*UPDATE on Page 2* Facial rig test

[vnavone]

This is a little animation I did to test the facial rig on my Giant character for my short film "Big Bang". The rig is a mishmash of fan-bones, weighted CPs and pose motion. The animation is rough and the model isn't done yet - still needs some smoothing in places and the horns aren't attached to the head yet. Mostly I was curious to see how the mouth would hold up and how much expression and directionality I could get out of the dot eyes. Here's the link:

 

Giant Head Test

 

Here's a picture of the mesh:

 

 

Enjoy! I must sleep now.

[Rodney]

Victor,

 

I almost cussed when I saw your 'test'. (That's a good thing)

Wowsers! Incredibles(!) Pixar has just gotta hire you!

 

oh... um... nevermind then... disregard.

 

Anyway, that is one sweet looking character! *and character test.

Glad I could be here in the night to see it first.

 

And we all thought you couldn't top Blitz!

"Rough"... he says... "test"... he says...

That's it.

I'm giving up 3D... (Not!)

 

You remain an inspiration to animators everywhere. Especially those here who love A:M!

[DarkLimit]

WOW voctor this is awsome animation, I can see a definite "step-up" improvement compared to the alien song when comes to facial expressions..

 

BTW- I just wanted to say breathtaking job on Finding Nemo

 

Keep up the good work.

[Guest mrsl13]

Man..excellent expressions on that face......he....,she.....,it..came alive..

 

Mike

[JBarrett]

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

 

Inspiring work, even for a test! I think the level of expression in the face is working QUITE nicely. Can't wait to see more!

[starving4rtist]

Amazing!

 

 

Makes me want to stop animating...

[ZachBG]

...Jaw drops...faints...swoons...

 

Wow, just wow. That was just frippin' incredible.

 

I won't ask you to share your "technique," since I suspect it has something to do with working on feature films for a living, but I and I'm sure many others would LOVE to get more details on the "mish-mash" rig that was able to create such fluid, expressive, and living motion.

 

I was especially stunned by the gorgeous squash and stretch. That's been my Alpha and Omega (am I mixing metaphors, or pureeing them?) in terms of CGI and I've never figured out how to make it happen. It just adds so much to the life of a character.

 

Seriously... wow.

 

Zach

[ChrisThom]

This is great!!

 

OK, here's a serious question. Victor, have you ever considered putting out some instructional materials like Jeff Lew and others have? I know that you've done an article about the making of Alien Song but it would be cool to have something really detailed with video. Just looking at your stuff I think that many of us could learn so much from you.

 

I know that you probably don't have much time, what with everything going on at Pixar but maybe just think about it.

 

BTW, congrats & blessings on you and the new bambino on the way.

[Dalemation]

I have to go with what everyone else has said.

Just brilliant!!

I love the cartoony character design too which has so much more appeal than all the `photorealistic` stuff you see.

[3DArtZ]

I believe that the test went off without a hitch!!!!!!

I am really looking forward to seeing this project unfold. Please keep us posted!!!!!

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

[robcat2075]

That is just too charming and adorable! I'm impressed by the wide scope of the mouth.

[pequod]

Ditto the praise everyone else has given.The squash and stretch works really well and his little furrowed brow is just too cute.

 

Have you thought of a solution to attaching those horns?

[JTalbotski]

Great facial expressions and life in this character, Victor! He really comes of as being a child (or childlike) with the open mouth smile and the sad frown. Whatever rigging you are using seems to be working extremely well. Thanks for sharing!

 

Jim

[Roger Eberhart]

Have you thought of a solution to attaching those horns?

He could try Zpider's Conform plugin (http://www.kci-group.com/z/conform.htm). That should get the bases of the horns to match the curvature of the head. Then he should be able to model them into the head. Although, Conform is only available on PC. Does Victor use a Mac?

[vnavone]

I'll try to briefly explain the rig. For every span of the mouth (splines running to and from the lips) I have one bone for the up and down motion and one for the left and right motion. Each UD bone is a child of the corresponding LR bone. It had to be two bones instead of one for a few reasons that I would have difficulty ariticulatng here. The points around the mouth are assigned to the UD bones and are weighted using AMweights to give them a nice falloff. This was a tedious process, and luckily version 11 will have the AMweights functionality built in.

