Developers can use Mixamo’s Face Plus to capture your facial expressions in real-time

Animators have a tough task creating realistic animations that reflect the nuances and emotions of real people. But Mixamo has created a game development tool called Face Plus that can capture a face in real time and animate it in a 3D-cartoon style. The San Francisco 3D animation service provider says it will lead to more emotionally engaging games with characters who have realistic facial expressions.

Stefano Corazza of Mixamo
Stefano Corazza of Mixamo

This kind of technology makes it a lot easier for amateur game developers to create stunning 3D characters in games. And it moves animators a small step closer to conquering the “uncanny valley,” a hypothesis that suggest that human face animations become more unreal the closer the animations come to 3D replicas.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.