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What's New in 2010



Release Date: May 12, 2010

New Features

  •  Created the License Manager 
  • Added the following functions to the FxStudio Python module.
    • dingBell
    • displayDirectorySelectionDialog
    • displayFileOpenDialog
    • displayFileSaveDialog
    • displayMessageBox
    • displayYesNoBox
    • displayYesNoCancelBox
    • errorBox
    • getAppName
    • getAppTitle
    • getAppVersion
    • getBonePoseBoneNames
    • getBonePoseFrame
    • getBoneNames
    • getBoneRefFrame
    • getBoneFrame
    • getCurrentTime
    • getFaceGraphFrame
    • getMultipleChoicesFromUser
    • getPasswordFromUser
    • getSelectedKeys
    • getSingleChoiceFromUser
    • getTextFromUser
    • lockSelectedKeyTangents
    • msgBox
    • unlockSelectedKeyTangents
    • warnBox
  • Added the following console variables:
    • g_maxaudioduration
    • ogre_default_fov
    • fg_enableunrealnodes
    • g_autoaddmorphtargetnodes
  • Added the following python callbacks
    • newanimationdataavailable
    • postxmlexport
    • preloadtext
  • Made several improvements to the .facefx exporters. 
    • Added ability to import morphs and combiner nodes.
    • Added audio analysis, newtake and change analysisactor functionality
    • Created the following new script functions:
      • fxcreatenode
      • fxlinknodes
      • fxnewtake
      • fxisanalysistool
      • fxgenerateanim
      • fxsetbipedheadrotation (3ds Max only)
  • Event widget can automatically create missing animations when their events are double-clicked.
  • Browse for audio directory (batch processing) now defaults to last selected audio directory.
  • Added delete accelerator to the timeline widget for deleting selected keys.
  • Added -curveName option to key command, can be used in place of any -curveIndex.
  • Added -add, -subtract, and -refbones options to the bonepose command.
  • Non-shared geometry supported. Non-FaceFX Ogre Exporters rarely supported shared geometry.  Use of more 3rd party Ogre tools now possible.
  • Added "field of view" camera support to the ogre command.
  • Added curve smoothing
  • Added curve smoothing button and insert key button to the curve toolbar.
  • Added option for overriding colors of phoneme classes in phoneme widget.
  • Added 24-bit and 32-bit audio support to FaceFX. (Be aware of multiple 32-bit formatting standards...32-bit int  (type 1 - 32-bit) assumed). 
  • Added delete node button to Face Graph Select widget.
  • OGG Vorbis audio files (*.oga) now supported.
  • Rendering and FBX export are now available from command-line mode.
  • Max exporter now supports setting keys on the Biped Head bone.
  • When no lights exist in an Ogre .SCENE file or a .MESH file is loaded, the default camera has a light attached.

