best facial movement... Bones or morphs???

[Grey]

I hate the way the big platforms handle morphs, it overloads the files with irrelevant geometric data that should be discarded upon defining it as a morph, but isn't... (Poser is so much better at morphs for this reason).

I think Bones are a far better way to go in most areas of any Character Animation.

Limit your morph targets only to those that are necessary and can't be accomplished with a bone (like vertexes moving in multiple directions: very uncomon.

[LucentDreams]

the key to morphing is knowing what morpha keys to make. For cinema 4D there are many different morph plugins all of which have different advantages and disadvantages, one still in development (I assume it is still being worked on) is Doppleganger, probably the bst for facial animation, but as I said not available yet (if ever)

Next is Vreel Morphs, nice thing about this one is it is very powerful and deals with exactly what grey was saying about irrellavent geometric data, as you save store points rather than actual modeled targets.

then theere are a few smaller ones like morpher (my suggestion) which work decently though they do deal with modeled targets which can be hard on resources if your not smart about it. THough Morpher is great cause it saves as PLA so you don't need the morph targets after your done animating, you can simply delete them and render away. Disdvantage to this is going back and remorphing something is hard as you can't bring up the mixed parmeters to make that.

My suggestion is MOrpher cause it is the easiest, and the best of the free ones, but Vreel is great if you can afford it, though it has a steeper learning curve, very minor though.

As for whats better morphs or bones, for facial I am finding a mix is best. Curerently C4D bones are sort of hard to do this type of thing though so I do almost all with morph targets, now experimenting with bones for eyelids and mouth, and soon bones for the eyes themselves too.

[Grey]

Vreel Huh! (off on a Vreel hunt...)

[Grey]

http://www.vreel-3d.de

Vreel looks promising... I can't see how many morph targets it's limited to, or if it is or isn't.

[That Adrian Guy]

Kaiskai,
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that you're a blessing to this forum!!! Any hints as to where I can find "morpher"?? Is it free? cause I'm on a slightly limited budget right now!

thanks chief

[LucentDreams]

morpher is free and it was the first for XL 6, it should be in the plugin cafe at www.plugincafe.com under plugins. It is super simple and quite effective, it is sort of limited to how many morph targets, but more it is limited to how many you need to mix at one time as you can replace any in the list at anytime.

As for Vreel's i believe it is unlimited as it uses store points. the plugin is free for download but can only open scene without the serial number, there are a few samples you can download to check it out too I believe.

[anobrin]

I prefer morphs especially for eyeblinks

( still needs work!!)
http://66.70.166.29/animation/mike2.MPG

[Grey]

After playing with Bones in Cinema, the eyeblinkds are one of the things I'd never use Moprhs on.

It's too easy to setup point groups and have the bone bring they eyelid down in an organic manner with variable weight.

[bry]

Hi,

check MorphMixer from this website

www.studio-fabian.de

It's easy and cool, too. (and free)


bry

[LucentDreams]

yes thanks for pointing this one out, this one has the advantage of working with Magpie (a pretty good lipsyncing tool) I have jsut used Magpie to help dope out a scene with lipsyncing in my classical film and wow is that program handy. This is definitely another good free one.

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