itsjustme

Here's a simple project with a surface constraint similar to the forehead constraints in Bertram's head. In the Action in the attached project, move the "surfaceaimtarget" bone to manipulate the "constrainedbone" while keeping the "surfaceaimtarget" bone's contact with the geometry (if you don't, the "constrainedbone" will jump to it's starting point). I posted this here as an example to a question on surface constraints...and it applies to Bertram's forehead.

Okay, here's the entire face including the forehead/eyebrow stuff with the same audio and Action file included again. I think I cleaned out everything that won't affect anything in this project...if anyone finds something, I'll go back and clean it out. I left in the "forehead plate" that the surface constraints are tied to (that might also get rid of any unpredictability with constraints working)...I left it set at 100% transparency like it is with the actual model. If there are any questions, I'll try to answer them.

Nice guns....you've been working out, obviously. Here's mine.

The cheeks in/out is only a muscle movement...I negelected to take that out, it puffs out the cheeks, sorry about that. The tongue also has muscle movement for width and thickness which I neglected to remove...I tried to be thorough, just didn't get 100%. To move the nose independently, you have to turn off the "nostril targeting". In order to manipulate the lower lip completely independent from the jaw, the "lower lip to jaw" slider needs to be set to "0" (in the "jaw" folder)...or at least lower than 100% for some independence. I made this a percentage slider so that you can gradually reduce the influence of the jaw instead of having to turn it completely off...that would cause some annoying popping and be very noticeable. If you look in the Action file, you'll see that I gradually decrease the "lower lip to jaw" slider starting at 12:23 for the last 5:07 of the face test. Occasionally I have things not work, but, I think it's because there's no geometry in the project...it's only every now and then, nothing really repeatable. I've had no problems with it when there is geometry. I'm presently using 11.0t.

Not a problem, Mark, I'll try to answer any questions you have. The forehead rig happened because I ran into a problem with CP's locking up that I couldn't repeat with any regularity...I haven't had the problem since then though. I ended up putting a bone on each CP of the forehead and making poses that way. Once I checked the poses from the side, I saw that Bertram's head was caving in a little. I didn't want to go back and set keyframes and such, so, I copied Bertram's forehead, made it invisible and then constrained the forehead bones with a surface constraint to that. The benefit I got was that I didn't need to put in additional keyframes, I could just adjust the "translate to" constraints. I'll try to put something up on the forehead setup in the next couple of days, but, I think the above explanation gets most of the idea across. Not a problem, Joakim. If you need any more clarification, just let me know.

Here's the second part of the web page.

Okay, I bumped up against the file size limit of the forums, so, the web page is now spread over two zip files. I'll post the first one here and the second one in my next post. Unzip both of the files to the same folder and point your browser at "riggingface.html".

Sorry about the quick off-hand response earlier, Mark...I was in a big hurry at the time. I don't get much feedback, so any response is greatly appreciated. I'm glad you and Joakim have found the rig useful. Like I said, I'll probably add some to the web page that I have earlier in this thread...I'm thinking that an image showing the colors for the CP weights wouldn't tell you much since some of the shades are so similar (and wouldn't give you percentages), I'll probably just make some images with the weighting listed off to the side. I've been debating showing how his forehead is rigged, but, I don't know if anyone in their right mind would do it that way. I had run into some problems with whatever version of v11 I was using at the time, and as a workaround, I used a bone for every CP with surface constraints tied to an invisible copy of Bertram's forehead. It made it pretty easy to change things around though, and I didn't have to worry about keyframing anything (other than 100% or -100% settings). Since it wasn't part of adapting the mouth rig, I exluded it...and because it might not be a sane method. In this case, it worked fine though. I'll post something late tonight/early tomorrow.

Sure, I'll put something up either today or tomorrow....more likely, it'll be very late Sunday night/early Monday morning.

If you zip it up is it still over 1MB? If it's still over 1MB, reduce the screen size of the image...say, from 640x480 to 320x240...or you could try a different video compression. I've had good luck with DivX for AVI file size, but Mac's have trouble viewing those (DivX), you might try MP4 compression with Quicktime or, if you stick with an AVI try Cinepak (it isn't the best looking, but I think everyone would be able to view the file).

