[released] Want good 3D-character-animation but are short on time, budget or training, HELP is here

Have you ever wondered - if you can get your own face to generate expressions and talk with no effort, why can’t your 3D creations? Well, they can if you use this highly innovative software!

NaturalFront Unity plugin empowers professionals and hobbyists to vastly cut down the cost and time in modeling and animating expressive 3D faces.

You can very easily
- create custom-built, realistic 3D-face-models, as many as you want, from a single photo;
- more importantly, once a 3D-face-model is created, it will automatically have high-quality 3D animation built-in.

The whole process can take a few seconds to minutes, all within Unity.

You can instantly get facial expressions and mouth-shapes you want, and blend them together, all by a few simple mouse-clicks. The professional-quality animation will be successful the first time and every time, without any need for rigging, morphing, key-framing or motion capture, thus substantially save time and money.

Wonder how this can be possible? Because, with conventional techniques such as rigging and blending-shapes, trial-and-error is an unavoidable part of your work, thus your time and money are wasted in a large amount. But with this software, the certainty of being successful, from the very first time, is guaranteed, because no conventional-technique has been used in the patented software at all!

That is why this software is unique and can truly help you to get ahead. Last but not the least, please let us know how we can better help you.

Key features:

• Realistic, custom-built 3D heads.
• Extremely fast and simple modeling.
• Widely varied facial poses, including facial expressions and mouth-shapes.
• Realistic facial movements.
• Highly simple and intuitive user interface.
• Synchronization between animation and audio, and support of lip-sync.
• Export unlimited 3D-heads with high-quality animation.

Please Note:

- These benefits and features are valid for the Pro-version only, and they might diminish or be absent in other versions.


3D Face Animation Unity Plugin:

Updated Apr 2018: The photo-to-3D modeling in all Windows versions of Unity plugin is now realtime.

- Pro:

Only the Pro-version can export unlimited 3D-heads, each with high-quality animation to FBX files. Thus, the 3D-models and animation can instantly be available in other scenes of Unity, or run in other 3D apps supporting FBX.

- Free:

Please note: these features are absent in the Free-version:

- automatic animation across timeline, and
- synchronization of animation and audio









Photo-to-3D Modeling SDK for Windows:

NaturalFront™ Photo-to-3D Modeling SDK can create high-quality 3D-face-models from a single photo.

The software allows 3D professionals, hobbyists or gamers to create high-quality 3D face models in a tiny fraction of time and cost that would be needed by using traditional manual processes.

• The SDK will create high-quality 3D-face-models very quickly, without traditional processes that are very time-consuming and labor-intensive.
• The SDK will need Unity Game Engine to run, and is designed to be used in games developed by SDK users.
• Photo-to-3D modeling is very simple and intuitive, thus gamers should be able to easily complete this process.
• There is no limitation in the number of 3D-face-models that can be created.

Please note both the Free Demo and the Paid version

• only work on 64-bit Windows PC;
• only work when the software is not being debugged.

Users are welcome to evaluate the SDK by running the Free Demo version. These are the differences between the Full SDK and Free Demo:

• the Free demo doesn't run in realtime, while the Full SDK can complete the photo-to-3D modeling in a few seconds;
• the Free demo will stop running after around about 2 days, while the Full SDK will run perpetually.
• only the Full SDK will export every customized 3D-models to FBX.

- Download Free Demo


- Buy Full SDK

 

Wow! This looks great!
The photo to head quality looks impressive, the lip syncing feature looks easy to use also.
Thanks for having a free version available too for testing, definitely going to check this out in the asset store!
This is going to be fun

 

Thanks for your interest.

Go ahead to see for yourself how much time and money you could save by using this innovative software.

Also, please tell us how you want to use the software or how would you like the software to improve.

 

I don't understand what is going on in this software. But from my trial of the Free-version, it is certainly quite refreshing.

Getting the work done with no rigging, no blending-shapes and no key-framing is quite a good idea!

 

Hi ThmYgx,

Thanks for your insight into this issue.

We just think, if our own faces do NOT rely on
- rigging for generating expressions and mouth-shapes,
- a ton of pre-built targets to move among them,

why should our created 3D-faces?

 

Awesome work!
Can I upload the face photo and build the 3D head in the realtime game with this asset(may be need some modifications in asset for this)?

 

Can this be used on Android device in the realtime.

 

For now, the computation is too much for Android devices in the realtime.

But we certainly can create a version for Android devices, and aiming at realtime. The end result will be customized and high-quality 3D-avatars that can instantly smile, cry and talk, as our latest Pro and Free version for Windows.

