Monday, March 16th, 2015 Posted by Jim Thacker

Jasper Brekelmans releases Brekel Pro Face 2


Jasper Brekelmans’ demo of the video, infra red and depth streams from the Kinect 2. Brekelmans has just updated Brekel Pro Face 2, his markerless facial-capture software, to take advantage of the new data types.

Originally posted on 30 December 2014. Scroll down for details of the commercial release.

Jasper Brekelmans has released a beta version of Brekel Pro Face 2, an updated version of his low-cost markerless facial-capture software adding support for Kinect for Windows 2 and Kinect for Xbox One sensors.

The system enables artists to use Kinect sensors to capture facial animation in real time, either saving the data in FBX format, or streaming directly into MotionBuilder.

Whereas the first release was written for the original Kinect, Brekel Pro Face 2 has been rewritten “to fully utilise all the data of the Kinect v2 sensor”.

More actors, more facial units, more data types
In practice, that means that you can now record up to six actors at a time – assuming that they all fit within sensor range – and 20 different face shapes instead of 11.

As well as generating a 3D facial mesh with blendshapes, the system can visualise colour, infra-red and depth data captured by the Kinect 2, and record point cloud data for use in sister app Brekel Pro PointCloud 2.

Updated 16 March 2015: Brekel Pro Face 2 is shipping. The video above gives a good overview of the features. The software is Windows-only, and costs $139.

Read a full list of features in Brekel Pro Face 2