Welcome!

You’ve found YerFace, the stupid facial performance capture engine for cartoon animation. It is presently in active development to support the production goals of Markley Bros. Entertainment.

Posts

  • Jun 30, 2022

    BTS Reel Featuring YerFace!

    My sister put together a fun little Behind The Scenes reel featuring YerFace! Check it out:

    I think these videos are a lot of fun. You can see several more of them over at MBE.tv.

    Have a great day!
    –Alex

  • May 10, 2022

    Animation Workflow Demo

    Yesterday evening I did a livestream where I walked through the process of importing some YerFace! performance captures into Blender!

    This is a real production use case for my show, The Malex Minute. These are actual performances, imported onto our actual characters, for an actual scene from our upcoming episode. You can see the results are a little rough around the edges, but the scene just needs a little cleanup and it will be good to go.

    Thanks for checking it out. Have a great day!
    –Alex

  • Feb 14, 2022

    A Valentine's Day Surprise! Announcing Release 0.2.5

    Hey all! I’m happy to announce the latest release of YerFace!, 0.2.5 is now available along with experimental binaries!

    YerFace! is still not stable, but we are using it at a rapidly increasing pace over at Markley Bros. Entertainment to power all of our character animation.

    I realize it has only been a couple of weeks since the last release, but I discovered a bug over the weekend and decided to knock it out right away.

    Production is heating up here in the MBE lab, so you can expect to see more updates in the coming months!

    Thanks for reading and have a great day!
    –Alex

  • Jan 27, 2022

    Announcing Release 0.2.4

    Hey all! I’m happy to announce the latest release of YerFace!, 0.2.4 is now available along with experimental binaries!

    YerFace! is still not stable, but we are using it at a rapidly increasing pace over at Markley Bros. Entertainment to power all of our character animation.

    In addition to getting a new release of YerFace! out the door, I am planning on upgrading and fixing our Blender plugin soon, and even providing some sample Blender assets that anyone can use to get started quickly. Keep an eye out!

    Thanks for reading and have a great day!
    –Alex

  • Sep 17, 2021

    DOWNLOAD: Blender 2.93 LTS with Outline Patch for Linux

    RATIONALE

    As you know, around here we love cartoon-style animation mixed with video. Aesthetically, think Who Framed Roger Rabbit and you’ll know what we mean.

    To accomplish this, we often mix photorealistic (PBR) and cartoon (NPR) rendering styles in the same Blender scene and render that scene with Blender’s Cycles rendering engine.

    Recently we’ve adopted Miguel Pozo’s incredible Blender Outline Material Node to power our toon style. You can read more about it here:

    Unfortunately, because Blender does not provide any way to extend Cycles at runtime without sacrificing GPU acceleration, the Blender source code must be patched before being compiled. (OSL script nodes do not count here because they are incompatible with GPU acceleration.)

    So until Blender officially supports the Outline Material Node (or a suitable replacement) we are providing patched builds of Blender 2.93 LTS for Linux x86_64 to compliment Miguel’s own Windows builds!

    DOWNLOADS

    You can also take a look at our build scripts which we are using to create these downloads.

    PLEASE HELP!

    Would you like to help? Please join the discussion on developer.blender.org and let the Blender developers know that you need the Outline Material Node to be officially supported in Blender!

  • Sep 8, 2021

    Our Patreon Page has LAUNCHED!

    Happy Wednesday! I’m delighted to announce that the Markley Bros. Entertainment Patreon Page is now LIVE for folks who want to support us!

    Because YerFace is a project of Markley Bros. Entertainment – and because YerFace is critical to our mission – your support for Markley Bros. Entertainment is support for YerFace! If you appreciate what we’re doing, please consider becoming a supporter today!

    Become a Patron!

    Oh, and by the way, we have some big updates for YerFace coming later this year. So stay tuned!

  • Dec 21, 2019

    Presentation Video from Ohio LinuxFest 2019 Posted!

    Finally! It’s been several weeks since we presented at Ohio LinuxFest and it took longer than expected to edit the video, but we’ve finally posted the videos from the con!

    Here is the quick summary video including footage of our booth and our demo:

    And here is the video of my presentation:

    Thanks so much to everyone who came out and said hi. We had a blast!

  • Oct 19, 2019

    Announcing Release 0.2.3

    Hey all! I’m happy to announce the latest release of YerFace!, 0.2.3 is now available along with experimental binaries!

    I would not consider this release to be “stable” (by whatever definition of “stable” you use), but it is definitely usable. In fact, we have been using it at a rapidly increasing pace over at Markley Bros. Entertainment to power all of our character animation.

