Face rigging

[Meowx]

Alright, I haven't started on the face yet - I'm setting up the rig for the rest of the body first - but I thought I'd see if you guys have any comments. This will be my first full rig, and if you have any insight on face geometry, let me know!

 

I've attached the facial geometry. I did set up a blink pose just to make sure it would work properly, but other than that the face is completely unrigged. Does the geometry look ok or are there going to be problem areas when I start animating? Thanks for your help!

untitled.mov

[robcat2075]

I think that looks like a pretty promising candidate for rigging.

 

There are some good tuts in the rigging forum on strategies for rigging a face.

 

You may find after you get it moving that maybe a five point patch or hook may have been better here than there, but you don't know until you try.

[3DArtZ]

Honestly... the fastest and easiest way is to use d-boxes to give you the morph targets.

I used to spend a lot of time trying to creativly rig bones in the face to get desired results,

but its much easier to have 1 bone make up the lower jaw and mouth, one bone to make up the upper mouth

and nose and one bone for each eye, all children of the head bone.(so that if you want to deform the whole head and have

all elements deform intact u apply it to the head bone)

then apply a deformer for each region and shape. A:M is great at creating smooth blends between

multiple morph targets.

Im sure there are downsides, but if your out to quickly get it going, then thats what I recommend.

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

[robcat2075]

multiple morph targets.

 

Do you really mean smartskin shapes?

 

Or are you rigging distortion boxes?

 

 

"morph targets" don't really exist in A:M.

[3DArtZ]

U know what I meant:)

no but seriously I mean the poses, when I said morph targets.

 

Im not rigging the dboxes anymore as I have not been able to get them to work in that way

for a long time now...

[rusty]

multiple morph targets.

 

Do you really mean smartskin shapes?

 

Or are you rigging distortion boxes?

 

 

"morph targets" don't really exist in A:M.

 

Quite true but he's probably calling his pose slider positions morph targets -- the face is 'morphing' and doing so to the 'target' shape of the pose at 100%. I called them morph targets at first even though I knew that this was wrong -- I did it simply because in any other software and, in the book I got my shapes from, they were referred to that way and, morph targets sound's cool LOL. But you're absolutely right... its like calling a patch a polygon (yikes! sorry Martin!). I seem to remember you pointing this out to me as well many moons ago. :-)

 

Rusty

[Gerry]

Hey Mike, it's nice to see you active on the forums again!

[jakerupert]

if you call it morph targets like in most of the standard poly aps or poses like in A:M ,its just a different name for the same thing.

[jakerupert]

> one bone to make up the upper mouth

and nose

 

[3DArtZ]

> one bone to make up the upper mouth

and nose

 

 

Because the bone does nothing other then to hold the dbox/capture the control points you

want to work with.

 

I dont really rig faces with bones that mimic the bones in a real face anymore. took too much time

for me and too much fun away from the process.

[Meowx]

Quick question (completely unrelated to face rigging) - I'm working with some cloth now, and the groups of the model I apply the "cloth" and "deflector" materials to get their group surface properties overridden, leaving them with the model's default. How do I avoid this?

 

edit: nm, figured it out, groups in the bottom of the list have priority.

[jakerupert]

>Because the bone does nothing other then to hold the dbox/capture the control points you

want to work with.

 

I dont really rig faces with bones that mimic the bones in a real face anymore. took too much time

for me and too much fun away from the process.

 

 

properly?

 

Thank you

 

Jake

[3DArtZ]

I dont think that there are any tutorials... but it basically uses the built in tools....

what you do is put jaw bone in and attach control points that you think accurately make up all the

control points for lower jaw.

then do the same for the upper jaw and nose.

then do the same for the other areas of the head you think you will need to move control points for.

Eyeballs get bones put in so that you can move them inside the head, like typical eyeball bones.

All children of the head bone(so that if you do a distortion on the whole head bone all the children/control points

will distort relatively.)

then, select the model, create new pose, select the lower jaw bone control points, lock rest of them and

hit the dbox icon. the desired control points will be put into dbox mode.

You can also apply the dbox to be parented to the actual jaw bone, but to my knowledge there is something not working as expected there

so your best bet is to just turn on dbox(at top of window,dbox button) mode with the appropriate control points lock/unlocked.

the # of dbox control points can be adjusted to suit your control needs.

This is really just a quick way of making a pose, moving individual control points. But I find with the dbox(or even magnet) you can

quickly move large number of control points and keep the mesh pretty smooth all the while.

 

You're milage might vary depending on how you like to work...

 

Hope this give you an idea...

 

Mike Fitz

[jakerupert]

Cool, thanks a lot.

I will give it a try.

[Meowx]

edit: actually, just gonna start a new thread since it looks like I can't edit the title of this one =D