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 :::::