Face Robot Terminology
Face Robot is a dedicated facial animation solution for high-quality digital acting.
Based on the standardized Face Robot animation control set consisting of 32 markers and an art-directable set of soft tissue parameters, many of which can be edited with direct manipulation, the Face Robot soft tissue solver determines the shape of the entire face for any facial expression.
The soft tissue solver is based on extended anatomy and animation research and uses a conceptual soft tissue model to compute its results. The soft tissue parameter set covers skin tissue parameters that influence facial skin deformations of the cheeks, forehead, neck, etc., as well as mouth tissue parameters that influence mouth deformations.
The system also automatically computes maps of the soft tissue stress in all areas of the face that can drive secondary effects, such as blushing and wrinkle smoothing.
A face designer is a trained Face Robot operator that can take a head model to an animatable state (this is our preferred way to describe this alternative to traditional rigging) by taking the head model through a two-stage process: head model preparation (facial landmark picking, insertion of spine, etc.) and soft tissue tuning (editing the soft tissue parameters according to specific artistic goals).
Face Robot also exposes a facial rigging API that allows rigging TDs to create custom high-level animation systems that drive the Face Robot animation control set. This enables productions to focus on high-level animation tools and acting performances while Softimage develops a high-quality soft tissue solver for facial deformations and transformations.
