Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/30784
Editor’sNote continued from page 2 FaceFX’s phoneme editor allows you to visual- ize the waveforms and adjust the timing of the automatic lip sync. tion produced is fairly conservative. This isn’t a bad thing, though, because FaceFX is work- ing mostly with the audio and phonemes to generate basic facial animation—one of sev- eral tasks required to truly bring a character to life. The rest of the work happens outside Face- FX, and this is where FaceFX’s plug-ins come in handy once again. The facial animation pass is exported to a 3D package, where the anima- tion can be incorporated or built upon using any number of tools. This is where non-linear animation editors, such as those in Maya and MotionBuilder, can come in very handy be- cause the FaceFX animation can be used as just another motion track. In fact, FaceFX’s output would be a big benefit for those productions using motion capture. The FaceFX-generated lip sync should lay over a motion-captured scene fairly seam- lessly and not fight the motion capture. In this situation, the motion-captured actor would provide a lot of the additional life needed to make the scene pop. For keyframe-based productions, FaceFX also could be of value to the user. While it doesn’t bring a character to life, it does do a lot of the groundwork and allows the anima- tor to focus on what’s really important. In that context, the software does about a third of the animator’s work. Overall, FaceFX is certainly a huge timesaver for animators. The software is very good at cre- ating accurate lip sync and basic animation. It will not animate an entire scene, but it can cer- tainly relieve a lot of the drudge work required in animation to free animators and artists for more rewarding tasks. n George Maestri is a contributing editor for and president/CEO of RubberBug animation studio. He also teaches Maya for Lynda.com. He can be reached at maestri@rubberbug.com. creating quality work is extremely high, yet visual effects command just a small por- tion of most movie budgets. The demand is always for more, better—but at what cost? Many facilities are bidding on jobs at a break-even point (or worse), just to retain staff or to keep their doors open. Perplexing It’s hard to believe that with the two Pirates movies grossing nearly $2 billion collective- ly worldwide that any studio associated with the highly acclaimed effects would be forced out of business. In that same vein, we have to scratch our head and wonder how Activi- sion (named the top US game publisher in 2007 by NPD Group) as well as the other dominant developers could find themselves in such tough financial straights. And EA, for goodness sake! After all, that company dominates the lucrative sports-themed gam- ing market. The general public hears this news and is perplexed. We’re talking tent-pole films and triple-A game titles. What they don’t under- stand is that they are part of the problem: Audience and player expectations are higher than ever. The public is no longer wowed by a realistic CG character on screen; they expect that character to look and perform flawlessly. They expect a digital evolution with every release—movie or game. Unfor- tunately, directors and publishers have simi- lar expectations. And more unfortunate still is that studios must satisfy those demands on ever-tighter budgets. Recently, I came upon an interview with Greg Zeschuk, cofounder of BioWare, and in it he claims that for most development studios, working on triple-A console games would be pointless, as only the top 10 stu- dios can actually accomplish that feat and walk away with a little pocket change. He further cautioned that such an endeavor is more competitive today than it has ever been, and more dangerous, too. New Avenues However dire the situation appears, it’s not all doom and gloom out there. There are success stories: Despicable Me, the first CGI feature produced by Universal and its Illu- mination Entertainment division, earned $542 million at the global box office on a modest $70 million budget. As Autodesk’s Petit points out, the democratization of VFX and CG is empowering small compa- nies to grow their businesses and empow- ering storytellers to create more compelling stories—whether in theaters, on television, or in games. In fact, as the traditional CG doors are closing, nontraditional doors are opening—particularly in the Web and mo- bile gaming areas. According to Petit, Autodesk’s research finds that this market is set to grow sig- nificantly, with revenue from mobile games projected to exceed that of console games by 2015. “Mobile is global; there are 726 mil- lion 3G users worldwide representing only 14 percent penetration and growing more than 30 percent per year,” he says. “In the ’90s at Autodesk, we were selling 3D soft- ware for 2D game creation. History is re- peating itself—in this new sector, 3D tools are the key to differentiation in the growing mobile game platform.” Others share Petit’s vision when it comes to alternative markets. One such person is Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. In his keynote address at GDC last month, he ad- mitted that the mobile and social gaming industries are a growing force. Iwata recalled that in 2005, when he gave his first keynote speech at the conference, only a few people were developing for the mobile market; now more than half the at- tendees made such a claim (no doubt due to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets). Another market game changer is an adjunct of this area: social gaming, which is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to Facebook. In so far as VFX is concerned, opportunities are sprouting in new areas, too, such as online advertising, notes Petit, as well as growing in others, including television. One only has to look at the number of epic-style miniseries (Camelot, The Tudors, The Borgias, Spartacus) and top-rated TV series (CSI, Fringe) to see opportunity. Or games like Angry Birds, being played on 42 million devices—and growing daily. Nev- ertheless, the need for high-quality visual effects and console games will continue to grow, too. Let’s just hope there will be plenty of studios standing to take on that work. n April 2011 45 Computer Graphics W orld