (Red-Green-Blue-Deph).

Officially it runs with:
– PrimeSense Carmine 1.09
– Asus Xtion Live Pro
– Microsoft Kinect (it is the Kinetic sensor for PC)

Unofficially it might work with XBOX360 Kinetic sensor.

Ok let’s start!

XBOX360 sensor installation

1. Plug your sensor

2. From Microsoft website download and install KinectSDK-v1.8-Setup.exe

3. and install KinectDeveloperToolkit-v1.8.0-Setup.exe

XBOX360 Sensor testing

1. Go to Programs/Microsoft SDKs/Kinect/Developer Toolkit 1.8/bin/

– KinectExplorer-D2D.exe to move the bar

– FaceTrackingBasics-WPF.exe

NOTICE: You have to stay 80 cm from the sensor for face tracking

Faceshift capture and export

1. Start Faceshift> select MS Kinect Sensor Plugin

2. LEFT COLUMN> Tracking

3. You have to stay 80 cm from the sensor for face tracking

4. REC button to record

5. REC button to stop

6. Tracking> select the clip (it turns to blue)> Refine (this operation will remove glitches)

7. File> Save> to save the project in .fsp format

8. File> Export> to export in mocap data or animated .fbx file

Import into 3DS MAX

File> Import> .fbx

First expand the timeline, we will find:

– Mesh
– Head Bones
– Morph Targets