FaceWare, which is known for its advanced face rendering technology, has powered some of the most popular games of the modern era. FaceWare’s face rendering technology is not just limited to software solutions, which it licenses out to any interested third and first party developers, but also to specialized hardware that can be used to render some pretty damn realistic looking faces- the kind you will increasingly come to expect (and see) as this generation progresses on.

Now, for GDC 2015, FaceWare have released a brand new trailer that showcases their advanced and sophisticated face rendering technology, that you can see above. It sort of looks like a David Cage promotional video, except FaceWare have the advantage of this trailer being for their technology, not for an upcoming video game or anything.

Anyway, GDC 2015 is ongoing right now, and we at GamingBolt will keep you posted on all of the latest and greatest developments from it. Stay tuned.

Faceware Technologies provides some solutions that are increasingly important and relevant to video games as they move more and more towards immersive storytelling. They are the leading provider of markerless 3D facial motion capture solutions, and today they announced that they have upgraded and released version 2.0 of their real-time facial mocap and animation product,Faceware Live.

“For the past 12 months, we’ve been vetting Faceware Live in a handful of studios, collecting feedback that has been invaluable in the evolution of the product,” said Peter Busch, Vice President of Business Development at Faceware Technologies. “We?ve rolled much of that feedback into the product, and are now ready to release Faceware Live 2.0 to any studio or content creator in need of real-time facial animation.”

“Faceware Live 2.0 is built on powerful technology that has been developed over 15 years of research and development,” said Jay Grenier, director of technical operations. “This focused development effort makes our technology rock solid, robust, and most importantly, stable. “

New features introduced by version 2.0 include instant calibration, consistent calibration, and Unity engine support, among others.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more.

Faceware Technologies will be partnering with Binari Sonori to launch something completely unique and unprecedented- a new video-based localization service, which uses Faceware’s professional headcam systems to capture video of a voice actor’s performance at the same time that the audio is being captured, providing both actors and animators with time-saving video reference for localization. This service launches today, and should make simultaneous releases of video games around the world that much quicker and easier.

“I’m really excited about this new service,” said Andrea Ballista, account manager and co-founder of Binari Sonori. “It gives us a simple yet elegant solution that allows actors around the world to mirror their performances, saves artists time in the animation process, and helps game studios drive up the quality of localization without adding any time to the process.”

“We’ve been talking to Binari Sonori for many months, and have tested the service internally,” said Pete Busch, vice president of business development for Faceware Technologies. “It’s now ready to roll out globally, and we can’t wait to see the results on actual productions.”

If you want to learn more about how the process works, you can check out the video above.

Bungie’s upcoming persistently online and connected shooter, Destiny, looks like it will be revolutionary not just for its living, breathing world, and the plethora of possible ways that it looks like it will offer to the players to interact with the environment, but also for its storytelling, which seems like nothing else in shooters yet. Now, Bungie has announced that it will be using Faceware’s motion capture technology to adequately be able to tell the story it wants to tell.

“When we develop a game at Bungie, our goal is to fuse brilliant technology, beautiful art, compelling stories, and deep gameplay into games that audiences worldwide want to play,” said Dave Lieber, Cinematics Supervisor at Bungie, Inc. “Faceware has been used on Academy Award-winning movies and some of the highest grossing AAA videos games of all time. There’s a reason for that: their products are production proven, easy to use, and indispensable to any team wanting to elevate the realism of their character performances without being locked into a particular capture pipeline, rig or art style.”

“Bungie’s artists have the flexibility to build upon a real-world performance, and easily add their own artistic touch, as desired,” added Pat Jandro, Bungie’s Lead Facial Animator.

“Bungie has produced some truly amazing titles over the years. They are one of the best in the business,” said Pete Busch, VP of Product Development at Faceware Technologies. “All of us at Faceware are honored that Bungie has chosen our products yet again. We can’t wait to see what they create for Destiny.”

Destiny is due in September this year for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4. it is being published by Activision. No PC or Wii U versions have been announced yet.

