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

Thanks for your interest.

Once you export a 3D-customized model with its animation, you should be able to easily import them to any application that supports Fbx, such as Maya, Max or Blender.

There are some specialized tools to create body-model quickly, but you will need to make sure they can import the Fbx animation.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

 

Hi, is it able to create facial animation from my own head model without rigging in unity?

 

Yes, you can create high-quality and customized 3D-face-animation without rigging, using NaturalFront Unity plugin.

Watch this video and see how it is done.

By the way, can you please remove your comment at:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...front-3d-face-animation-plugin-free-mac-64351

since that review is based on your misunderstanding of the software, thus doesn't help anyone.

Thank you.

 

No I mean create facial animation using my own head model, not the model that using the plugin to generate.
I removed it already

 

For now, the workflow will only go the other direction:

- you create customized 3D-models with animation using NaturalFront 3D face animation plugin;

- then export them to FBX (only on Pro-version of NaturalFront Plugin);

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

Thank you.

 

Does not work with Unity 2018.2.x
Working with MacBook Pro (2018 version) and trialing the free NaturalFront package from the Unity Asset Store. NaturalFront starts processing a photo and quietly crashes. No 3D model, no animation, nothing.

 

We have tested the 3D-face-animation plugin for Mac on the latest version of Unity, and it does work.

Do you mean the "50% done" window is being shown for a long time? If yes, it is not crash.

We have discussed the same issue with other users in this thread, and also on the product page at:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...front-3d-face-animation-plugin-free-mac-64351

Most likely it is due to the combination of our current Mac-version and your Mac hardware.

If you have a PC, you can run the Win-version of the plugin and photo-to-3D modeling will be realtime.

If you meant something else, please share here or email more details, e.g. error messages and screen-shots.

Thank you for your interest.

 

If you are a Windows user of NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin, either Free or Pro, please note the latest releases of Unity (from 2018.3.0 ) broke the proper running of the plugin. You might see error message like

"error CS1703: Multiple assemblies with equivalent identity have been imported"

We are working at the issues caused by Unity updates.

In the meantime, please use previous versions of Unity to run NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin, which should work on all versions up to Unity 2018.2.20.

If you are a Mac user and can't run the plugin as shown in our demo, e.g. animate the customized 3d-model, please also run the plugin on 2018.2.20 or an earlier version of Unity.

Thank you.

 

Following our last message, if you still prefer to run NaturalFront plugin in Unity 2018.3.x, please use this work-around for now:

1. Open PlayerSettings in the Unity Inspector, by selecting Edit > Project Settings > Player.
2. Under Other Settings > Configuration, click the Scripting Runtime Version dropdown and select .NET 3.5 Equivalent. You will be prompted to restart Unity.

Again, we are working to make the plugin compatible to .NET 4.x.

Thank you.

 

Hi All,

NaturalFront Unity Plugin Free 5.0 has been released.

With this release, the Free-version of both Windows and Mac plugin will work on .NET 4.x, which is the default .NET version of Unity 2018.3.

NaturalFront Unity Plugin Pro for .NET 4 will be released soon.

Thank you.

 

Hi All,

NaturalFront Unity Plugin Pro 3.0 has been released.

With this release, the Pro-version of both Windows and Mac plugin will work on .NET 4.x, which is the default .NET version of Unity 2018.3.

Thank you.

 

Hello and thanks for this great Asset!
I have a problem. I am using
- iMac iCore i5 3,4 GHz
- 8 GB Memory 2400 MHz DDR4
- Unity 2018.3.3f1 Personal and Scripting Runtime .NET 4.x Equivalent.

After I installed
1) NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin Free (current vers. 5.0)
then ...
2) NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin Free - Mac

I get the error messages as you can see in the screenshot.
Please can you help me? What is the problem?
Thank you very much.

 

Hello,

Thanks for your interest.

It looks like not all files from the asset were imported.

Please make sure to click "All" when you import the asset into your project. Please also avoid removing or changing any file before a successful run.

In addition, you only need to install
1) NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin Free (current vers. 5.0)

Since it has files for running on both Windows and Mac. Unity Editor should be able to unzip the right files depending on your platform.

Please let us know if your issue can be fixed now.

If not, please send us more details.

Thanks again.

 

Hello,
thank you. I created an new project and installed "NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin Free (current vers. 5.0)"
Now it works great. And I get wonderful results! You made a really awesome asset!
My question is. How can I import the created Face3D into my original project?

 

Great to know!

You will need the Pro-version that can export the 3D model with automatically customized animation to FBX, so you can import the FBX into your original project.

Thanks

 

Hi, this looks great. Is the old release of the free version still available for download anywhere? Because, I will not be upgrading to 2019.x anytime soon - I'm using 2018.3 for current project.