 

Next I set about creating a series of poses that moved the mouth bones in different combinations to create different shapes. For instance, the Corner_R_UD pose moves the UD bones on the right side of the mouth to form the curve of a smile or frown. The bone rotation alone gets me most of the way there, but for complex areas like the cheeks I do some custom muscle animation on top of the bone motion.

 

The advantage of using this kind of modular bone setup in a face is more consistency of deformation between poses, since they're all driving the same underlying bone structure. Once you articulate one part of the mouth you can use it with multiple combinations of other controls and always get predictable results. I find there is too much room for variation and inconsistency when relying on straight muscle motion for facial articulation. Also, this character's mouth is such a dominant part of his image and this method allows me to control the shapes very precisely. If his mouth were tiny then I might get away with regular muscle motion, as I did in the brows.

 

Currently the mouth has about 24 controls and I've still got some more to add.

 

Below is a screen shot of all the mouth bones. It looks like a mess, I know, but I hide all the bones except for the jaw when animating. The jaw itself uses rotate relationships instead of poses, but the effect is the same. On the left you can see some of the Pose Sliders controling the mouth.

 

As for they eyes, they are controlled with poses and some simple bone rotation, scaling and translation. The poses were created using deformer lattices. I can taper them, bend them in different directions and blink them with poses.

 

The head bone has a volume-preservation expression on it for easy squash and stretch. Anytime I scale the Z value the X and Y change value accordingly. I've also made a pose to move the mouth up and down to help the squash and stretch (or "squetch" as we call it at Pixar). The rest of the squetch is achieved with good old-fashioned animation tricks.

 

Many people have asked me to do a tutorial and I wouldn't mind but I just don't have the time. It's taken me years just to do this much on my spare time, and with a kid on the way I can't imagine I'll have more time soon!

[vnavone]

Have you thought of a solution to attaching those horns?

 

I'll probably use the Conform plugin as mentioned above. That will at least get the bases of the horns to lie flush on the head; then I have to tweak the bias handles to make the tangents at the intersections smooth. That's going to be a pain. I'm wary of trying to actually model the horns into the head because I don't want to disturb that nice, smooth, even mesh.

 

This would all be relatively easy if I were using Nurbs. Fillet tool, anyone?

[shaunf]

Hi Victor,

 

Beautiful test! How long did it take to animate that 'rough little animation'?

[vnavone]

Beautiful test! How long did it take to animate that 'rough little animation'?

Thanks! The animation itself probably only took 4 or 5 hours (spread out over a week). As I animated I would find problems with the rig so I would go back in and make changes. That ate up much more time.

[ZachBG]

Many people have asked me to do a tutorial and I wouldn't mind but I just don't have the time. It's taken me years just to do this much on my spare time, and with a kid on the way I can't imagine I'll have more time soon!

Victor,

 

Just that last post and the screenshot has opened up whole new worlds. Thanks a lot.

 

Zach

[jfirestine]

Victor, thanks for sharing your information about your rig. I like your test animation! You have a very interesting character to animate, and I look forward to see him in action.

 

Thanks again for sharing, you have inspired me to create something good too!

[3DArtZ]

Wow, great to see the behind the scenes controls you are using for your face. I used a very similar idea for McKnuckles face set up, I called it a face cage. Basically a lot of aim at, scale to reach constraints controlling the strechyness of the characters cheeks. then just used smartskin for lip shapes. It gave me great freedom how extreme or not I wanted to make the face pose.

Initially I wanted to make a tute on it myself, until some dingdong decided to fight the idea of tutorials for the community.

After seeing this inspirational stuff from Victor, who knows, maybe people will rise to the informational pedastal!

Thank you for posting that picture Victor

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

[Parlo]

Gorgeous work Victor - truly inspirational stuff.

 

Your rig intrigues me. I can see the need to create a rig that uses one base control for each sub section of the mesh, and having that all higher level controls alter the base control. This gives finite control over the movement of each section and insures that the model only deforms in the way that you want it.

