LipService 3d facial sculpting and animation plugin and standalone for lightwave. 

LipServiceTM    
(C)opyright 1999 Joseph Alter, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Motion capture on a $3 mouse.

No, I'm really not bullshitting you. Click on the above MPEG. These expressions are being performed in real time with a $3 mouse. You can layer up to 8 groups with 4 targets each in a single animation.

Eyebrow movement, eyes darting left and right, smiles, frowns, breathing, blinking, twitching - you can add them all to your animation by just waving your mouse around as you listen to your audio.

In the LipService interface you'll see 8 sets of performance groups with 4 targets each. When you click on one of the group tabs above the group it will enable the group for performance. You can test this performance by holding down the 'T' key and waving your mouse around in the work area. LipService maps the targets to the 4 corners of your work area, with neutral in the center. As your mouse moves towards one of the targets you get blends of the different shapes. As you move towards one shape, LipService blends the other 3 towards zero (automatically, and totally transparently to the user).

The when you are ready to record, hit 'X' (don't hold it down). The audio will sound a little choppy, but that is because LipService is now playing back in a mode that doesn't drop frames. This is actually what you want. You want every frame of capture data.

Since your mouse captured animation is actually getting its shapes from your modeled targets you can, ofcourse, modify your targets and the animation will update instantly.

As I was saying, you can layer the hell out of these. It makes for *very* lifelike animation when you get all these layers together.

Far more cost effective than traditional capture solutions (like optical facial capture), much easier to set up, and much more controllable because of the layering and modeled targets.