 

The old release of the Free version is here. It can run on Unity 2018.3.

To run in Unity 2019, please download the Free-version from Asset Store.

Please let us know if you have any other issues.

Thank you for your interest.

 

Hey!

We bought the Pro version of your product and so far everything is working fine. Unfortunately the textures of the eyes (similar to what you can see in your tutorial video) always looks very bad. The textures are not white, they are streaked with lines. I have now fixed the texture but now I have noticed that the texture is used 3 times next to each other in the eye - this causes these unpleasant effects in the eyes. Is there a fix for this? Or why did you apply the UVs in the eyes so strangely? Is there a reason for this that I don't understand? Unfortunately, changing the tiling of the texture doesn't help either.

I'll send you a picture. The right eye is unchanged. I tried to fix the left eye but as you can see there are two more pupils left and right of the middle one at the lower end of the eye.

Anyway thanks for this otherwise good product!

 

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Yes, there are issues with the eye textures.

So far, we have focused on the most challenging part of 3d-face-animation - how to highly intuitively and quickly create quality facial poses and the animation. At the same time, we might have overlooked some other aspects, e.g. eye textures.

We should get those aspects fixed in upcoming versions.

In the meantime, please use workaround, e.g. those you have tried, for eye textures.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Hey there, thanks for your answer.

Then I have another question: Our current "workaround" is rather mediocre - the eye still doesn't look realistic or good enough. Do you know how to fix the eye so that it looks normal without these strange textures?

Thanks for the answer!

 

We should have a new release soon that will have good eye textures.

Thank you for your patience.

 

Hi,

The price of NaturalFront Pro Unity plugin has dropped to incredible $99!

This change will allow more animators and hobbyists to get the highly rated asset.

Thank you.

The NaturalFront Team

 

in the demo did you deliberately make it use too much space? my scene went from 1 meg to 450 meg from using a few of your heads. If this also happens in the full price one then it is a useless product. So I assume it is a ploy to get people to buy it ?

 

Thanks for your interest.

Absolutely not.

Something else should have happened in your scene to cause this. Take a good look at other causes.

In addition, the Free Demo was not designed to create a large number of 3D heads in a row, even though you are not prevented to do.

Did you know NaturalFront Pro Unity plugin empowers you:
- create unlimited 3D-heads, and
- create high-quality animation customized for each model, without rigging, morphing, key-framing or motion capture,
- export to FBX files the 3D-heads with animation.

Thank you!

 

thanks, im going to buy it so long as scene size is ok cheers. I want to place many heads on different bodies, I presume this will be ok ?

 

Yes.

The Pro-version can export unlimited 3D models, and each is customized, e.g. looking like the person in a face photo.

After you export the customized model with animation to FBX, you can import the FBX in a different scene and place it on whatever body.

Thanks.

 

this is going to be a great way to get my friends in my game, thanks!

 

That is right. Let us know how you go.

Thanks for your interest.

 

On popular demands, NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin - Indie & Academic is released at Asset Store.

This plugin allows indies, researchers and students to create professional-quality 3D-face-animation painlessly, and on a tight budget.

For details, please land on the product page.

 

Hi, what is difference between Indie/Academic and Pro version? The main difference I saw related to running on a Mac. Are there other significant differences?

Also, I had purchased the "NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin Basic- Windows" version from Asset store 2 years ago. What would be the difference between that and the new Indie/Academic version? Thanks!

 

Thank you for your interest.

Here are their differences:

- Pro version

* models a 3D-face from a photo in real-time;
* runs on Unity 2018.3.8 or higher (e.g. including Unity 2019.x);
* only works on 64-bit Windows computers.

- Indie/Academic version

* models a 3D-face from a photo only in Non-real time;
* only runs on Unity 5.6;
* only works on 64-bit Mac computers.

However, both the Pro and Indie/Academic versions can export to FBX unlimited 3D-face-models and high-quality 3D animation customized to each model, thus you can reuse them in other applications or other scenes in Unity.

NaturalFront 3D Face Animation Plugin Basic- Windows has been depreciated. The Basic version

* can NOT export 3D-face-models and high-quality 3D animation to a FBX file.
* can only create much smaller 3D facial movements than Pro and Indie/Academic versions, e.g. the Basic version can only create mild expressions (e.g. smile/angry), while Pro and Indie/Academic can create extreme 3D-facial expressions.

Please let us know if you have any more question.

 

I saw in the comments that a Mac and Linux version of the Natural Front 3D Face Animation "Pro" version is due to be released soon?

Particularly I am interested in the Mac version!