 

My question is: what are the other advantages of the rig? I ask because as far as I can see the same level of control can be achieved by nesting poses. Is this easier to animate? Am totally missing something else? If so would you recommend glasses?

 

P.S. My nephews do impressions of the 'karate crab' all the time. It makes me smile - well the first 15-20 times every day it does. Every time they come round they raid my dvd collection, I'm not saying I blame you but....

[robvmonte]

I would first like to say good job on the post. I saw it and just wanted to stop working on animation forever. There is nothing to critique. Your bone structure is really complex but I guess the more complex it gets the better the animation. You are an inspiration to everyone.! Keep it up. btw how did you make the texture?

[JohnArtbox]

Don't really like me too posts......but this is fantastic and all the superlatives have been used up by other members.

So...

Me too, me too, me too

Wonder if the ability to set a permanent rotation point for areas of the mesh(like the bones) would be a worthwhile new feature. I like using that style of rig but I hate the setup time and complexity.

[John Keates]

Hey Victor, beautiful stuff there allready. It is amazing how much of the acting is done with those little eyes next to the big mouth - even when they don't have pupils. I would be interested to know what guided the decision to go un-pupiled.

[KenH]

Absolutely gorgeous work! He looks not unlike a Sesame Street pupet. I can see him as a cuddley toy with those long arms wrapped round your kid as you put him to bed.

[vnavone]

My question is: what are the other advantages of the rig? I ask because as far as I can see the same level of control can be achieved by nesting poses. Is this easier to animate? Am totally missing something else? If so would you recommend glasses?

Hi Parlo,

 

In my mind, the advantage of using bone motion over nested muscle pose motion is that bones naturally make points move in arcs, whereas muscle motion wants to move points in a straight line (unless you put in some inbetweens). Because the Giant's head is spherical I wanted a rigging system that would move the points of his mouth in a way that followed the radius of the sphere. All the mouth bones start at the center of the sphere so the points naturally orbit from that location. I could have done this by hand with muscle motion, but again, I would have had to ad inbetweens to all the points to make sure that they move in arcs rather than straight lines. Otherwise you will get problems of inconsistent mass.

 

One thing I did in all my mouth poses was set the pre- and post-extrapolation methods for the spline channels to "linear". This means that the animation continues to go in the direction of the last keyframe I set to infinity. That way if I ever decide that I need to push a mouth shape just a little further I need only increase the range of the pose slider. I don't have to go in and ad more keyframes to the pose because it naturally continues in the direction it was already heading. Make sense? Normally I try to build headroom into my poses to make them a little more extreme than I think I'll need, but it's good to have this method to fall back on as well.

 

I saw it and just wanted to stop working on animation forever ... Your bone structure is really complex but I guess the more complex it gets the better the animation. You are an inspiration to everyone.! Keep it up. btw how did you make the texture?

Don't give up, Rob! I hope you are more inspired than discouraged. The bone structure is complex, but that doesn't necessarily mean better animation. I'm just very anal about how I do things. I was hoping for a much simpler rig - I've been trying to keep this character very simple overall - but sometimes making things "look" simple can be very complex. As for the texture, he has decals for the nose, brows and horns, but that's all. The rest are basic materials. I think perhaps you're reacting to the lighting, which comprises of one warm key on the right, a few cool rim lights back on the left, and lots of reddish fill lights in between to give his flesh some warmth.

 

It is amazing how much of the acting is done with those little eyes next to the big mouth - even when they don't have pupils. I would be interested to know what guided the decision to go un-pupiled.

 

Thanks, John. Again, I was going for a really simple design and dot eyes are about as simple as you can get. For me they also suggest a harmless animal, like rabbits or dear, whose eyes rarely show their whites. There's something innocent and mysterious about them. I'm sure I was probably influenced by Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, who has dot eyes much of the time. I've been looking at some of Hank Ketchum's Dennis the Menace drawings for inspiration - he got a lot of character and directionality out of dot eyes.

[John Keates]

V. Navone: "For me they also suggest a harmless animal, like rabbits or dear, whose eyes rarely show their whites."

 

I remember reading that many animals have black eyes because they are less easy for preditors to pick out. The black on white target is a very powerfull visual signal and can be picked out at a distance or in dim light. I guess that the fact that prey need this more than preditor explains the cuteness corrolation.

