A couple of years ago I was working on a music video, using scans from the 3D scanner project. The body object would be create with 3DSOM, the head by FaceGen Modeller, lip-syncing by Magpie Pro, and character animation using Automatron, with the main animation done in 3D Studio Max. Sadly, the music video was never finished; I left headed to London, and the video production company failed to do their job. Now that I have Automatron, and am using it with for architectural visualisation/simulation, I’m in a good position to finally actualize what was in my head.

The following is a proof of concept of just how easy it is to get animated, articulated faces in 3DS Max:

Facegen exports a complete collection of “morph targets” for each expression, and phoneme (phonetic sound, used for lip-syncing). You can either choreograph these by hand in 3DS Max, as above, or let Magpie Pro work them out for you.