Faceware Technologies

Faceware – Faceware Technologies is a company renowned for its facial motion capture hardware and software. It provides end-to-end solutions to capture an actor’s facial performance and apply it to digital characters for films, games, and animation.

Faceware’s system typically involves recording an actor’s face with a specialized camera (often a head-mounted camera that focuses on the face to capture every expression in detail), and then using their software suite to translate that footage into animation data. The two main parts of their software are Faceware Analyzer, which tracks facial movements frame by frame from the video (identifying expressions like brow raises, eye squints, mouth shapes, etc.

), and Faceware Retargeter, which takes that tracked data and maps it onto a 3D character’s rig in programs like Maya or MotionBuilder. The result is the character’s face moving exactly as the actor did – achieving highly realistic facial animation including nuances like cheek puff or jaw clench. Faceware’s tech is markerless; the actor doesn’t need dots on their face, which makes it easier and more comfortable, relying instead on advanced computer vision. They also offer Faceware Live, which can do this tracking in real time, allowing for live puppeteering of a digital character’s face (used in live broadcasts or interactive events). Faceware is widely used in the industry – for example, in many video games to capture actors’ performances for cutscenes, or in VFX to bring CG creatures to life with an actor’s emotive expressions. In summary, Faceware stands as a gold standard in facial mocap. It gives creators the ability to capture the subtle human emotion and convey it through digital characters, whether for a dramatic acting scene or a real-time avatar, significantly streamlining what used to be a painstaking manual animation process and enhancing realism in character-driven media.