We recently spoke to Jake Fenske, Line Producer at CounterPunch Studios about Faceware, work-flows and even the amount of effort it took to model the Psycho from Crysis 3. CPS specializes in facial animation, and has produced it for many other top games such as Max Payne 3, Red Dead Redemption and more, using Faceware and their own technology in the process.

Ravi Sinha: Can you explain the entire process by which you used Faceware for Crysis 3? What were the advantages it presented versus traditional means of scanning and animating?

Jake Fenske: We animated 48 minutes of facial animation for in-game cinematics for Crysis 3. We use Faceware for all of our facial animation as it allows us to efficiently translate a captured performance from an actor to our proprietary facial rigs. Using Faceware is much more efficient and cuts our resourcing needs significantly.

The process for using Faceware is simple and requires only a few steps. First, the performance of an actor must be captured on video. Then our team uses the Faceware Analyzer to track the movement of the pixel data of the video. This data is exported into controller data that can be transferred to the facial rig. The Faceware Retargeter takes the data created by the Analyzer and transfers it to the facial rig with our animators establishing specific poses and controlling the process. When the data has been retargeted to the character you end up with a good level of animation data. This allows our team to focus more time on perfecting animation data to achieve the high quality animation that we achieved on Crysis 3.

Ravi Sinha: What other tools and technologies were brought in for the facial development in Crysis 3 aside from Faceware? How well did the various processes gel together?

Jake Fenske: We have a proprietary rigging process that allows us to create high quality facial rigs (a set of interconnected “bones” used to animate a 3D modeling mesh) for not only features but for gaming budgets as well. We have worked with Faceware often and our rigging technology has been developed alongside the development of Faceware.

Ravi Sinha: How many man hours did it take altogether to scan Pyscho’s face? How much faster was that than traditional methods? How many man hours did it take to animate his face? How much faster was that?

Jake Fenske: Typically the process of capturing the performance, rigging the characters, and animating can take several months but we perform each task diligently to cut the schedule and meet strict delivery dates. Although there is no way of getting around the true development time to achieve the true characteristics that make up each character. Our goals are to capture every nuance of a character’s face and performance.

Ravi Sinha: Roughly speaking how many polygons went it to building Pyshco’s face? More details on this will be appreciated.

Jake Fenske:  After an actor is scanned to create the character, the density of the mesh (the surface representation used to draw the character) is extremely high. Psycho’s scanned mesh was around 50,000 polygons. Unfortunately this is too high for a current generation game engine so the character must be retopologized to create a usable head model. Psycho’s game ready head was approximately 3,500 polygons, which is much less costly in the game.

Ravi Sinha: Was the pipeline overtly complex with all these technologies used in conjunction? How did you manage it all?

Jake Fenske:  We utilized the same pipeline we developed for other games that we have worked on in the past including GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3. We spend the majority of development time in the beginning establishing the look development and art direction for each character. This includes several levels of animation testing and building expressions and pose libraries to achieve a lifelike performance. Once we’ve achieved all of these benchmarks the process is standard for delivering up to hundreds of minutes of animation in a relatively short amount of time. Generally it cuts about 50% of the time it would take to hand animate.

Ravi Sinha: Crysis 3 features arguably the most realistic facial animations we’ve ever seen. But how well does that fit into the larger scheme of things, when you have massive photo-realistic levels, explosions and massive aliens vying for the player’s attention, and for the hardware’s processing power?

Jake Fenske:  Now more than ever developers are trying to push the quality levels of all aspects of their games. Fewer characters have helmets or obstructive elements. There are also more cameras being set to extreme close ups to show off the quality that the game has achieved. This is the same for facial performance. In order for a player to be immersed in the game the facial quality has to be believable because, let’s face it, people want to imagine and fantasize that they are those players. Bad facial animation will take the player right out of the experience.

Ravi Sinha: It’s understandable if specific numbers can’t be given, but there must’ve been a sizable amount of resources allocated to the facial animation process, right?

