What is SGX?
SGX is a procedural facial animation system driven by audio.
It produces accurate lip sync as well as nonverbal behaviors including full-face emotional expressions, head motion, breath, blinks and eye darts. SGX is used by developers looking to produce facial animation content efficiently, at consistent quality, and with creative control.
SGX works for any language, even fictional ones. Input consists of audio files. Optional transcripts of the audio can also be input for 11 different languages (14 dialects), to support higher-quality lip sync (see Language Support). Output animation files can be imported into game engines or other 3D animation systems (see Integrating Animation). SGX works for any rig after a one-time setup of a Character Control File, where the behaviors and idiosyncrasies of the character can be fine-tuned.
The SGX 4 Suite includes three components:
SGX Producer - a command-line tool for batch processing
SGX Director - a desktop tool for interactive processing and editing
SGX Studio - plug-ins for 3D engines and animation tools, currently including Maya and Unreal Engine
For information about what’s under the hood, check out Speech Graphics Technology.
What’s new in SGX 4?
The SGX 4 Suite includes three components:
SGX Producer - a command-line tool for batch processing
SGX Director - a desktop tool for interactive processing and editing
SGX Studio - plug-ins for 3D engines and animation tools, currently including Maya and Unreal Engine
For information about what’s under the hood, check out Speech Graphics Technology.
SGX Producer
SGX Producer is the core batch processing system that is a continuation of SGX 3, with some improvements:
Faster processing
Frame-rate control
Effort detection
New, more powerful transcript markup system (see Behavior Markup)
Support for reprocessing of events edited with SGX Director
SGX Director
SGX Director gives animators direct control over output. Preview animation, make changes and reprocess, all in one tool. It includes:
A real-time interactive timeline editor with audio and animation playback.
Ability to process and re-process a single line of dialogue.
Editable metadata including word alignment, behavior modes, expressions, and various modifiers. Use this instead of transcript markup to modify the performance.
SGX Studio
SGX Studio plugins provide an interface with game engines and digital content creation tools. They inlcude functionality for character setup, animation import, and visualization. This is a continuation of the SG Studio tool in SGX 3, with some improvements:
Faster setup process
Animation preview from SGX Director timeline editor
New poses for eyelids that help prevent intersections
Game engine integrations including Unreal Engine
Changes to the Markup System
The markup system in SGX 3 has been replaced by a new markup system with these features:
XML-style tags replacing use of parentheses
Expanded set of attributes
Ability to activate auto modes individually rather than as a group
Custom mapping from auto modes to behavior modes