I received a marketing letter from Smith Micro this morning: Zign Track at $119.

This has to be one of the more underwhelming marketing campaigns in history. Not only is there no link to the maker of this software, nor a link to an info page at Smith Micro, but clicking takes you directly to a shopping cart! Now THAT is what professional sales people call "The Presumtive Close."

And all this without building interest in the Poser community for the product. I mean, I never heard of it before, and I am someone actually interested in both Poser for animation and facial animation in particular!

Aynway, prior Poser forum thread:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2722573

There are also references to this in the Blender forum.

Home page of the publisher:
http://zigncreations.com/

The program exports to both BVH and to a native Poser pose file. Cool.

Has anyone tried it?

Now how do you talk a girl into putting dots on her face and then letting you video her talking?  [just kidding, I already know how to do it!]

Here is the content of SM's promo email this morning:

Zign Track is easy-to-use and affordable!
Zign Track is a facial motion tracking application that can track an actor's face with just one regular camera. Watch the Zign Track demo. With Zign Track's low price and easy-to-use interface, facial motion tracking can be done by anyone now!

Buy Zign Track now for only $119.99 — SAVE 25%!
 

Zign Track handles head rotation, jaw/lip syncing, eyebrows, eyelids, sneer and cheek movements. Things like lip curling, tongue and eye movement can be added in your 3D animation application.

Mimic any facial expression
Zign Track is an 'expression tracking' application. The facial markers are tracked from only one point of view. Every motion the actor makes is converted to 3D motion. Even a webcam can be used for motion tracking with Zign Track!

**Export to animation
**Zign Track exports to animation formats such as:

• Animation: Master action files
• Poser pz2 (morph) files (add your motion capture to your Poser models with a mouse click!)
• BVH and TRC (universal motion capture formats)
   

Get started today with Zign Track!
Zign Track gives you quick and easy facial tracking at an incredibly low price. Buy Zign Track now for only $119.99 (reg. $159.00) — SAVE 25%!

::::: Opera :::::

I haven't tried it, but it sure looks cool.... at times I do wish I had plenty of money to spent. 

yea i got an email about this a few weeks ago when it was first released but at the moment i don't have the funds to finance it. but i am very interested in knowing how the results are

Attached Link: http://www.zigncreations.com/

Dont you need to own  decent video camera system for this?

I see P7 "Sydney in the ads
what about the DAZ Line of figure for Facial motion export?

Oh and no Mac version

No thanks Im doing fine  with Mimic from DAZ
for my type of animation

Attached Link: Image Metrics

I also own Mimic, started with it before Daz bought it and own the newest version. Still was intrigued with zign so picked it up to check it out.

Curious too how much the image metrics costs, couldn't find any prices on their site.

It's been out for a while now. I think this is the second time I got an e-mail from SmithMicro about it. Luuk Steitner first designed it for Animation:Master and inquired about Poser interest in the forum at Content Paradise a few months ago. You can use a regular consumer grade camcorder. As long as things are lit OK and the dots contrast enough with the skin, you're in business. There is a demo video on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE-ZzyBLlDk

It does work. Luuk also keeps improving it. Good proggy for intermediate/advanced hobbiest level. A little more functionality with Animation Master as that program gives you more control over things like facial animation and animation in general. Always wished Hash had gotten polygon models to work better in it instead of their native spline based models.

Kevin

Just watched the Youtube Video for poser
Very unimpressive.

I saw NO Eye blinks and the need for additional tweaking in poser.

Not really a replacement for DAZ lipsync IMHO
 especially considering you need
to spend time shooting video before you even get into your native app.

Yup I stopped buying AM at when they started their new pricing system so I don't have the version you need for this one. Don't think AM will ever go away from the splines.

IMHO I'd rather have a cheap working full body Motion capture that I can use with my digital 8 video camera so I can make my own BVHs. I am not intrested in facial capture, if I wanted facial movements I would use mimic.

Mimic and the Poser talk manager (don't forget that little gem, it "works" to rough you in) can't capture an actor's nuance. It can insert some head movement, yes, but based on a static methodology in reaction to empahsis in the audio.

An actor takes the dialog and imparts a unique expressive stream of action. That's the difference.