With Apple Arcade and also the new 2019 Mac Pro coming soon a 3D Face Animation "Pro" version for the Mac is what we need!

Is there any news on when the Mac version will be released?

P. S. CrazyTalk 8 and Character Creates 3 are not an option because that suite does not fully support the Mac!

 

Thank you for your interest.

Actually we already have a version for Mac. It can do everything the Pro-version can, except it works in non-real time and only runs on Unity 5.6. However, the high-quality 3D animation exported from it will work in any version of Unity and other apps supporting FBX.

This is our "Indie & Academic" version.

We are working to get the Mac version to run in the latest version of Unity.

Please let us know if you have any question.

Thank you.

 

We have had quite some questions from users regarding lipsync.

For lipsync, our unique approach is:

- maximum customizability, e.g. a user can greatly customize a 3D-model at any point of the timeline, and
- with minimum effort, e.g. no need for any low-level work such as rigging, blend shapes, or motion capture.

This unique approach is clearly shown in the demo video.

Please be aware traditional speech-driven animation is not supported in the approach, since traditional speech-driven conflicts with maximum customizability.

However, if the majority of users prefer automatic synchronization with audio, over maximum customizability, you can quickly release a version for that.

Please share with us you thoughts.

Thank you.

 

So, I cant get the free version to work. at import i get compile errors:
"You are trying to replace or create a Prefab from the instance 'AnimatableMesh' that contains the script 'UpdateMeshFromShape', which does not derive from MonoBehaviour. This is not allowed.
Please change the script to derive from MonoBehaviour or remove it from the GameObject.
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:ImportPackage(String, Boolean)
AutoPackageImporter.Editor.AutoPackageImporter:Reimport() (at Assets/AutoPackageImporter/Editor/AutoPackageImporter.cs:166)"

And the menu link in the window dropdown isn't there. what would i have to do to make i work?
Unity version 2019.2.0f1

 

Thanks for your message.

We are sorry for the issue you had.

Can you please share more details, e.g. if you were running it on Windows or Mac?

Thanks

 

I'm trying to change Animation properties on an existing face model I just made, but I keep getting "Please get the right conditions met, before running this function."

I think this is because I don't know what I need to select in the Unity Hierarchy (see attached screenshot).

 

Thanks for your interest.

Did you create the model from NF Unity plugin?

Which version (e.g. Free or Pro) did you run?

Did you follow one of the demo video like the Pro demo?

 

Hey developer, thank you so much for making such a cool plugin, but I want to use it after the Unity build is complete so users can dynamically upload photos and change the look and feel.Do you have any good ideas?

 

Hello,

Thanks for contacting NaturalFront.

At this time, the NaturalFront Pro Unity plugin can only work in Editor Mode.

We have a separate Photo-to-3D Modeling SDK that can be used in your games. However, the 3D-models can't be animated as the Pro Unity plugin.

Please let us know if you have any more questions.

Thank you for your interest.

 

I hope I am simply missing something obvious and you can point me in the right direction.
I have the pro version and have no problem generating the heads and keying expressions and/or mouth shapes.

The problem I have is with the lip-sync. Your ads suggest that lip-syncing to an audio file is as easy as falling off a log. That sounds great but, the only way I have found to perform lip-sync is to manually set a mouth shape key for each syllable. So, for something as simple as "Mary had a little lamb." I have to key seven mouth shapes for a three second phrase in order to make the lips mouth each of those syllables. It would take me several seconds per shape. For a character that has something more significant to say, it would take hours to lip-sync just a minute or two of speech.

I know you pride yourself in not requiring any rigging or blend-shapes. However, there is software that can analyze an audio files and sync the viseme blend shapes to it automatically. The only way I can see to do that with your heads is to create a head, import it into a 3D graphics editor and rig the head so that viseme shapes can be assigned so that software that expects standard rigging or blend shapes can be used to synchronize an audio file. But that defeats most of the purpose of your product.

So, I'm hoping that I'm just missing something and there is a simple, not time-consuming method to move those lips in sync with an audio file. Can you please help me out here? What am I missing?

 

Thanks for contacting NaturalFront.

We totally understand your point.

For lipsync, our unique approach is:

- maximum customizability, e.g. a user has the complete freedom to customize a 3D-model at any point of the timeline, and

- with minimum effort, e.g. no need for any low-level work such as rigging, blend shapes, or motion capture.

As you said, the Pro-version only takes several seconds to create a realistic expression or mouth-shape. Moreover, it is created on any customized 3D-model, e.g. from a face-photo. What would be the cost of time and money to achieve these using other solutions?


>> However, there is software that can analyze an audio files and sync the viseme blend shapes to it automatically.

Our software could easily do that.

