adding motion tracking to face drivers?

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adding motion tracking to face drivers?

Postby nikoszikos » Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:21 pm

Hello, Thank you for creating Makehuman it is very helpful and useful.

The title should rather read: adding facial motion tracking to makehuman MHX2 face.
I am currently importing MHX2 into blender 2.79 - and I am successfully loading and retargeting Mocap BVH files. most recently I have been learning how to track my face in the motion tracking editor in blender. I track parts of the face, I then click "RECONSTRUCTION" - "LOAD EMPTY TO TRACK" which creates empties on the 3D view. This then locks the camera to this motion track. I then import an MHX2 Makehuman with Face Keys but this is imported standing up at 90 degrees to the Tracks I created. So I then rotate the Makehuman to fit into position so that the tracks are just underneath the face. I then place each empty (track) to the corresponding part of the face using the depth constraint on the empty and i put the makehuman object as that and the track then places itself on the corresponding part of the face. i then create an armature single bone for each track and place it on the mesh. i then join the bones to create one armature. so, at this point so far so good but this is where it gets weird. When i go to pose mode, then click on mesh then shift click the armature bone i created, and ctrl P with automatic weights, the tracks and bones remain where they are but my mesh moves back to the original position it was when i imported it - with the exception of the hair and the eyes and teeth? they stay with the tracks - only the main body moves to its imported original position. therefore no success. so then what i do is i start again. this time when i place the mesh makehuman in the position masking over the tracks, i change the resting pose, but when i then go through all this again and ctrl p with automatic weights the mesh shifts to a different position and again the bones and tracks remain where they are (not on the mesh) again...

when i import Makehuman without the MHX2 funciton and just as an object with no bones, it works.

But i really want to use the MHX2 for my project.

after many hours trying different things, nothing. i then tried to link the face keys to the tracks by constraint - copy location but that is not effective, it seems to deform it.
I tried to move the tracks to the mesh instead of the mesh to the tracks but instead the tracks seem to be deforming with the camera and not staying in the same plane with respect to each other when moved.

I even thought that maybe if when i create the motion tracks of my face and press RECONSTRUCTION and load empty to track if there is a way to place that behind the standing up makehuman instead of at 90 degrees to him but i cannot find this. i dont know

is there a way to move makehuman into a new position and when linking armature (with auto weights) it stays where it is?
if not then
is there a way to move the tracks to the makehuman?

appreciate if someone could find this answer or think of alternatives for me to link my facial motion track to a makehuman MHX2?

or even this... maybe if i just cut out the motion tracked face off imported makehuman which does not have MHX2 and sort of delete the face of the MHX2 human and add the motion tracked face?

thank you
nikoszikos
 
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