Can't have two people share one Animaze?

[Ravemaster99]

I read up on Animaze... and how they brutally killed off my Facerig. Anyway, not having any support for two people on one computer really sucks for streaming.

The fact that Facerig had this feature also makes it harder of a pill to swallow. My computer has two webcams plugged in, so the hardware is no issue. I tried opening two instances, but it refuses to do so.

I recommend reconsidering adding this as a feature, and advertising it as such. It'd be a powerful tool to make facerig more attractive.

[devops]

Hello Ravenmaster.

Thank you for the feedback.
You should be able to run two instances (just use the Steam build, and the non-steam build as the two instances).

However please realize that you are reducing the chances of any new features ever being added, by jumping to unflattering assumptions and propagating the above rumors and speculations.
Facerig, if you got it at any time between 2014 and 2020, works normally even today.
Building up the new Animaze engine in 2018 was not what killed FaceRig, but what what saved Fluffo, friends, and the Facerig tech from disappearing from the store back in 2017., and the reason why we are still around today.



Here are the details:

1. The functionality you mention can already be achieved in Animaze by using the same computer ( but is better with two computers) if you run the Steam version and the Non-Steam version in parallel, and composite the two avatars in OBS or in an Animaze Multiplayer session ( Animaze Rooms, a feature that FaceRig never had). Animaze has a free tier that can be used to host and join Animaze Rooms.


The reason we didn't rush to replicate multi-avatar on the same screen on the new engine EXACTLY as it was implemented in the past in Facerig, is because it is a very problematic experience for a full-body scenario;
In Aniamze we aimed from the very start to eventually track more than the face (and do face and hands/body). A proper multiplayer is simply a lot more robust, with a lot less headaches.

Motion capture of two people in the same webcam feed (especially mocap that goes beyond the face) is usually bad/messy due to overlaps. Even if it is not on the same feed, it is still challenging to do on the same machine due to heavy tracking CPU footprint. To add even more to the pile, the UI controls for controlling two avatars at the same time are usually confusing for casual users.
we considered it was just cleaner to keep them separate, and the people who really wanted two people on the same screen experience in spite of its disadvantages could always run two instances (steam and non-steam).


2. What we built with Facerig wasn't "killed" by Animaze, it was saved by Animaze.

Without Animaze engine, all Facerig tech, fluffo and friends likely would have gone away
(being closed down or sold to a larger corporation) at the end of 2017 start of 2018.
Instead, we took an external investment and tried to build something better, that lasts longer.
https://tracxn.com/d/companies/facerig/__PTk0IRgZRMzLJaURr4J_OSAbIE-nWvy-BxBSJBdZKFk/funding-and-investors


Back in 2017 Facerig was pirated to hell and back, and new spending on it had been largely abandoned by its user community. We had painful layoffs, had to downsize the dev team. And then, to top it all off, the engine team that we were licensing the FaceRig engine from disbanded, and the all-important toolset for importing custom models "died".
2018, 2019 and 2020 were bonus years, when facerig was kept on life support, but the long-term future of the old Facerig had died back in 2017, when its rampant piracy kept us from being able to make a full-time employment offer to the Chameleon render engine team.


What you read about Facerig being "killed" in 2020, is not only misleading but originates in dirty tactics, aimed to drive away users from indie engines like ours, onto corporate engine-powered apps. and to drive 3D model art away from protected formats (like the .avatar format we built for Aniamze), into openly parsable formats that can be easily fed into AI training datasets to create AI art generators.

Many large corporate tech layers have been offered for free for a while, and that is a well-documented tactic to "starve out" smaller competitors that would try to build competing solutions. These small competitors need to charge something to live, they can't afford to give the store away for free. If the true cost of the engine powering the experience is being hidden by a large corporation "subsidy", it becomes easy to see indie engines as unnecessary.
The larger companies can easily do that for a while, as they have deeper pockets, but, sooner or later, once everyone is dependent on that tech, and the indie alternatives have disappeared, that monetization button is being adjusted.
https://www.pentadact.com/2023-09-16-unitys-trap/

Any steps that we took are tied to the survival and evolution of Fluffo and his friends, making sure this is developed ethically, and making sure you don't end up with the collar of a giant corporation around your avatar's neck.


Cheers, and happy Streaming!