Opening a Tracked Performance (.fwr) File

The subtleties and nuances of a facial performance can make or break an animation. For purposes of creating animation of the highest quality and for adding artistic decisions to the animation process, we have Retargeter. In this tutorial, we're going to focus on opening a performance file that has been generated by Faceware Analyzer.

 

 

Important Note About AutoSolve vs Pose-based Retargeting

AutoSolve is entirely separate from the regular posed-based retargeting workflow in Retargeter and the two are incompatible. If you have poses created, then the AutoSolved animation will pop where the poses exist as they conflict with the AutoSolve results. Please choose one workflow or the other based on your needs and skill level.

 

*Note: Head rotation is only usable with AutoSolve. If you are using head rotation in your scene, you will need to set up the appropriate expressions in your Expression Set and retarget with AutoSolve on.

 

 

Opening A Performance

The first step in retargeting a shot is to load the scene and plugin:

  1. In your Autodesk application, load the Retargeter plugin.
  2. Open the Performance menu and select "Open..."
  3. In the Open Performance dialog box, you will be asked to select several files:
    1. Performance File (.fwr) - In the Performance File field, select the .fwr performance file that you generated during parameterization in Analyzer that you wish to animate from. This file contains the tracking data that Retargeter uses.
    2. Character Setup File (.xml) - In the Character Setup field, select the character setup xml file that you created for this character during the Character Setup phase. For more information on Character Setup, please see the following article: Character Setup Walkthrough
    3. Shared Pose Database (Optional) (.fwsp) - The 'Shared Pose Database File' is an optional file that can be used to load "pre-made" poses for your character. This file is usually created by a supervisor and contains artistically approved poses for each of the character's 'Pose Groups' (mouth, eyes, brows). Please see Shared Poses for more information.
  4. Once the desired files are selected, check the options that you wish to use:
    1. Import Video - Creates a plane in the scene that displays the image sequence of the video for reference. Note that you may have to look around in your scene to find it, as different rigs work on different scales.
    2. Import Audio - Loads the audio from the shot into the scene for reference.
    3. Set Playback Range - Changes the timeline to fit the total number of frames in the performance.
    4. Set Frame Rate - Changes the frame rate in the character scene to match that of the performance file.
    5. Generate AutoSolve - Creates AutoSolved animation immediately upon loading the performance. See AutoSolve Walkthrough for more information.
  5. When your desired options are selected, hit "OK" to load your performance into the scene.

*Note: For information about what is happening when a performance is opened for the first time and file management, please see the following article: File Management for Retargeter

 

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