 

It is interesting the way that you can get around the lack of indexicality (if that's a word) by moving the whole eye rather than rotating it - like where the eyes lead the motion at the first head rotation. So much to learn, so little time (sigh).

 

Ps. Calvin and Hobbes rule!

[robvmonte]

I got another question for you victor: Did you lathe or extrude the form of the giant? Like how you lathed blitz did you do the same for the giant?

 

BTW I wasnt going to give up in the first place Its just I didn't fell my skills were that great, my goal is to work for Pixar.

[vnavone]

I got another question for you victor: Did you lathe or extrude the form of the giant? Like how you lathed blitz did you do the same for the giant?

Lots of both, I think. The head was formed primarily with a lathe, hence the radial splines. I probably used extrusions for some of the limbs and digits. Other parts, such as the shoulders, hips and mouth, are hand-stitched meshes.

[shaunf]

So for a non-spherical head, for this to work, you might have the bones guiding the mouth off centre, to that the arc of their movement runs along the surface of the face of the model in question? (I think that made sense... )

 

I tried something similar with one of my characters recently and found that the smile action pinched in the cheeks, due to the spherical arc of the bone movement pulling the cheek in as it continued to rotate. I might try it again though, with the axis of the bone guiding say.. the right cheek , off to the left side of the head and a bit deeper in resulting in a greater arc than if it was in the middle of the head, so that when it is rotated it still follows the surface of the face.....

 

That may or may not work (I'll have to play around with the idea), but regardless this thread has been very useful Victor, thanks!

[vnavone]

Like I mentioned before, the bone rig gets me MOST of the way there. With complex areas like cheeks I think you're going to have to do some custom shaping no matter what.

[JBarrett]

I've been looking at some of Hank Ketchum's Dennis the Menace drawings for inspiration - he got a lot of character and directionality out of dot eyes.

Don't know if you've got easy access to any episodes of "3-2-1 Penguins!", but if so, you might take a look at Jason and the way his dot eyes are setup. Rob Dollase did a great rigging job on him and gave him poses that made what we called "comma eyes" to give the impression of looking in different directions. It's similar to some of the shapes used on Peanuts characters' eyes from time to time (Dennis the Menace might have been another inspiration...I didn't get there until after Jason was rigged, so I don't know). There were also poses for Jason that flattened the top of the eyes into a "shelf" to give an impression of low eyelids.

 

Thanks for sharing your rigging ideas! Some great food for thought!

[takahiro]

Hello, Victor

 

Thanks for sharing.

Making each UD bone a child of the LR bone sounds great idea!

Anyway, I got an opinion about horns.

I made following example.

http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/~takahirotakahash/hornspline.zip

I hope you like it.

 

 

Takahiro

[vnavone]

Hi Takahiro, that's a pretty neat solution! I'll definitely give it a try. It will be more complicated on my model because the head is not perfectly spherical and I want some variation in the size of the spikes, but the dangling spline technique seems to work well for rendering.

[amarillospider]

Hey Victor,

 

Congratulations on becoming a Dad (soon)! That "offsping" poster you made is great.

 

All those bones in the face are scary. It must take a while if you are controlling them all with pose sliders. You probably already know it, but Bill from Anzovin studios posted a little mock up of a Jason Osipa (Stop Staring book) style face rig in these forums a while back. Playing with it I've got my snarl, smile, eek, frown, motions all in one control thats easy and flows between them well.

 

The eyes remind me of Jeff Smith' Bone comics. Its a nice touch that they turn into little u's when they close.

 

Keep it up, you're always an inspiration. One day (way in the future) I'll catch up with you animation wise.

 

Good luck with the new little Navone

-Alonso

[Parlo]

....bones naturally make points move in arcs, whereas muscle motion wants to move points in a straight line (unless you put in some inbetweens). Because the Giant's head is spherical....

Ahh, got ya.

 

I've been rigging a head that is far from spherical, so I've been nesting motion that is almost entirely linear. I can see how bones would be perfect in your case however.