Bugfixes

  • Default analysis actor won't generate blinks that extend the animation
  • Improved handling of error and warning messages from FXL and Python scripts so that they aren't overwritten on the command panel before being seen by the user.
  • Fixed words getting slammed together during punctuation removal when only punctuation separated the words.
  • Recursive events work correctly in analysis actors
  • When breaking up a text file with audio chunking text tags, inserting event or curve text tags into a section with no text will not cause analysis to analyze the audio for phonemes.
  • Node selection is shown in the face graph select widget after changing node groups as appropriate.
  • Fixed curve baking on boundary case of curves that look like steps.
  • Fixed curve baking on boundary case of constant curve with non-zero value
  • Browse for audio directory dialog is now modal to prevent crash associated with triggering multiple dialogs.
  • Evaluated tick times in studio are now constrained to be within [animStart, animEnd].  The user can scrub the timeline anywhere, but the anim is only ticked appropriately.
  • Multi-selected links in the face graph node properties widget may now be deleted in batch.
  • Fixed bug in copy curves command so that the copy curves button works
  • Fixed bug in bonepose -transfer command
  • Fixed bug in the face graph widget where it was looking at invalid indexes in the compiled graph on a refresh prior to compiling the face graph when undoing a node removal.
  • Fixed XML exporter.  The default value for event start time was 1.0.  The importer used the correct value of 1.0.  As a result, any events with start_time = 1 were getting incorrectly imported with start time = 0.  XML files exported with 2009 will continue to have this problem, but XML files exported in future versions do not.
  • Removed some cases of gimble lock from FBX files exported form FaceFX Studio.
  • Fixed a bug where batch processing would ignore any file with an uppercase letter in its extension, thus disqualifying *.WAV or *.Wav. Now, file extensions are lowercased before the extension comparison.
  • Pasting keys in the curve editor on top of an existing key now modifies the existing key rather than adding a duplicate key at the same time.
  • Fixed refresh issues with the XSI plugin.
  • If a prompt-to-save triggered by the application closing fails (ex, a read-only target file), the application no longer ignores the failure and closes anyway. It properly aborts closure to give the user a chance to save his work.
  • Fixed a crash when the user passes an invalid curve index to the key command.
  • Fixed a crash when creating a combiner node from sliders with events selected in the take view. Also resolves a refresh issue when canceling the create combiner from sliders dialog.
  • Curve widget correctly draws selection box in XOR.
  • Fixed bug with menus from the menubar being hard to use when the application is at the bottom of the screen. Now the menu system is aware that the menu is coming from the menu bar and pops the menu up above the menu bar so you can still interact with it.
  • Event command full analysis take now correctly sets the analysis language.
  • Run the text preprocessor when the analysis take is being completely regenerated. This will regenerate text tags meant for the analysis actor. The original analysis text is used (not the phoneme wordlist text because it doesn't have punctuation) and the word times are based on a fresh analysis of the audio and text.
  • Fixed bug in events tab that caused the event tracks to jump up and down when panning with the middle mouse button.
  • Reanalyze range will no longer fail when the final phoneme end time is slightly past the end of the audio.
  • Long diphthongs will be split into their component vowels in the phoneme bar.  Previously, this was occurring in coarticluation, so the curves were correct but the phoneme bar still listed the diphthong.
  • Fixed bug in animation forward and back buttons that would select incorrect animation.
  • Fixed a bug in FxList::Sort()
  • Fixed machine specific bug that would occur when setting keys with Max exporter.
  • Fixed bug when loading Ogre .SCENE files where no MESH entity was specified.  .MESH file is now searched for when .SCENE loading fails.

Structural Changes

  • Updated to FBX 2011.2 SDK
  • Updated Ogre to version 1.7.1
  • Updated Python to version 2.6.4
  • Updated wxWidgets to version 2.8.10
  • Updated libsndfile to version 1.0.21
  • Updated to Visual Studio 9 (2008) SP1
  • Using Evolver's mascot character as sample content.  Maya, FBX, and other versions of her available from www.evolver.com
  • The the anim command's -changeaudio flag no longer accepts the new audio as an argument, it requires the -newaudio flag to pass in an argument.
  • Warnings are now generated when loading an actor that contains a target in the phoneme mapping without a corresponding node of any type in the face graph.
  • Revised key copy/paste to be much more intuitive.
  • Pitch and stress curves in analysis actors insert keys at 1 during silence. These curves are normalized, so 1 is the most appropriate value.
  • Removed all STL code from SDK logging system
  • Added support though 2011 versions for 3ds Max, Maya, XSI, and MotionBuidler. 
  • Removed support for versions of MotionBuilder prior to 2009.
  • Updated XSI script functions from "FXA" to "Actor"
  • Replaced Slade's Max content with FBX ASCII file. Normalize scale must now be used appropriately after impporting the FBX content into Max.
  • Changed sample audio files to OGG Vorbis format *.oga
  • FBX morph curve data is now exported by creating a special morph data skeleton and moving bones with the appropriate morph target names in the X-axis.  
  • The NoTextNoTweaking.animset file was removed.  Both sample characters now mount the SpeechSnippets.animset file, which is used by the FxAdvancedFunnel.py file to insert tongue-only movements.

Supported Animation Packages

  • 3ds Max - 9, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
  • Maya  - 8.5, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
  • XSI - 6.5, 7, 2010, 2011
  • MotionBuilder - 2009, 2010, 2011

See Also

Version Number: 
2010

FaceFX 2010 Documentation Index