Using Jaw Bone with Facial Morph Targets?

[JamesDeschenes]

Well this is just a thought I just had... I do not know how pratical it could be but anyways... It could be possible to link the morph ammount of the phonemes to control the ammount of rotation on the jaw bone.

You would probably have to elaborate on that a bit to get it to work better when you have multiple targets being morphed. Just an idea tho.

[Chris Thomas]

Personally I've gone for doing the jaw with skinning, and all other facial shapes as morphs, you could and should wire any bone rotations to morphs and I'd do this via sliders (on a panel, not the viewport sliders, their just too buggy). For instance on a character of mine I have the eyelids boned, and they blink via a slider, which also drives a morph for further facial movmnt cause by the blink.
You could use a similar system for your phonemes, but I would'nt it could get very complex pretty quickly. Keep it simple and animate both by hand, it allows great flexiiblity anyway.

Chris Thomas

[Mahlon]

Thanks,
So you're saying, just to clarify....

1. bone and skin the jaw

2. make morph targets for the lips and mouth area and incorporate the jaw rotation into these while making them.

3. Then wire the jaw bone to the different phoneme morph sliders so that when you move your phonemes, the jaw will rotate with them and give you the state you had when you created the expression?

Thanks,
Mahlon

[GRMac13]

I'm going to be trying this pretty soon (for the first time) with the main character from a short I'm working on. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

[Chris Thomas]

nope, i'd make discreet moprh targets for each phoneme or facial expression, and also wire up a jaw via bones and skining. i.e. keep the two things separate, however I'm also saying that if you need to combine morphing and skinning effects, do so by driving both with a slider or custom attribute


Chris T

[Matt-Clark]

I've recently had some great results by using a reactor controller to use the morph targets to drive the jaw rotation, it's similar to wiring but not as flakey. ;)

[Chris Thomas]

or alternatively use scripted controllers or expressions, one tip, use script controllers if you can, their much more flexible unless you want basic relationships. Also read up on "DependsOn" function for scripted controllers as this makes them interactive.

Chris T

[Mahlon]

ok, thanks all, this gives me something to go on.

Mahlon

[Bennels]

Having recently come across the same dilemma of how to make characters talk with a skinned jaw bone I spent a few days figuring out how to do this with a GUI made with MAXscript. To control as many properties as you want but then also having the control to hand edit them after was very important.

Basically what I do is create a spinner that can controls these jaw’s rotation and the appropriate morph channel at the same time. The advantage in doing this is you can create hundreds of variations and still be able to tweak individual properties later. Expressions and wiring can limit you in this way.

In the zip I’ve attached there is an example scene and a maxscript, as none of this would make sense if you can’t see it in action. Just run the jawbone.ms and then play with the spinner.

I hope this makes sense.

Cheers

PS - made with max 4.2

[Mahlon]

Thanks for the file. I'm going to play with it a bit. Looks good.

Mahlon

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