Accelerated Character Pipeline
New technology makes creating characters faster.
PRIEST RIVER, IDAHO – Dec. 16, 2009 – FacePro today announced an innovative new character production pipeline, in partnership with Mixamo and Evolver. The “Accelerated Character Pipeline,” or ACP, provides a streamlined, end-to-end character asset production workflow. ACP combines Evolver character modeling, Mixamo character animation, and FacePro facial animation services and expertise, to offer 3D professionals a significant reduction in the time, complexity, and cost of creating high-quality characters and animations.
“Character asset production has always been one of the most difficult and demanding tasks in the game development process. With the introduction of the Accelerated Character Pipeline, suddenly it becomes possible to create AAA-quality characters in motion with sophisticated facial animation in days, rather than weeks or months,” said Rod Stafford, President of FacePro. “The end-to-end workflow is seamless across Evolver, Mixamo, and FacePro because all character assets are fully compatible throughout the entire pipeline. This is a disruptive evolution of the character production process.”
By following the ACP, users first create a fully rigged character model using the Evolver interface. Next, they can apply high-quality motions to their Evolver character using the Mixamo service. Finally, users can upload their character model and audio dialog to FacePro, for facial animation carefully tuned to their character’s style and personality.
“The Accelerated Character Pipeline (ACP) integrates the technology and expertise of Evolver, Mixamo, and FacePro into an incredibly powerful workflow that will change the way 3D professionals approach character production,” says Stefano Corazza, CTO of Mixamo, Inc. “Mixamo is excited to partner with Evolver and FacePro because we all share the same vision: to significantly reduce the time and complexity required to create amazing, high-quality characters and animations.”
“There is no question that the reduced complexity of the ACP pipeline offers a considerable cost and lead time advantage,” said Brian Nilles, CEO of Evolver, “but perhaps even more significant is enabling high quality character creation and animation in the market segments that previously thought it was out of their reach. The world’s demand for digital characters is growing at an astounding rate, but until the industry veterans at Mixamo, FacePro and Evolver delivered products and a pipeline simple enough to be used by anyone, much of that demand would otherwise be unfulfilled.”
The Accelerated Character Pipeline will also be featured at GDC 2010 in a hands-on Tech Session where representatives of Evolver, Mixamo and FacePro will present a live demo of the process, using audience-designed content. For more details about the new pipeline and to see ACP in action, visit www.evolver.com, www.mixamo.com, or www.facepro.net .
About Evolver
Evolver is the flagship product of Darwin Dimensions Inc., the first solution to bring together complex 3D modeling, consumer ease of use, and fully interoperable avatars. Evolver provides a central portal to design, manage and transport digital avatars that can be deployed in virtual worlds, online games, social networks and professional animation and pre-visualization projects.
For more information visit www.evolver.com or contact (949) 330-6345.
About Mixamo
Mixamo Inc. is a Silicon Valley, VC-funded company founded by 3D pioneers Stefano Corazza, CTO, and Nazim Kareemi, CEO. Based on research from Stanford University’s BioMotion lab, Mixamo offers the first online 3D character animation service that provides animators, game artists and 3D professionals the power to customize and create professional-quality character animations at unprecedented speeds. Mixamo currently employs a team of outstanding computer vision experts, 3D animators, software engineers and serial entrepreneurs from around the world. For more information, please visit www.mixamo.com, or follow Mixamo on Twitter.
About FacePro®
FacePro LLC is an Idaho Limited Liability Company, specializing in advanced facial animation for the interactive entertainment industry. Founded in February 2007 by game industry veteran Rod Stafford, FacePro has provided full game sets of facial animation for the American Idol® franchise, titles by Electronic Arts, Virtual Heroes, Blade Interactive, and others. Located in historic Priest River, Idaho, FacePro LLC employs animators and technical artists from around the world.
For more information, please visit www.facepro.net
Copyright ©2009 FacePro, LLC. All trademarks are property of their respective owners and used with their permission.