FaceFX Support

FaceFX Documentation and support

Console Variables

FaceFX Console variables control many user-modifiable properties in FaceFX Studio.  They are get and set using the get and set FaceFX commands.  They can also be get and set from python.

Global Console Variables

Variable Default Description
g_appdirectory - The application directory where FaceFX is installed.
g_applaunchtime   The time the aplication was launched.  The default value and variable value are set when the application starts.  Format is YYYYMMDDHHMMSSSSS
g_appversion - The installed version of the application.
g_autoaddmorphtargetnodes “1” When true, any morph target nodes found in ogre content that are not found in the face graph will be added to the face graph.  Set to false if you don’t want the extra nodes automatically added to the graph.
g_checkforupdatesonstartup “1” Determines if the application will check for updates on startup.  The value is stored in between studio runs and can be edited in the applciation options.
g_clientspecroot - Audio file paths are made relative with respect to this variable.  Absolute paths are also stored for reference when the relative path can’t be found.
g_defaultanalysisactor - The analysis actor to select during analysis if the actor does not have a default analysis actor.
g_licenseename - The person or entity that this version of FaceFX Studio was built for.
g_licenseeprojectname - The project name that this version of FaceFX Studio was built for.
g_licenseeversion - A version number for source code licensees that change the file format.
g_logsdirectory {g_userdirectory}/Logs Where log files are written.
g_maxaudioduration “600” The maximum duration in seconds of an audio file that can be loaded in FaceFX Studio.  Increasing this can cause out-of-memory crashes on systems that do not meet the minimum system requirements.
g_playbackspeed “1.0” The speed to playback animations in FaceFX Studio
g_productname - The name of the product (i.e. FaceFX Studio Professional)
g_productversion current version Contains the version number (and point release) of the product.
g_sdkversion Current version The current SDK version.
g_settingsdirectory {g_userdirectory}/Settings The directory where user settings are stored.
g_skipupdateversion - Stores the update version that the user is not interested in.
g_skipupgradeversion - Stores the upgrade version that the user is not interested in.
g_templatesdirectory {g_userdirectory}/Templates Directory for user-created templates
g_unattended “0” When true, this suppresses dialog messages and warnings so that scripts can run uninterrupted.
g_usenewcoarticulation “on” New coarticulation will not create curves for uneccesary phonemes to reduce mouth jitter. Only compatible with component mapping.
g_userdirectory My Documents/FaceFX Studio 20XX A writable folder where FaceFX stores user-specific information.

Miscellaneous Console Variables

Variable Default Description
fg_enableunrealnodes “0” When true, the application can insert Unreal-specific nodes.  (Keep in mind Unreal names may not have spaces.  They are replaced with underscores)
pl_realtimeupdate “0” When true, curves are updated in real time when the phoneme bar is tweaked.

Audio Console Variables

Variable Default Description
a_audiomax “90” The maximum amount of audio that FaceFX Studio will accept for analysis with text.  Larger files are analyzed without text and chunked into smaller pieces.  Increase this at your own risk as the analysis libraries are not tested above this threshold.
a_audiomin “.5” The minimum amount of audio that FaceFX Studio will accept for analysis.  Lower this at your own risk as the analysis libraries are not tested below this threshold.
a_detectspeech “auto” (Deprecated. Use) Set to “false” to turn off speech detection.  In some rare cases when speaking starts immediately at the beginning of the audio file, a long silence is inserted at the beginning and starting speech is not recognized properly.  Turning off speech detection with this variable will improve results. 
a_speechdetectionlevel “5” Replaces deprecated a_detectspeech variable to set the speech detection level. Accepts values 0-5. Speech detection off with 0. Noisy audio may benefit from setting to 1. Clean audio should use the default value of 5.

FBX Console Variables

Variable Default Description
fbx_export_format 0 Specifies the file format to use when exporting FBX files from the File->Export menu.
fbx_export_input_file ”” Specifies the input FBX file to use for the actor when exporting FBX files from the File->Export menu.
fbx_export_key_precision “.001” Specifies the default key precision to use when exporting FBX files from the File->Export menu.  Too high and animations will miss important details.  Too low and output FBX files will be large.

Ogre Console Variables

Variable Default Description
ogre_default_near_far_distance “10000” sets the default distance to the far clipping plane
ogre_default_fov “45” Sets the default field of view for cameras.
ogre_default_near_clip_distance “.5” the default distance to the near clipping plane
ogre_rendersystem “direct3d” Sets the ogre render system.  Should be “direct3d” or “opengl”.  Must be set when application loads from the command prompt.

Python Console Variables

Variable Default Description
py_enableoutputwindow 1 enables the pop-out python output window
py_scriptpath - The path to the currently executing Python script, if any.  If script is executing from the Python Shell this will be set to PYTHON_SHELL otherwise it is set to the full path of the currently executing .py script. Don’t set this manually.

FBX Importer Console Variables

Variable Default Description
py_fbx_bindframe 0 Set to “None” to use the FBX bind pose to troubleshoot common content issues.
py_fbx_useattributes “off” Set to “on” to support FxAttribute nodes and FBX attribute curves
py_fbx_boneweightspervertex “4” Set to “8” to enable software skinning with 8 bone weights per vertex. 

Publishing Variables

Publishing an actor removes data that is not required for in-game use to save memory and speed up playback.  See Publishing Content for more info.

Variable Default Description
po_bake_events_to_curves “1” Controls if events are removed from the animation and replaced with equivalent curves.
po_collapse_face_graph “0” When true, the face graph is collapsed so that only target nodes remain.  Animations are baked down to curves for these targets.
po_remove_anim_editor_only_data “1” When true, removes animation data like the analysis actor, absolute audio path.
po_remove_mapping “1” When true, removes the mapping from published actors.
po_remove_phon_word_lists “1” When true, removes the phoneme word list from published actors.
po_remove_event_templates “1” When true, removes the event template from published actors. 
po_excluded_anim_groups ”” An array of animation group names (separate with pipe character “|”) to exclude from the published actor.
po_target_platform “pc” The target platform to publish to.  Should be “pc”, “xbox 360”, “little endian”, or “big endian”
po_destination_dir ”” The directory to write the published files.

Progress Console Variables

Python scripts can display progress dialogs and control their display with the below console variables.  See python functions for more info.

Variable Default Description
pp_overall_progress “0” A number from 0 to 1 representing the overall progress.
pp_task_name “unnamed” The name of the task.
pp_task_progress “0” A number from 0 to 1 representing the task progress.
pp_subtask_name “unnamed” The name of the subtask
pp_subtask_progress “0” A number from 0 to 1 representing the subtask progress.

Coarticulation Console Variables

Modify these variables with care (and extensive testing). They impact how the coarticulation agorithm works and may improve results on some files while making other files look worse. Custom per-file settings can be accomplished with .fxanalysis-config files.

Variable Default Description
ca_leadin “.4” The time to lead into a phoneme following SIL.
ca_leadout “.45” The time to lead out of a phoneme followed by SIL
ca_tongueleadin “.15” The time (for the tongue) to lead into a phoneme following SIL.
ca_tongueleadout “.15” The time (for the tongue) to lead out of a phoneme followed by SIL.
ca_shortsilenceduration “0.27f” Silence shorter than this duration are ignored, giving their duration to the prior phoneme.