News

Latest Project: Fast & Furious Crossroads

Delighted to announce Red9’s involvement in Fast & Furious – Crossroads, developed by SlightlyMad Studios. We were involved from the very early stages of the project supplying Body & Facial Rigging as well as LipSyncing services for the entire project.

This is the first title where all of the facial animation was generated for the project using our TalkBack LipSync service. The final game has some 2hrs of facial data in total, with minimal animation adjustments over the top of the raw solve to add further expression and eyeline fixes. This was a really key project for the development of TalkBack, with so much data to process we were continually pushing the results hard and catching logic issues. From raw audio files we supplied tracked r9Anim data, our lightweight animation format for Maya, which the client loaded directly over the body data.

We also provided Red9 PuppetRigs for all of the body animation, although didn’t get involved in the deformation side for the body. For the facial setups one of the biggest challenges with the project was the number of iterations required on the key cast characters as likenesses were nailed down. We ended up developing new tools in our systems to allow us to consume changes in the base client meshes without destroying all of the facial setup and sculpt work that had already been done.

All in all this was a challenging project but great to see if finally out there

Latest Project: Amazon’s Crucible

Delighted to finally be able to announce our involvement in Amazon’s new free-to-play action shooter “Crucible” released last month.

Red9’s been involved in the project from the very beginning, providing some of the key tools used for character development. Initially we were tasked to supply rigging solutions but that quickly grew into custom toolsets to support the animators. This project really help us push ProPack’s functionality and flexibility and we look forward to our continued relationship.

Really excited to see where this game goes.

Red9 : TalkBack LipSync service

Delighted to be able to release this new demo of our Red9 TalkBack Facial Lip-Syncing service, taking raw audio data and mapping it to accurate facial motion. This has been in development for over 5 years now and with each new project we pass through the systems, the articulation and calibrations get better and better.

This demo is running on one of our Red9 Facial Rigs in Maya and the results are raw data, straight out of the solver with no animator input at all. The only input is the audio file itself. Being an offline process we can do a lot more tricks on the data than some of the current engine based real-time solutions 😉

TalkBack now runs on any rig, with training, and is a service we offer to all clients. Perfect if your budget won’t stretch to full performance capture! The system also works just as well with cartoon based rigs.