Jake Fenske:  In our experience, the budgets are actually quite limited. Because of this we have developed solutions that make the process much more efficient to keep the costs down basing our margins on volume.

Ravi Sinha: Talking about how all these tools were used in conjunction – and also about how the consoles somewhat limited the graphical potential of Crysis 3 – what do you see next gen consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One providing in terms of visual fidelity?

Jake Fenske:  We are starting to develop technologies built around realtime applications. We are also starting to have discussions with Stereoscopic companies to project out where we think the gaming industry is going. We think one day people will be playing with holograms.

Ravi Sinha: As you must be aware, Xbox One will have 8GB of DDR3 RAM and the PS4 will have 8 GB of DDR5 RAM. Does the PS4 gives any advantage over the new Xbox in the way you guys will approach facial capture for next generation of games?

Jake Fenske:  Anytime there is an increase in the hardware there will be an improvement in the level of facial quality that can be achieved. We will be able to use higher resolution models, rigs and textures. This only increases the believability in the facial animation and the deformation quality our facial rigs. Whether the PS4 has an advantage over the Xbox One is yet to be seen on our end but both are a significant upgrade from the current generation.

Ravi Sinha: Do you see a time when realistic facial animation will be as easy and fast to develop as high-profile games (as most developers praise the PS4 for being able to do)?

Jake Fenske: No matter how much technology advances, there is still no answer for the emotion a human being brings to a character. The fidelity will increase and so will the need for people who can bring life and emotion to a character.

Ravi Sinha: Concerning all the realistic modeling of artificial characters in video games, do you see a time when the Uncanny Valley might pop up in gaming?

Jake Fenske: One of the key factors with the Uncanny Valley implies that the visuals are disturbing enough to take you out of the visual experience. No one who has played Crysis 3 mentions the Uncanny Valley, which says that players are able to be fully immersed in the experienced. The concept we have been working toward the last few years (from GTA IV to Crysis 3) was to cross over to the other side of the uncanny valley and bring real life to a character. We are currently building photo real models for feature films using the same approach. We believe that gaming has already solved that problem with games like Crysis 3.

Ravi Sinha: Given all the time and effort put into such realistic facial animation, has the team ever considered just going straight into movie production?

Jake Fenske: We are currently in production building photo real characters and digital doubles for several features set to release over the next two years. These characters all employ the same technology that was used in Crysis 3. As an example, please feel free to check out Ek Tha Tiger, a record setting feature film released in India last year.

Special thanks to Eric Schumacher from Neology Concepts for setting the interview up.

We recently had a chance to sit down with Jake Fenske, Line Producer at CounterPunch Studios, who specializes in facial animation and has used commercial technology such as Faceware (seen in games like Crysis 3) along with CounterPunch’s own tech for producing jaw-dropping visuals and facial expressions in 3D characters.

When asked about what next gen consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One could provide in terms of visual fidelity, Fenske stated that, “We’re starting to develop technologies built around realtime applications. We are also starting to have discussions with Stereoscopic companies to project out where we think the gaming industry is going. We think one day people will be playing with holograms.”

As for the Xbox One’s 8GB DDR3 RAM versus the PlayStation 4’s 8GB GDDR5 RAM, and any advantages derived from the latter because of this discrepancy, Fenske remarked that, “Anytime there is an increase in the hardware there will be an improvement in the level of facial quality that can be achieved.

“We will be able to use higher resolution models, rigs and textures. This only increases the believability in the facial animation and the deformation quality our facial rigs. Whether the PS4 has an advantage over the Xbox One is yet to be seen on our end but both are a significant upgrade from the current generation.”

The main appeal of next generation consoles though, is their PC like architecture and tremendous amounts of power. This helps facilitate easier development while still bringing cutting edge graphics to gamers. Will a day come when next gen consoles allow for easier facial animation as well?

“No matter how much technology advances, there is still no answer for the emotion a human being brings to a character. The fidelity will increase and so will the need for people who can bring life and emotion to a character.”

As for the next generation of gaming, stay tuned as E3 2013 gets closer and we learn what developers will have in store for us in the coming months.

