FaceFX Support

FaceFX Documentation and support

DOS Prompt Use

The facefx-studio.exe executable file is a powerful commandline tool. Pass it a .facefx file and it will launch the GUI with the specified file opened. Pass it a .fxl or .py file, and it will execute the scripts in command-line mode. (You will probably need to call the loadactor command and possibly the saveactor command in your .fxl or .py file to do anything meaningful.)

C:\>"c:\Program Files\FaceFx\FaceFX Studio Professional\facefx-studio" "C:\my-python-file.py"
C:\>"c:\Program Files\FaceFx\FaceFX Studio Professional\facefx-studio" "C:\my-fxl-file.fxl"
C:\>"c:\Program Files\FaceFx\FaceFX Studio Professional\facefx-studio" "C:\my-facefx-file.facefx"

Notice that you do not include the “.exe” file extension when calling facefx-studio.
The analyze command is not available in FaceFX Studio Professional, and analyzing audio from the commandline is not possible without it.

Options

Here are some other flags that can be set from the commandline. Flags expecting an argument must be followed by the equal character = and the argument.

--help - displays a list of available options
--verbose - generate verbose log messages for troubleshooting
--safe - starts up FaceFX Studio at a small resolution in the center of the screen to resolve issues where FaceFX is “lost” on a monitor that is no longer available.
--nosplash - starts up FaceFX Studio without a splash screen.
--noautoexec - turns off executing the autoexec.fxl file
--clientspec - used to specify the clientspec to load and use (expects argument)
--exec - Executes the provided .fxl or .py file (expects argument)
--guiexec - Launches the GUI then executes the provided .fxl or .py file (expects argument)
--ogre_rendersystem -see below (expects argument)
--arg1 - see below (expects argument)
--arg2 - see below (expects argument)
--arg3 through --arg9 - see below (expects argument)

--ogre_rendersystem

Use the --ogre_rendersystem option to specify the render system to use when FaceFX is run from the commandline. You can also launch the application using “opengl” instead of the default “direct3d” to troubleshoot graphics driver issues. Check the install folder for the openGL shortcut as well.

>facefx-studio --ogre_rendersystem="opengl"

Note that when running a script with the -exec flag or by passing a .FXL or .PY file, by default FaceFX is started without initializing the renderer. This allows FaceFX to be run from machines without a graphics card, but it prevents the render command from working, and the fbx commands can not export FBX files with body animations. The previewanim and exportframe commands also require the rendersystem, and these commands are used by the FBX Import process. Use the -ogre_rendersystem flag if you need to call these functions from your script. Note that the machine must have an acceptable graphics card for the render system to initialize properly.

>facefx-studio --ogre_rendersystem="direct3d" "C:\renderscript.py"

Arguments

You can pass up to 9 arguments to an executed python script by using the --arg1, --arg2, --arg3, --arg4, --arg5, --arg6, --arg7, --arg8, and --arg9 flags.

You will need to import the sys module and access the arguments with the sys.argv array:

import sys

print len(sys.argv), 'command line arguments: ', str(sys.argv)

You can then execute facefx-studio.exe as shown below to pass values to these arguments:

> facefx-studio --exec="command_args.py" --arg1="hello" --arg2="world"

> facefx-studio command_args.py -1=hi

Argument Implementation Details

Arguments are passed as strings. If the string has a space, quotes must be used.
sys.argv[0] is the path to the executed script, while sys.argv[1] through sys.argv[9] can be set as described above.
Empty arguments are not passed. Specifying --arg2 without --arg1 will pass --arg2 as the first argument which will be avaialable at sys.argv[1]
sys.argv is only available from the initial script executed by FaceFX Studio, not scripts that are imported by the executed script.

Return Values

When specifying the -exec option from the command line or being passed a .FXL or .PY file, the executable returns a value by setting the %ERRORLEVEL%

-2	Indicates a crash occurred. No crash dialog is displayed in command-line mode, so check the “Crash Reports” folder in the FaceFX Studio directory in the current users documents folder. Please send crash reports to OC3 Entertainment.

-1	The specified script contained an error and did not execute completely.

0	Execution completed successfully.

-4000 and lower

Various licensing errors