But, very early on, we made a decision not to implement traditional speech-driven animation. Since it conflicts with maximum customizability.

But, we are working on a balanced solution, between maximum customizability and speech-driven animation.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

The NaturalFront Team

https://naturalfront.com/

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

Like you, I am also a fan of maximum flexibility and I understand your feelings about it. However, for long and tedious tasks, we usually want the computer to do it.

My goal is to have animated characters present new fifteen minute to half-hour monologs every week. However, even with quick and easy formation of mouth shapes, we're talking thousands of syllables and many hours of tedious work per monolog. It is simply out of the question to set up each mouth shape for each syllable by hand. So, here's another question:

Since we can get by with just a few visemes, is it possible to create and save a set of, say, six visemes which can be named and recalled at will instead of having to recreate the same viseme a thousand times? If that is possible then, is it possible for another program to call those saved visemes?

I'm guessing that it is not currently possible. However, if you're looking for a balanced approach, may I suggest that expressions are, indeed, where you want to keep your flexibility. Meanwhile, since visemes consist of only a small set of standard shapes, sacrificing automation for flexibility there is sort of a waste of resource. My vote (I'm biased, of course) is to keep your flexibility for expressions, but give lip-syncing the ability to be automated. That would make your program infinitely more useful.

As it is now, I see no alternative for me but to rig the head and use other sync software. That's a shame because your program has so much more potential.

 

Thanks for your great suggestions.

We should implement your suggestions as soon as possible.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

 

Dear Dr Paul,

Thanks for your interest and genuine suggestions.

We have taken your suggestion into consideration and building out the new features for our next big release. For us to better understand how our software can serve your purpose of making 15-30 minutes monologs every week, we are thinking of having a virtual meeting with you in the following days/weeks. This will certainly help us to have a better discussion about how we can help achieve your goals. If this is possible, please feel free to contact us at charlene@naturalfront.com or leave your email below so we can send a meeting link to you.

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Many thanks,
NF Team

 

Hi there,

It has been a while. Hope you are well. We really appreciate your genuine suggestions previously. We can see you have a lot of insights into the industry.

Recently we have been revisiting our product development and hope to serve more purposes to truly make 3D animation-making easy for animators and studios. To help us better understand your needs, we are thinking of arranging a virtual meeting with you for a detailed discussion in the following days/weeks. As a return, we will provide you our next version of the software for free once the updated version is released! If this is something that interests you, please feel free to email charlene@naturalfront.com or leave your email below so we can send you a meeting invite.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Many thanks,
NF Team

 

Hi there,

It has been a while. Hope you are well. We really appreciate your genuine suggestions previously. We can see you have a lot of insights into the industry.

Recently we have been revisiting our product development and hope to serve more purposes to truly make 3D animation-making easy for animators and studios. To help us better understand your needs, we are thinking of arranging a virtual meeting with you for a detailed discussion in the following days/weeks. As a return, we will provide you our next version of the software for free once the updated version is released! If this is something that interests you, please feel free to email charlene@naturalfront.com or leave your email below so we can send you a meeting invite.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Many thanks,
NF Team

 

Hi there,

It has been a while. Hope you are well. We really appreciate your genuine suggestions previously. We can see you have a lot of insights into the industry. We are very interested in partnering with you to make some business.

Recently we have been revisiting our product development and hope to serve more purposes to truly make 3D animation-making easy for animators and studios. To help us better understand how we can work together, we are thinking of arranging a virtual meeting with you for a detailed discussion in the following days/weeks. If this is something that interests you, please feel free to email charlene@naturalfront.com or leave your email below so we can send you a meeting invite.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Many thanks,
NF Team

 

Hi there,

It has been a while. Hope you are well.

Recently we have been revisiting our product development and hope to serve more purposes to truly make 3D animation-making easy for animators and studios. We are adding a new hair asset store/ feature in the software. Before our release, we'd like to arrangee a virtual meeting with youto get some of your thoughts in the following days/weeks. As a return, we will provide you our next version of the software for free once the updated version is released! If this is something that interests you, please feel free to email charlene@naturalfront.com or leave your email below so we can send you a meeting invite.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Many thanks,
NF Team

 

Hi there,

It has been a while. Hope you are well. We really appreciate your genuine suggestions previously. We can see you have a lot of insights into the gaming industry.

Recently we have been revisiting our product development and hope to serve more purposes to truly make 3D animation-making easy for game developers and studios. To help us better understand your needs, we are thinking of arranging a virtual meeting with you for a detailed discussion in the following days/weeks. As a return, we will provide you our next version of the software for free once the updated version is released! If this is something that interests you, please feel free to email charlene@naturalfront.com or leave your email below so we can send you a meeting invite.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Many thanks,
NF Team