Also with the Pro-version that exports to FBX files both 3D-models AND their automatically created animation, you should very easily load the models and run their animation in Android devices, assuming they support FBX.

 

We now have a SDK on Windows that can create 3D-face-models from a photo in realtime. The SDK is created for game developers to embed this feature into their games.

For now, this SDK is not available in Unity Asset Store so we can buy directly from us.

Thank you for your interest.

 

The latest Complete version is released.

There are a few bug fixed in this version.

In addition, the price is made much cheaper, so more users can afford to enjoy the substantial benefits!

See for your self, how the innovative software
- can save animators, artists and hobbyists hundreds to thousands in money; and
- weeks to months in time; and
- get great work done even you are short on time, budget or training.

 

I want to get low poly head to reduce create time,and How do I use ModelDensity.LOWto reduce the generation time and the number of faces On free version? Or I must to buy Pro version?

 

We understand your need in creating low-poly-heads.

NaturalFront software automates both modeling and animation, i.e. once a customized 3D-model is created from a photo, the 3D-model will automatically have built-in professional-quality 3D animation.

To support the realistic modeling and animation, the 3D-head will need to be high-poly, since low-poly-heads can't support realistic animation.

Therefore, at least for now, low-poly-heads are not included in all versions, including Free and Complete versions.

Thank you for your interest.

 

Any plans to get Mac support on the Basic and Complete versions?

 

It looks fantastic. Can't wait to try~~

2 questions:
1. From the video it looks like the feature points should be selected by myself. Can the feature points be detected automatically?
2. To build a model quickly, it needs a powerful CPU. So can it be built on a server?

Thanks~~

 

Theses are the Mac versions:

Pro
Free

 

It might be possible in future releases.

Yes, the Unity plugin should be able to run in a server, as long as you can run Unity Editor.

 

I am trying out the free Windows version and it seems to be crashing the newest version of Unity:

 

Thank you for your interest.

No, it didn't crash Unity. It meant the photo-to-3D creation was unsuccessful, and the working directory was not recovered to the one before this process started. This directory recovery issue has been fixed in our Paid versions of Unity plugin. We will soon submit a new Free-version which will also have this fixed.

Back to the underlying issue of photo-to-3D failure, the most likely reasons could be:

- Failed to strictly follow the guidelines shown in the demo-videos;
- The running computer didn't meet the minimum requirements above.

Would you please tell us more, e.g.
- what sort of computer was running the software?
- did you click the points at exactly the locations?

Thank you again for your interest.

 

Hi,

Our first release of Pro-version for Windows has just been added to Unity Asset Store.

This Pro-version:

• Exports unlimited 3D-heads with animation to FBX files, and with
• Automatic animation between key-frames,
• Synchronization between animation and audio, including lip-sync,
• Faster animation than the Free-version (Windows and Mac).

In short, only the Pro-version offers the export-to-FBX feature.

With the FBX files, the models and animation can instantly run in other 3D apps, or be imported into other scenes of Unity.

The quality of 3D-models and their animation are the same as the Complete-version.

Please share with us your thoughts.

Thank you.

 

This looks very cool. I just hope I can eventually get it to work.

I guess you consider an error that causes a fatal error in Unity that forces you to quit without saving not crashing Unity. I guess technically it puts Unity in a state where all you can do is press the quit button on the Fatal Error dialog box.

My computer is has an i7-6820HK CPU, 32GB of RAM, with a NVDIA GTX980 graphics card. I think that should meet the system requirements, right? I made an effort to click the exact locations shown in the video. The first time I tried it, it failed more gracefully. I tried again and it caused the fatal error. I will wait until the demo version is updated and then try again. It is possible I am not clicking precisely in the right place or something.

 

Thanks for your update.

We are improving the software and it is quite some work. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Can you send

- the original photo you use to create the 3D-model, and
- a screen-shot showing the same photo with 11 points you clicked,

so we can check if there is any issue with the photo and click points?

You can send them to "support at naturalfront dot com" or any other at http://www.naturalfront.com/Contact_us.aspx.

Thanks

 

Hi Miroku000,

A new file for the Free-version is now available.

In the new file, there is a sample photo that you can instantly use to test the plugin.

Of course, you can also load your own photos that meet the requirements.

Please let us know how your testing goes.

Thank you for your interest.

 

The new free version works great for me. Or at least I was able to load a photo and get it onto a 3d model. I think I will go ahead and get the pro version in the near future.

 

Great to know the software works for you.

Please let us know if you have any other issue.

 

Can I use this on existing high poly heads?

