I'm thinking of buying this utility but was wondering if it worked with V3 characters and how well it works with them. Also, does it capture facial expressions or just speech motions. Is it a true facial motion capture program? Any replies apprciated. Farang

I have Mimic 2 Pro and Mimic 3. Both of them give access not only to the morphs in the mouth to create the phoneme shapes with, but also all the expression morphs as well. It can auto generate some random timed functions (eye blinks, flick of the brow, etc), but on the timeline you have access to them, and can customize the expressions to match what is being said. It reads the CR2 file, so any mesh character that is Mimic compatible should work in Mimic 2-3. V3 works just fine; you get a better effect when you input a text file of your speech, as well as the .wav file. It helps Mimic shape the morphs more accurately (and you can always adjust them yourself in the program after they've been generated). About the only bugaboo I've found to watch out for is the actual .wav file. =Never= use anything but a single channel .wav; Mimic doesn't understand the dual and multi channel format options, and will refuse to load the sound file

Thanks for your reply. I have looked at Facestation by eyematic and was just wondering how the two products compare. In facestation you can create with a video camera realtime facial motion capture. Now I don't expect Mimic to do this of course but I was curious how Mimic was in animating facial expressions.

heh well the two programs are definately different in what they do, (and the $1700 price difference is also a factor for a lot of people) Mimic analyzes a sound track and assigns specific Phonemes, and the strenth of those Phonemes to an animation track. while it has access to an expression and gestures track from which other morphs can be applied it is not a motion capture program, and for the most part other then the Phonemems other expressions have to be added to the animation track. Facegen does not anylize the soundtrack as far as I know but uses a motion capture scheme to mimic facial gestures. Syncing lip movement to an actual soundtrack would have to be done manually in the modeling suite after using facegen.

I would definately get Mimic 3 Pro NOT Mimic 2. Mimic 3 is so much better than Mimic 2. Mimic 2 makes the character look like it's chewing on bubblegum compared to 3. On the text file... Make sure that it is only word "NO PUNCTUATION". and single space between the words. It makes the the calculation work better giving you more realistic animated facial pose. Cheers, Joe

Creative use of phonetic spelling in the text file can sometimes improve results, also.

Well, no mimic 3 for me unless I get a really spendy client, but I, personally, would definitely go towards the mimic range instead of facestation if you are using poser. Aside from cost, well, it's just a hell of a lot more work, and if you already have the tools in hand to effectively use facestation, then I just gotta know why yer using poser... Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to leave my wriggling young 'un here as an offering to the dragon and skedaddle...

I don't think Daz sells Mimic 2 any more, just the upgrade/full program of Mimic 3Pro. They do have a Mimic 2Pro for lightwave. I would guess thier both the same. Pro3 works great with V3. There are tutorials at Daz to help you get started using it. I really like the new features of Pro3. Can't beat the price.