 

One thing I did in all my mouth poses was set the pre- and post-extrapolation methods for the spline channels to "linear".  This means that the animation continues to go in the direction of the last keyframe I set to infinity.

 

It's already monday and this is tip of the week for me! That's so straight forward that I'm ashamed that I've not stumbled across it myself.

 

Thanks for the thorough reply Victor.

[takahiro]

It is my pleasure if my opinion would be useful.

Because I'm a big fan of 'Alien Song'!

 

Takahiro

[robvmonte]

I have a question that I would like to ask: Where did you learn and where can I learn the bone setup you used for the mouth?

[vnavone]

I have a question that I would like to ask: Where did you learn and where can I learn the bone setup you used for the mouth?

I figured it out for myself. I think the Anzovins have used a similar approach, though. Perhaps they have a tutorial floating around somewhere.

[genocell]

Mr Victor Navone, you did it again!

[dcnelson]

What a wonderful character and facial rig test! (If only my tests turned out so well.) WOW!

 

And thanks for sharing some of the details about your facial rig. I noticed that you had a pose slider labeled "Corner_L_IO". I assume that "IO" stands for "In-Out", as "LR" stands for "Left-Right" and "UD" for "Up-Down". Also (assuming that the bones' roll handles point either up or down) In-Out involves scaling a bone in its Z-axis, Left-Right involves rotating a bone around its Y-axis, and Up-Down involves rotating a bone around its X-axis. Correct?

 

In trying to play with a test rig based on your facial rig, I noticed that one could either scale or translate the bone in its Z-axis. Translating moved the center of the sphere described by the bone as its radius. This seems to have some interesting possibilities, but I assume that you used scaling since you do not want your sphere's center to move. Correct?

 

You mentioned that you found that using a single bone for both Left-Right and Up-Down rotations caused some unspecified problems. Assuming I'm on track (which may be a bad assumption on my part), did you find any issues regarding which bone you scaled (i.e., the LR bone or the UD bone)?

 

I was also wondering in regards to your character's arm rig whether you were going with a strictly FK rig? IK? or one that can select for either?

 

Thanks in advance for any answers you may provide. It is greatly appreciated. I've been struggling with the rigging of my character's mouth for a few months now and have been encouraged by seeing your facial rig. Although my character's head isn't spherical, it appears I can adapt your rig to my situation.

 

Thanks again,

Dean

[vnavone]

Hi Dean,

I noticed that you had a pose slider labeled "Corner_L_IO". I assume that "IO" stands for "In-Out", as "LR" stands for "Left-Right" and "UD" for "Up-Down".

Correct.

Also (assuming that the bones' roll handles point either up or down) In-Out involves scaling a bone in its Z-axis, Left-Right involves rotating a bone around its Y-axis, and Up-Down involves rotating a bone around its X-axis. Correct?

Correct.

I noticed that one could either scale or translate the bone in its Z-axis. Translating moved the center of the sphere described by the bone as its radius. This seems to have some interesting possibilities, but I assume that you used scaling since you do not want your sphere's center to move. Correct?

Correct again.

You mentioned that you found that using a single bone for both Left-Right and Up-Down rotations caused some unspecified problems. Assuming I'm on track (which may be a bad assumption on my part), did you find any issues regarding which bone you scaled (i.e., the LR bone or the UD bone)?

I would always scale the LR bone because it is the parent bone, and I want both the UD and the LR bones to have the same scale so that they will both behave in the same way. Same for translations.

 

The problem which prevented me from using a single bone for both UD and LR rotations is that the UD bones which actually move the mesh are not horizontally oriented. They angle down from the center of the head to the mouth. This is fine for up and down (X) rotation, but if I were to rotate them in Y they would arc up around the head making a smile, rather than moving lattitudinally (is that a word?). Therefore I decided to parent each of them to another bone (LR) that was oriented horizantally and would rotate along the sphere's lattitude. Does this make sense?

Although my character's head isn't spherical, it appears I can adapt your rig to my situation.

It should adapt pretty well to non-spherical heads, but I imagine you may need to scale the bones as you rotate them to make them follow whatever curves your face has. I would create rotational relationships for each bone that makes them scale as they rotate. Set this up once for each bone and you shouldn't have to worry about it in later posing.