Sit back and enjoy the full interview below.

Rashid Sayed: For people who are not aware of Faceware, can you please explain what this technology is all about and what you guys do?

Jay Grenier: Faceware Technologies offers hardware and software for high-quality, high-speed facial motion capture. Our technology, licensed from Image Metrics, is a marker-less, video-based system that tracks and solves facial data from any video camera to any CG character. We also rent and sell a Head-Mounted Camera which is an optional, optimized capture method you can use with our tech. Faceware is an award-winning application that has been utilized on AAA games like Crysis 2, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed and Halo.

Rashid Sayed: How does this technology work?

Jay Grenier: Our system is completely marker-less and works from any type of video file, whether it’s from a smart phone camera or from one of our Head-Mounted Cameras. Analyzer™ accurately detects the person’s face in the video image and can track the movement of every pixel. As it learns more about the shapes and movement of the actor’s face, the work gets faster and easier. When it’s finished, a file is saved that contains all of the facial movement data for a particular video. Retargeter™, a plug-in to Maya, 3DS Max, MotionBuilder and Softimage, reads the data from Analyzer™ and with the help of an animator, it transfers that data onto any CG character.

Rashid Sayed: How different is motion capture in video game compared to a Hollywood movie?

Jay Grenier: The mocap process is very similar in both games and films. There are game developers using the exact same hardware and software that’s used in movies. The difference that the larger film budgets can make is that they have more time to spend capturing, more time to polish the data, and pre-render characters with limitless quality. Games budgets are smaller, so animators can’t spend as much time capturing and polishing facial animation. Plus, a lot of facial animation in games is rendered in real-time, which is highly dependent on processing resources. That said, hardware and games are catching up quickly. Soon enough it’ll be the same process all around.

Rashid Sayed: I was going through your projects and interestingly, you have closely worked with Rockstar on a number of AAA games like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto 4. But in case of L.A. Noire, Rockstar implemented their own capture tech (called Mo-Cap). Was this due to the technical limitations of Faceware?

Jay Grenier: No. When Rockstar began working with Team Bondi on L.A. Noire, the game was already quite a ways into production and was already using the MotionScan technology for the facial animation. It didn’t make sense for them to start over at that point.

Rashid Sayed: Well, I have to ask this question. Rockstar are working on Grand Theft Auto 5 and undoubtedly it is one of major games of 2013. Are you guys working on it? If yes, what level of animations are we going to see in the game?

Jay Grenier: My lips are sealed about project details unfortunately. We’re just as excited about GTAV as everyone else!

Rashid Sayed: Does implementation of Faceware vary in different games? Or is it as simple as wearing the Head Mounted Cameras and letting the Analyzer do its work?

Jay Grenier: Our software workflow is pretty straight forward and the animation pipelines tend to be similar on every project. The video capture process though is different all the time. Some studios are using full performance capture, some shoot their talent in a voice-over (VO) booth, and some will use footage directly from a live-action plate. Even archival footage from old films and other videos is used in some cases. The capture process is usually the biggest variable on every project. Once studios have good video data, the tracking and solving process is identical in whatever type of project you’re working on.

Rashid Sayed: You have worked on a lot of big franchises like Crysis, Metal Gear Solid and Halo. What was the one major learning factor from these projects that led you guys to do more improvements and enhancements to Faceware?

Jay Grenier:The one resounding thing we’ve learned from doing facial animation on big titles like Crysis, GTA, Assassin’s Creed, Red Dead Redemption, and others is that making the game doesn’t ever go exactly the way it’s originally planned. Things happen that can throw everyone for a loop. Stories can change, ideas can become new ideas, and the project evolves. To be successful the developer needs to be able to adapt, deal with difficult situations, and keep the ship moving forward. Our software has been designed and battle-tested to meet these challenges. When a big script change comes around in the middle of crunch-time and you’ve got a huge amount of animation to do with a team of exhausted artists, Faceware has you covered.