The earth seems dark in comparison to the lettering to me...maybe a rimlight? The swoosh looks sorta like an outline of earth's orbit around the sun....maybe use the sun (possibly partially behind the earth so that it's not the main focus) at the center of the orbit to give the whole logo a rimlight? Just spit-ballin'...apparently with a rimlight fixation.

Will, you are scary! Fantastic, the face really sells it for me....not that the rest doesn't, but the face and eyes are what does it for me....the skin wrinkles are great.

Here's a rough explanation of the face rig...it may be a little haphazard though. This is a zipped up web page with accompanying files, unzip it to a folder of it's own if you don't want bits of it rolling around on the floor. Once you point your browser at the folder, open the "riggingface.html". -------------------------------- EDIT -------------------------------- I have updated the zip file to include the CP weighting. Since I have exceeded the file size limt, I have had to put up two zip files...they are later in this thread now.

Very cool Dale! You've got a lot of irons in the fire.

Okay, I went back and looked at the bones project and found some eyebrow poses and stuff still in there....so as not to confuse anyone, I cleaned it up and here's a reposting of the same project. I don't think I've ever posted anything right the first time.

Thanks Joakim, I'm going to have Bertram in a 2-3 minute animation once I get everything working the way I want...I'm slow, so it might be a while. I was hoping to get it done by the beginning of March, but I probably won't make that deadline. I'm going to consider the face done at this point, that was one of my major concerns since I had never done anything this extensive before. The setup is available for download in my previous post (feel free to critique). Also, if you use GIMP, in this topic is a Script-Fu for making an iris (feel free to critique that as well). There's not really a "magic" tutorial, but have you gone through Colin's tutorial at http://www.colins-loft.net/new_coop_tutorial/tutorials.html? There's also a good video tute that is older at http://www.shimmyo.com/face_tute.php that might help you. Another good one is located at http://www.ovis.net/~cgroves/tips/toonhead/toonhead1.htm. If those don't help, you might consider buying the face modeling video from Anzovin...it's at http://www.rafhashvideotapes.com/modelfacecd.html. They have quite a few videos that you might find helpful.

In the interest of showing my work, here's a project file that has Bertram's face rig for the bones below the eyebrows along with the audio file (reduced in quality for size) and the face test Action. My animating skills are still in need of work, so please forgive my awkward use of the timeline...I included the actual Action to help illustrate how I used the rig. As always, critiques are appreciated.

Very cool, Noah! I hope you get some animation done with him, he looks like a fun character.

I took longer getting to it than I thought, but, here's an update. There's more cheek movement, nose movement, hairline movement, a bump map for forehead creasing (which really isn't visible in this small of a render, unfortunately), a little different CP weighting and some pose increases. I go back and forth about whether it's enough exaggeration and whether I should increase the hairline movement...anyway, crits are appreciated. Once again, it's a zipped up DivX encoded AVI.

I like what you've got so far, Mike! Very nice acting and lip sync, the only things that I saw were some popping in the skirt that I think is caused by the dynamic constraints you mentioned and a slight slide/slippage in the feet that takes the weight out of the character. The work you've put into it really shows.

Ideally, you'd like to have a front and side view...those are hard to get sometimes. You can do it with a 3/4 view like this, but it takes a whole lot more guessing. With this view you can get the height of things in relation to each other (eyes, ears, mouth, etc) by using it as a rotoscope and then putting markers in the modeling window at each significant feature. If you can't get a front and side view, I would get the front and side view of someone with features that are similar (if they resemble someone famous there'll be a lot more available pictures), make the head based on that and then tweak it to resemble the person that you're really trying to model...it would eliminate some of the guessing. That would be my solution. If you're asking about modeling using a rotoscope, I would recommend Colin's tutorial at http://www.colins-loft.net/new_coop_tutorial/tutorials.html

I'd go with David Higgins' assessment...I can't really add anything except to say that I only had four votes, it was very tough.

You can render Targa images. In the "Output" tab on the "Render to File" menu select "Targa sequence" then in the "Range" pull down select the frame range you want to render out. You can convert the Targas to whatever file type you need in a paint program or Irfanview or whatever.

Congrats to amarillospider and a thanks to Rodney and Hash for the drawing!

There's some cheek movement, but not enough. You're right, I need to have some more going on. I'm doing some experimenting with the face rig and increasing some of the poses. I'll try to have something new up in a few days. Thanks for the crit.