It certainly would be fine to not have to use face markers, because without them you are into a disarmed ad hoc mode, eliminating the 'staged' issues. I don't know if Image Metrics is a product at all. "University types" are involved and they have less drive to go to market, has been my experience. However, if and when they do, they bring some hefty power to the product on occasion.

Not that there's anything wrong with the Mimic-style approach for getting roughed in.

The other option is.....pure hand key of facial expression and lip sync. That sets you free to make the character do -- and say -- anything you want!

On full body motion capture short of a $20,000 Gypsy.....

.... how about 'aided rotoscope'?

shoot your video with two cheap cams at right angles. Use PhilC's little device to throw the vids onto two panels in the Poser viewport, from which you just move your model to fit over the video.
 

another option for full figure work is a different kind of aided rotoscope.

Download a "Learning Edition" of Endorphin
Learn how to put a character through its paces.
With the free LE edition, you don't get the BVH export, so.....
You render out your character's movment as a .avi clip
You render it out twice, at right angles
Load into PhilC's panels in Poser and rotoscope into Poser.

http://www.naturalmotion.com/ele.htm

::::: Opera :::::

Quote -
Download a "Learning Edition" of Endorphin
Learn how to put a character through its paces.
::::: Opera :::::

Yeah that that endorphin  is truly Awesome
but at some point you have to stop endlessly looking of some holy Grail 'Computer does it all " software and dig in and learn what you have to the fullest in the most cost effective way

Im not saying this  Zign Track thing is completely  useless but for the
$119 cost you may well spend a mere  $20 on ** mimic light ** which gives you the same functionality as the built in Mimic function in Daz studio  if you need to export lipsinc to poser.

And learn your graph editor and dope sheet to add the subtle nuances
of a speaking character.

Here is a very quick lipsinc I did just minutes ago in Daz Studio
PROJECT 2501

I added in  an animated pose(PZ2) ,I developed for another project ,
on top of the lipsinc for body gestures
Not to brag but I think these basic"roughed out" Untweeked results are much better than the ones You see in the Zign Track poser demo.

There are plenty of viable options  for complex character/lipsinc animation for poser/DAZ users .

One must be willing to take time to learn what we already have instead of forever Chasing down often ovepriced miracle  solutions. JMHO

Considering it's only $120 and a decent motion capture set up would be several times that, IMHO it's a nifty tool to have. Pity it's PC only.

Not looking for the holy grail just want to get my work done faster...if this program does that for me it's worth the money. If you don't like it don't buy it. Mimic also has it's faults but I upgraded anyway. Not looking to start an argument just saying what I thought of the program and giving him a place to read more on it.

But after a week of trying I think I've managed to finally get it to work, well 90% I think, just the morphs to go and hopefully maybe someone here can help me with this....

1. If running vista, make the program run in xp compatibility mode.
2. Program only accepts .AVI   Intel IYUV codec
3. Only use 1 field of video, delete the second. (any problems dload Virtual Dub and the Vdub deinterlace filter  to both convert to IYUV & deinterlace. )Free
4. Lighting and colour of marker were an issue with me !!! Unfortuately our air conditioning has broken down, during the day, I'm sweating so the markers don't stick. Also I found that green markers worked best with my skin tone but I'm black.
5. I found tracking small amounts of markers and then re-tracking using the "do not overwrite previuos marker" option worked best
6. So far head movements look quite good but that is in "preview" I haven't rendered to video yet.There are lots of adjustments controls/filters I haven't tried.

When I tried to export to pozer I only got the head movements and not the expressions or mouth movements. So I watched this very low quality Youtube video about exporting to poser. I realised there was still a bit of work to do :-(

I'm using an M3 head. The morph names for Zign Track are totally different. Hopefully the manufacturer can let the Renderosity forum users know what morph names are used for M3/4 V3/4 & A3/4 as these are the most popular 3d characters on the planet. Or if there is a forum user that knows please let me know :-)    I've attached a photo of the morphs in question...

One plus point, when I initially sent their support team an email. The reply was almost instant which is rear these days.

Mimic is so much easier but again two different programs

Zign Track support team replied early this morning, told you they were fast.

They say...
Not all models match the morphs exactly like the ones from Zign Track. In some cases it migth be best to create custom morphs for your model. In Poser you can easily combine existing morphs into a new custom morph to get what you wan't

I'm new with custom morphs, anyone know how i should go about this. Meantime I'll be searching