Rashid Sayed: You are currently working with Bungie (probably Destiny (reference here)). Two years back Bungie claimed that by using Faceware they will have better animation quality. Since then a lot of time has passed and it is only obvious Faceware has also grown. How are the animations in Bungie’s new IP looking like now?

Working with Bungie has been a great experience for our team and our development has been influenced very positively by their feedback. It’s been great to see how much success they’ve had using Faceware and we’re looking forward to when they can share more about their new title.

Rashid Sayed: Are you guys working on any other new video game products? Any unannounced games Faceware is using?

I can’t reveal any details about upcoming titles we’re working on but I can say that we’ve had a very busy year and 2013 is looking like it’s going to be even bigger. You’ll be seeing a lot of great Faceware animation this year on some very well known and anticipated titles.

Rashid Sayed: Doing motion capture footage for a PC version of a game can be less daunting compared to consoles (PS3, Xbox 360). How do you guys work with game developers and overcome console limitations?

Jay Grenier: Console and hardware limitations have always been a huge factor for us due to the fact that historically, facial animation has been pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to divvying out game resources. Due to this, we’ve always had to work to produce the best quality possible within some pretty harsh constraints. Faceware has been built to work well with any type of character for this reason. Now that the consoles are getting better, it’s enabled higher quality assets to be built and more resources to be allocated to facial animation. All that said, we still want and try to pull the very best out of whatever limitations we’re up against.

Rashid Sayed: What’s next for Faceware? Do you guys think there is scope for this technology to improve and take it to another level?

Jay Grenier: We’ve got some huge things coming in 2013 that we’re really excited about. Working closely with Image Metrics gives us first dibs on the new tech they are developing and we’re working on a full integration of their next-gen facial tracking and animation tech into Faceware. There’s so much more room to grow and so much more to do. The sky is the limit for this technology.

Rashid Sayed: And this obviously leads to another question: How far can you go with this technology? Despite technological advancements, there has to be a threshold for motion capture. Thoughts?

Jay Grenier: Our mission isn’t just to have the highest quality capture, but to also have a solution that empowers artists and speaks to real-world production. Quality is king, but you also need a solution that’s fast, affordable, and gives you creative control all the way through the process. It’s reasonable to say that someday we’ll hit a quality threshold and motion capture will be as good as it’s going to get. When that day comes, we’ll be busy trying to make the very best quality easier, more accessible, and less expensive to produce.

Rashid Sayed: Is there anything else you want to tell our readers about Faceware?

Jay Grenier: Stay tuned for some huge advancements in facial capture this year, some big things are coming! If you’re looking to try out Faceware you can download both Retargeter and Analyzer for free on our website. We also provide free video samples and free facial rigs that you can use to evaluate the process.

Rashid Sayed: Thanks a ton for your time.

Jay Grenier: Thanks for having us!

Faceware has announced that it will be targeting Asian region with its motion capture technology. It has signed two new resellers Japan?s Crescent Inc. for the Japanese market and Beijing Ou-Lei Technology, Co, Ltd., a successful supplier of entertainment equipment & solutions in China.

The company explains why it chose these two resellers:

“We have been selling directly to those markets for a few years, but given the increasing demand and the time differences, it made more sense to partner with companies that know the market and offer complementary technologies to ours,” said Peter Busch, vice president of business development at Faceware Technologies.

“In Crescent and Beijing Ou-Lei Technology, we?ve found two strong partners with deep ties to their countries? entertainment markets.”

“Crescent is the exclusive distributor of the world-leading Vicon Motion Capture Systems to the entertainment market,” said Hajime Kotani, founder of Crescent Inc. “Faceware’s technology not only offers high-quality, markerless facial motion capture; its ability to work seamlessly with Vicon’s systems allows us to offer animation studios a far more complete solution for performance capture.”

Adds Lei Xi, vice president at Beijing Ou-Lei Technology, Co, Ltd.: “Marker-based facial motion capture systems are not accurate and very difficult to use. That is the primary reason we decided to work with Faceware Technologies.”

 Basic software is free of charge but if you want it for professional use, you gotta pay.