    (click to read more…)

  • Oct 15, 2019

    Returning to Ohio LinuxFest in 2019

    Exciting news!

    I’ve been invited to speak again this year at Ohio LinuxFest! The talk is called YerFace! From Computer Vision to Cartoon Animation and the abstract is as follows:

    This is the story of our ongoing quest to convert regular webcam video to CGI cartoon animation, suitable for production use, using only Open Source software! Come hear the war stories, stay for the live cartoon character demo!

    Now if you heard last year’s talk you may be tempted to skip out – but wait! This year there’s a lot of new stuff to talk about. Development on the project has only accelerated, and the vision for the future is clearer than ever!

    Update October 19th: The Ohio LinuxFest schedule has been released! Looks like I am speaking at 1PM Eastern (just after lunch). See you there!

    We’ll also be in the Expo hall running a live demo for most of the day on Saturday, so come out and say hi!

  • Oct 15, 2019

    Introducing Gamepad Support!

    It’s a whole new dimension of expressiveness!

    Over the past many weeks, I’ve been hard at work on something I’m very excited to announce: Preliminary Gamepad Support in YerFace!!

    Check it out:

    As you can see in the above video, introducing Gamepad support has given our performers a whole new level of control over the character, providing more interactivity with the audience and a more lively result. The resulting animation works equally well for live performances as it does in the studio.

    With this latest development, we’ve kind of stumbled into something of a digital puppetry application, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

    Thanks, –Alex

  • Jun 15, 2019

    Another Production Success Story

    This weekend we released our second short film powered by YerFace! called The Egg of Dismay. As before, YerFace! was used to drive all of the automated facial animation and lip synchronization. Check it out!

    This is a really exciting step for us, because this second episode was produced in only six months (compared to roughly two years for the previous one), and that included some software development cycles for improvements to the YerFace! project.

    Hopefully we can cut down the lead time for the next episode even further!

  • Apr 15, 2019

    Experimental Binary Downloads Available

    Hey all! I’m pleased to report that experimental binary downloads of YerFace! are now available for Linux and Windows.

    The usual caveats and disclaimers apply. In particular, the Windows build might be pretty rough around the edges. I haven’t had a lot of time to put it through its paces, but it seems like it might be a lot less performant than the Linux build.

    Also, if you are expecting a GUI…? Lolno. At this point the only available interface is the command line. So even on Windows, try executing yer-face.exe --help from something like Powershell.

    As usual, please check the documentation and open a Github issue if you run into any trouble.

    Thanks! –Alex

  • Dec 21, 2018

    YerFace Officially In Production!

    After over a year of work, I’m absolutely confident that YerFace! has reached MVP. How do I know this?

    We just released our first CGI cartoon which used YerFace! for all of the facial animation! Check it out:

  • Nov 4, 2018

    Video from Columbus Code Camp 2018!

    As mentioned before, we were delighted to be invited to speak at Columbus Code Camp last week. It was so much fun, and the video turned out great (despite a couple of minor hiccups)! Check it out…

  • Oct 15, 2018

    Blender Plugin Open Sourced!

    As I promised at Ohio LinuxFest on Saturday, I have released and open sourced the YerFace Blender Plugin for anyone to use and improve!

    It’s still rather simple, and needs a few improvements, but it does work. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

  • Oct 14, 2018

    Columbus Code Camp 2018

    Good afternoon all! I’m really excited to announce that my presentation about YerFace! has been selected for Columbus Code Camp 2018!

    I’ll be speaking on October 27th, although the precise time is still TBD.

    Hope to see you there!

  • Oct 14, 2018

    Another Successful Demo

    We had a delightful time at Ohio LinuxFest 2018 yesterday! Not only did we get to share about the YerFace project, but we also managed to pull off another live animation demo which was incredibly cool.

    Thanks again to everybody who created this opportunity for us and helped make it a success.

    The session was video recorded, but unfortunately it might not have turned out the way we hoped. If we get it together and it turns out to be presentable, we’ll post it.

  • Sep 17, 2018

    See You @ Ohio LinuxFest 2018!

    Hey all! So excited to announce that my presentation about YerFace! has been selected for Ohio LinuxFest 2018!

    See you there!

  • Feb 27, 2018

    Great Reception at PillarCon 2018!

    I was honored last week to have the opportunity to speak at PillarCon 2018. I spoke about the story behind YerFace, shared about some of the technical challenges the project has encountered thus far, and even did a live demo featuring our favorite fuzzy round MBE character! Check it out…

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