 

No. The workflow will only go the other direction:

- you create a customized 3D-model AND its animation using NaturalFront 3D face animation plugin;

- then export the 3D-model AND its animation to FBX (only on Pro-version of NaturalFront Plugin);

- then import them to whatever 3D-apps that supports FBX.


Try out yourself!


Many professionals and hobbyists are used to marginal saving when they switch software. However, NaturalFront's solution truly offers substantial saving on both time and money, since you can completely get rid of uncertainties in modeling and animation.


That is why users agree that it is revolutionary or at least a paradigm shift in 3D face animation.


When your car can take you to a destination faster and also cheaper, do you still need to ride a horse to get to that same place?


You can create unlimited 3D-models with their animation, using Pro-version of NaturalFront Plugin.


Thank you for your interest.

 

Hi , i didnt understand does the Basic feature support auto audio sync and facial animation ?

 

Hi, thanks for your interest.

Yes, from the Basic-version and up, any version of NaturalFront-3D-Face-Animation Unity plugin will support automatic facial animation.

For auto audio sync, our approach is similar to the best approach in this thread, but much better. Simply because users can automatically create facial expressions using our software, rather than procedurally.

If you have already tried our Free-version, you would agree that NaturalFront's solution stands out far ahead in

- creating high-quality expressions and mouth shapes, and simultaneously

- in a super simple and quick way.

The Basic-version has limited facial movements. Users can nevertheless upgrade to the Complete and Pro-version.

Please let us know if you have any more question.

 

This looks great, but I am having problems. I have tried 4 x now a few times it says an object is not set to an instance then exits, last one I tried the higher quality mode it worked away and said
Error displaying dialog: The operation completed successfully.

I see a new object called avatar but it is just an empty object, I was expecting a head I guess?

What could I be doing wrong? Im using the free one for windows.

EDIT: So I tried it on a new scene and it worked! But it has N F on his face, and it looks *nothing* at all like the photo, not even 1%, Is this meant to look like my photo? See screenshot here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4194619/Snap 2017-04-10 at 08.41.05.png

 

Thank you for your interest.

We tested the face-photo at the above link a number of times, using version 2.2 of NaturalFront Free plugin for Windows. We are able to successfully create a 3D-model each time, please see the screen-shot. As you can see, the 3D-model looks like the person on the photo.

After the 3D-model is created, we can immediately animate it to get realistic expressions and mouth-shapes, without the troubles of rigging and creating blendshapes.

Can you create a 3D-model using the sample photo that comes with version 2.2?

For the Free version of NaturalFront 3D-face-animation Unity plugin, it is supposed to be so. This is different from the demo video that was captured on a previous Free-version.

However, for all the other version, including Pro and Complete versions, you will not have the letters "NF" on the textures. In addition, you will have faster animation than the Free-version.

Yes, the created 3D-model is meant to look like the person on the photo. We are not sure what happened at your side.

However, the photo you used doesn't exactly meet the requirements. If you check it carefully, you will see it doesn't really show the front face fully, and one ear is almost completely missing.

Perhaps you could try

- use the sample photo in the Free-version, or

- retake and use another photo, or

- contact our support with more details, e.g. your computer hardware.

Thank you again for your interest.

 

Yeah that looks a bit like him, and probably is acceptable but I cannot get it to work myself. Cant find the sample image to test with either and "use sample" doesnt seem to work. I wonder what could be different between the way I did and the way you did it?

 

If you could get the photo meet the requirements exactly, the 3D-model should look much more like the person.

That sounds strange.

Please use the "Load" button to locate it at

Resources\SampleFront.jpg

under the installed folder.

Please let us know how it goes.

Thanks

 

Tried sample one, same result as above, its like its not using the image I supply.

 

Can you open the texture files under "_Textures" in your installed folder, especially the file with "skin" in the name, to see

- if they look like the person in the photo you used?
- if their modified time is around the time you created the 3D-model?

If yes, then the issue is most likely Unity didn't refresh textures, normally you can click anywhere inside the Scene window to force Unity to reload textures.

If files under "_Textures" don't like like the person in the photo, we will need more analysis.

Thanks for your interest.

 

them files are all from 13th of March, ie unchanged. I tried changing the directory from read only to see if it helped but it didnt. The materials in _Materials do seem to have updated though but they all point to the textures that ship with the asset.

 

Can you check under

C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\NaturalFront\Unity Plugin\Data

(replace "YourUserName" with your actual user-name, and your drive might not be "C:")

there should be a number of folders.

If a 3D-models is created correctly, one of these folders should have the texture look like the person in your photo. These texture files are then copied to "_Textures" folder under your installation.

If you can find such a texture file, then a 3D-model was created.