 

Good luck!

[zacktaich]

This may have been answered already, but what are the advantages of having two bones per CP? Why not just one? I'm not very experienced with rigging so I'm very curious about this. Also: Does it make it tedious to animate? I imagine picking the right bone each time could be a pain in the neck.

 

Great job, that character has a lot of personality, and I wish you best of luck on this whole project.

 

Zack T.

[dcnelson]

Hi Victor,

The problem which prevented me from using a single bone for both UD and LR rotations is that the UD bones which actually move the mesh are not horizontally oriented. They angle down from the center of the head to the mouth. This is fine for up and down (X) rotation, but if I were to rotate them in Y they would arc up around the head making a smile, rather than moving lattitudinally (is that a word?). Therefore I decided to parent each of them to another bone (LR) that was oriented horizantally and would rotate along the sphere's lattitude. Does this make sense?

Yeah, everything you said makes perfect sense. Thanks for the advice.

 

Thanks again,

Dean

 

 

Hi Zack,

 

Victor just answered your first two questions (see the quote in this reply). And to answer your question about whether two bones per CP will make animating tedious and whether picking the right bone each time could be a pain in the neck -- well, actually the bones are hidden and you use pose sliders to manipulate them. In Victors case, the jaw bone remains visible and can be moved to affect the hidden CP bones. I'm considering hiding the jaw bone and using pose sliders for it.

 

Hope that helps.

Dean

[dcnelson]

Hi Victor,

I would always scale the LR bone because it is the parent bone, and I want both the UD and the LR bones to have the same scale so that they will both behave in the same way. Same for translations.

I totally agree regarding translations. However, I did notice the following differences when scaling the LR bone versus scaling the UD bone.

 

Given that each UD bone is a child of its corresponding LR bone.

 

If one scales the LR bone in its Z-axis, then the UD bone will only scale to the degree it is pointing in the direction of the LR bone's Z-axis. See diagram on the left.

 

If one scales the UD bone in its Z-axis, then the UD bone will retain its full scale length regardless of how it is moved, whether by rotating itself around its own X-axis or by rotating the LR bone around its Y-axis. See diagram on the right.

 

The reddish semi-circles represent the area described by the rotation of the UD bone about its X-axis with no scaling.

 

The yellowish areas describe the rotation of the UD bone about its X-axis with the corresponding scaling.

 

Just some food for thought.

 

Thanks,

Dean

[vnavone]

by George, you're right! I'll have to dig into my poses to see if I scaled the wrong bone. Thanks for doing that little bit of research.

[Zaryin]

It's looking great. I'm glad to see you're still working on this.

[Rodney]

...If one scales the LR bone in its Z-axis, then the UD bone will only scale to the degree it is pointing in the direction of the LR bone's Z-axis...

 

...If one scales the UD bone in its Z-axis, then the UD bone will retain its full scale length regardless of how it is moved, whether by rotating itself around its own X-axis or by rotating the LR bone around its Y-axis...

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hmmmm... yes... most definitely. I see it so clearly now. Positive proof to all qualified observers with potential to access triciary data representions in superior form against those events where the initiating force invariably fails to exercise in precise measure the caution against magnification of nocturnal fatigue induced sensory depravation, which when multiplied, exacerbated, and increased, by an uncalculable factor, directs all available stimuli toward results far exceeding the regions of limited encyphaletic capacity.

 

Gentlemen, clearly, this far exceeds my reasonable expectation of available faculties and would not appear to attain satisfactory results within my own regions of limited experiential knowledge.

 

And for this... (I think)... I thank you!

 

YYYYYYvvvvvvvveeeeeessssss!

They're not using big words... but they're still hurting my head!!!

 

*Sorry guys, for my late night attempt at humor

[Ross Smith]

Wow. Gorgeous character.

Something was nagging at me while I watched the test anim on loop, and I couldn't quite place it. Then I realized what it was -- he looks a lot like Calvin. I really think it's the spherical head and the eyes. But that was already mentioned, so.

Considering the rig you have for the mouth, I can't help but wonder what the bones for the rest of the body will look like.