If not, then the photo-to-3D process might have been failed. Can you send us

- detailed error messages displayed in Unity Editor; and
- a screen-shot showing 11 points you clicked on your photo, so we can check if the points are placed correctly?

Also, what sort of computer did you use?

 

Awesome, yes the files are there and appear correct! Once copied over things work as expected - Thanks!. PC is Win10 - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 NVIDIA GeForce + 32 gigs of ram.

What is the cheapest route to go to get rid of the letters on the face, I only care about photo to model.

 

The cheapest is the Basic-version. However the Basic-version has limited facial movements. Users can nevertheless upgrade to the Complete and Pro-version.

Only the Pro-version has export-to-FBX feature.

Your PC hardware should be fine.

If you still want to investigate why the textures were not automatically copied over, please send us detailed error messages displayed in Unity Editor.

Thank you for your interest.

 

Thanks, although there are no errors.

 

Hi, it seems this is stopping unity make a build, I see errors like:

Assets/NF3DFaceAnimFree22Win/PluginTools/PluginManager.cs(10,7): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `UnityEditor' could not be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

I presume these need to be wrapped in some preprocessing statements.

 

New versions of NaturalFront Unity plugin have been submitted to Asset Store. The issue has been fixed in the new files.

Nevertheless, the issue should not affect the running of the Unity plugin, as discussed in this thread.

Thank you.

 

Hi
My organization want to buy your pro version. but before the purchase we want to discuss some technical thing . Is there any way to contact you. I tried to contact you by http://www.naturalfront.com/ but i think it is not working

 

Hello,

Thank you for your interest.

Our website is back online now after a brief offline work.

If you feel ok, you can use this thread, since we believe it is the most effective way.

Thank you again.

The NaturalFront Team

 

Hi,
we want our model to speak ,so our requirement is export the 3d head in fbx form with blend shape . so that we can access these blend_shape in Maya and create the animation clip (named Take001) for visemes in Maya and import it in Unity with animation . Is it possible with your model.
required blend_shape are:
MouthSmile
Mouth sad
MouthFrown_L
MouthFrown_R
LipsUpperUP
LipsUpperClose
LipsStreach_L
LipsStreach_R
LipsPuker
LipsLowerOpen
LipsLowerDown
JawOpen
BrowsDown_L
BrowsDown_R
EyeBlink

 

Thank you for your interest.

Instead of directly answering your question at the beginning, can we tell a story - the story in this video:

Do you feel that in the video, the fast-running cheetah should stop to have a chat with the crawling turtle? Most likely neither of them wants to .

Now let’s go back to your question.

Have you already used the Free-version of NaturalFront Unity plugin? If yes, did you notice the huge difference in our approach from traditional ones? Do you agree that with NaturalFront software, 3D-face-animation is just as simple as getting your own face to generate expressions and talk?

To get the most out of NaturalFront software, you’d better to use it to complete your tasks, from the start to the end, rather than mixing it with traditional techniques.

With the Pro-version of NaturalFront Unity plugin, you can get your 3D-face-animation done at a tiny fraction of time and cost that traditional techniques take you. The customized 3D-models with animation can run in Unity or any other app that supports FBX. Thus it is really not needed to mix it with traditional techniques.

Hope this message will be useful to you. Please accept our deepest apology if you or anyone else feels offended.

Thank you again.

 

I just bought a Pro version and found this is such an amazing job!
Here is my question: Can I build faces dynamically in a mobile game with this asset？Well, I quess a phone's hardware probably cannot adapt for this.
So,what if I put this function in a Cloud Server and send the model to my phones after caculating the model in this sever?
Is this kind of method workable？
Thank you very much!

 

Thank you for your evaluation! Would you mind spending a few moment to rate the Pro-version?

Someone once said "If you will not share it, you cannot use it"

For our current versions, the computation is too much for mobile phones in the realtime.

But we certainly can create a version for mobile devices, and aiming at realtime. The end result will be customized and high-quality 3D-avatars that can instantly smile, cry and talk, as our latest Pro and Free version for Windows.

That is definitely a brilliant idea!!

If you could get Unity Editor running in a Cloud Server, you probably should try your idea out right now! Please let us know how it goes.

Let us know any other question you might have.

Thank you very much!

 

The document says “With the latest CPU and native C-plus-plus code, the process can take less than 15
seconds”. How to do it?

 

Our latest Free and Pro-version for Windows are able to do photo-to-3D in realtime.

Moreover, once the customized models is created, they will automatically have high-quality 3D-animation built-in.

Try yourself!

Thank you for your interest.

 

Thank you for your reply. Now the process takes too long. I just need the model without animation，but there is no corresponding function.Is there any way to make the process faster?